penny for your thoughts

For me, the determination of a mental disorder vs. someone who is "normal" but with whom you simply disagree, is irrational thoughts or behavior (like throwing a vibrator at someone who is crying, when the context has included no references whatsoever to sex or vibrators, but has been very angry for no reason that the crying person can discern. When I see someone crying, my first instinct is not to throw a vibrator. But maybe I need to re-evaluate my people skills.)

So, that said, when it comes to determining what's "rational," everyone's got a different opinion."

In the very few relationships to which I have an extremely detailed inside look, everyone's spouse has at one time or another displayed elements of BP or mental disorder, but I wouldn't call them mentally unbalanced on the whole.

So then the determining factor becomes frequency and severity?

How do any of you tell the difference between a relationship that is bad simply because the people don't get along, and a relationship that goes downhill because of mental instability?

I don't know how much "normal" people argue, or in what context. Thoughts?

You mentioned him moving on, and the impersonal accounting note. I have experience with that detachment myself, and hearing you talk about your bewilderment and pain sounds like you're reading my mind.

I should have known something was up with my now-hubby when, during one of our several breakups on the path to marriage, he exhibited all those behaviors: hanging up on me, refusing my calls ..... I'm not normally a crier - far from it - tho I've made several references to it in my posts, but lately things have escalated, and I guess I'm human after all. But back then, I would cry as if my heart was breaking and he would just ... "click." And then I wouldn't hear from him for weeks. And then when I did, barely any consciousness of the pain he had caused me.

I continued in the relationship and then married him because he swore he recognized his faults and the pain he caused me and that he would work on them, blah blah blah.

The red flags were everywhere but I believed in love and that people can change, and all that crap. Kept giving him the benefit of the doubt -- much to my own detriment.

----- Interesting also the timing --- This is actually my second experience with this (which I'm reluctant to divulge, natch, because I know how it looks). But I knew my first husband for 13 years. We had our differences, of course, but nothing I would term as mental or BP.

After 13 years of being together, we got married.

6 months later -- just like what I'm facing now, the only difference being in this case that it was there all along -- he flipped. Full-blown mania, every single symptom presented.

He cheated on me (lying to me that he was doing so), married her, and they have a baby.

I have no idea his mental state now or how their relationship is, but I have not one, tiny doubt in my mind that he was BP then.

It was so weird. It was like he was an alien. And he simply told everyone that I was horrible to him and that he had been mistreated, and they went off into the sunset.

Absolutely no recognition whatsoever of our 13 years spent together. I asked him at one point why he loved me and he responded, and I quote: "Because you pay the bills and stuff."

Among the many negatives he listed as reasons for him leaving me - and they were numerous -- was - and I am not making this up - the "way I walk."

The more devastated I became, the crueler and more detached he got.

The detachment I could take .... but to actively seek out someone just to heap abuse on them is about as mental as it gets, I think.

And I'm seeing that exact same behavior today.

My current hubby could have chosen any time at all to freak out and divorce me, or leave me -- we've been together 4-plus years.

He chose the worst time in my life to escalate his episodes and put the focus on him --- my father has cancer.

And now my husband has decided that this is a good time to divorce me.

Divorce me, sure (well, if it must be done). But right now?

Thanks for your insight. Please let me know how you're doing, too.

Everyone knows marriage is supposed to take some work --- but so frickin' traumatic as to turn someone crazy? Wow! I've got the magic touch, it seems. lol.

Post edited by: mbrento, at: 03/29/2008 20:06

I'm 35 now, I was 30 when we started. My own prospects for "family"? Can't wait to get divorced so I can unleash myself again on the dating world - twice divorced from BP spouses, biological clock tick-tocking away, let the race begin. I'm sure all the men will want to know where to sign up ... lol. omg.