# Bi polar Wife



## StumpedinMe (May 10, 2010)

First a little background info. My wife and I have been married for 15+ years and we have a 14 year old son that has been diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome. My wife was diagnosed as bi polar several years ago. She takes her meds regularly and has for several years. About a year ago she decided that she was too mentally ill to work, so she quit her job and applied for disability. There was no discussion between us before this happened. Her disability claim has been denied several times, so she is waiting for a hearing with a judge to decide her claim. For the past year while waiting for her claim to be decided she has not worked or looked for any kind of work. She spends several hours daily on Facebook. She rarely leaves the house, and has added agoraphobia to her mental illness diagnosis. She is undergoing the process to undergo gastric bypass surgery. She does see a counselor, but only once or twice a month, and mainly because it's required for her surgery. She has absolutely refused any couples counseling in the past. 
Here is my dilemma. Approximately 6 months ago, my son was discovered in an inappropriate situation with two girls, both younger than him. There was no abuse, physical or sexual. Two days ago my wife told me that she really regrets having a child, and does not really like our son a lot of the time. She was sexually abused as a child, and our son being caught in an inappropriate situation has triggered quite a bit of dislike on her part. She is very short fused with him, is very controlling of the smallest things, and is generally just not always very nice to him. 
I love my son and would do anything for him, but I'm not sure how to proceed. I'm not sure that telling her to leave is the best option and I don't have any idea if her feelings of dislike will continue forever, or if she can deal with this and move on. Any insights would be greatly appreciated.


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## Uptown (Mar 27, 2010)

Stumped, your W might have strong traits of a personality disorder (PD) like NPD (Narcissistic PD) or BPD (Borderline PD). A 2008 survey of nearly 35,000 BPD suffers found that 70% of them had experienced sexual abuse or some other form of abuse or abandonment in early childhood, like your W did -- (but not all people experiencing such abuse will necessarily develop BPD). 

BPD is also believed to be caused, at least in part, by inherited genes that predispose the person to having a mental illness -- with the abuse causing it to take the form of BPD. This predisposition therefore can be passed on to children, perhaps taking the form of another PD (e.g., Aspergers).

Most BPDers have another PD or illness that coexists with the BPD. A substantial share of BPDers (one study suggests up to a third) also have bipolar disorder -- which your W has been diagnosed as having. 

There are several clear differences between the two disorders. Bipolar mood swings are very slow because they are caused by gradual changes in body chemistry. They are considered rapid if as many as four occur in a year. Typically a bipolar mood change takes a couple of weeks to develop.

In sharp contrast, four BPD mood changes can easily occur in four days. BPD rages, for example, typically last about 5 hours and rarely as long as 36 hours (if the BPD sufferer is inner-directed, you will not witness a raging screaming person but, instead, a quiet withdrawn person who turns her anger onto herself).

A second difference is that the onset is very different. Whereas a bipolar change may occur over several weeks, a BPD change typically occurs in less than a minute -- often in only 15 seconds -- because it is event-triggered by some innocent comment or action by the person's spouse or child.

A third difference is that, whereas bipolar can cause people to be irritable and obnoxious during the manic phase, it does not rise to the level of meanness you see when a BPD is splitting you black. The difference is huge: while a manic person may regard you as an irritation, a BPD person can perceive you as Hitler and will treat you accordingly. Moreover, BPDers are very controlling and become fearful when losing control over the loved ones in their lives.

Finally, a fourth difference is that a bipolar sufferer -- whether depressed or manic -- usually is able to trust you if she knows you well. Untreated BPDs, however, are unable to trust -- even though they sometimes may claim otherwise. This lack of trust means there is no foundation on which to build a relationship. Moreover -- and I learned this the hard way -- when a person does not trust you, you can never trust them because they can turn on you at any time.

Yet, despite these four clear differences between the two disorders, many people confuse the two. The primary source of this confusion, as I note above, seems to be the fact that many BPD sufferers also have the bipolar disorder -- causing many people to mistakenly attribute the BPD symptoms to the bipolar disorder.

Finally, if my experience is any guide, you likely will never hear the diagnosis of BPD from a marriage counselor or a psychologist treating your W. Marriage counselors do not have the necessary training. Although most psychologists have the training, they seem to be very reluctant to render such a diagnosis. 

One reason is that, because insurance carriers usually will not cover BPD, the psychologists often list one of the associated symptoms (e.g., bipolar or unipolar depression) as the diagnosis. Another reason is that BPD is such a dreaded diagnosis that the client will usually terminate therapy on hearing that diagnosis.

Hence, if your W actually suffers from BPD, your best chance of finding out is to see a psychologist on your own and describe to him the behavior you witness. He will be able to speak candidly to you without being hampered by the constraints mentioned above. 

I also encourage you to read about BPD to see if your W seems to have a strong pattern of BPD traits. Because all of us have all nine of those traits (albeit at a low level), you are already familiar with them and thus need only to learn their names and learn to recognize them. 

You are already able to identify strong selfishness, for example, without being able to diagnose Narcissistic PD. This is not rocket science. So learning to recognize the nine BPD traits is surprisingly easy, especially if you have been living with a high-functioning BPD sufferer for 15 years as I did. 

What is difficult is determining whether the traits are so severe as to warrant a formal diagnosis of full-blown BPD. More difficult still is being able to treat the disorder. Hence, the diagnosis and treatment are the province of professionals. Significantly, I am not a psychologist. Rather, I am just a man who lived with a verbally abusive BPD exW for 15 years and took care of a bipolar foster son for 12 years.

If you would like to read more about BPD, I suggest starting with How a Borderline Personality Disorder Love Relationship Evolves - Roger Melton, M.A. . That article describes what it is like to live with a typical BPD sufferer. If the BPD behavior in that article sounds familiar but your W does not exhibit the rages and temper tantrums, I would be happy to suggest a good source of information on "quiet borderlines," i.e., those who turn their anger inwards on themselves. And I would be happy to try to answer any other questions you might have about this disorder. Best wishes to you and your family.


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