# Bipolar husband and concerned family



## artistmom (Feb 7, 2018)

Hi everyone,

My husband and I have been together for over 10 years. He's always had issues with Bipolar Disorder. He's manic depressive and that depression is expressed in pure anger and hate. He takes his misery out on his family and objects around them. He's never physically hurt anyone but he does have a tendency to break things, threaten, scream and say hurtful things.

Obviously, he doesn't want to live like this anymore. None of us want to live like this anymore. He goes into a manic low state about twice a month and it will last for several days each time. I usually can see it coming on because he will get this "zoned out" look on his face like he's going somewhere else. He usually will stop eating and end up sleeping a lot. This is when I know he will be angry soon.

When I try to talk to him about his depression, he blames me, his kids, our finances...etc.. It always seems to be someone else or something else that is causing this, according to him. I don't even think he realizes he needs help beyond anything I can do to fix the issues. He says things to me or our kids that are hurtful, just to hurt our feelings. One example is our seven year old son didn't want to change into clean clothes and instead of dealing with that issue like a parent, he screamed and came to where I was and said "you should find someone else". When I asked him what that meant, he wouldn't answer. Another time, we were on our way to a park and he was upset about something (can't remember what it was) and he said "this isn't working out anymore." and refused to talk to me about what he meant. He was fine fifteen minutes later. 

Don't get me wrong, he's a good guy. Like I said, he only turns into this angry person a couple times a month for a few days at a time. The rest of the time, he's laughing and playing with the kids, being affectionate with me, having genuine conversations with us, going places and doing things with us, helping around the house, wanting to spend time with me after the kids go to bed, etc.. It's like when it's good, it's really good and when it's bad, it's really bad...just like his BD.

I KNOW the major issue with him, besides needing to see a doctor, is that he doesn't have any hobbies. He wants to build things but we don't currently have the money to buy a bunch of tools and supplies. He always talks about wanting to buy this or buy that to accommodate his ideas for new hobbies but those ideas change constantly so we can never save up to buy what he wants because what he wants never stays the same. We don't have any health insurance so I'm not sure how to go about seeing a doctor. That's why I'm trying to find a good hobby for him that he would like. One of the last ones was that he wanted to get into food saving so he wanted a vacuum sealer. We spent like $130 on one and he never uses it now. That's usually how it works out. Then he's blaming me for him not having hobbies because I am not OK with him pulling money out of savings to purchase hundreds of dollars of THINGS for these hobbies everytime he gets a new idea. He used to snowboard and skateboard but he doesn't anymore. He's really into that survivalist stuff and likes those gadgets they use on youtube for surviving out in the wild. He keeps saying he wants to build things but we don't have a lot of tools at the moment. 

ANyway, enough with my rant. Thanks for reading. Any advice or suggestions are greatly appreciated!


----------

