frog, i've thought of that what if myself, but i dont dare mention it because she doesnt repond all that great to any what if's, and that one would make her explode.

weaver,
i asked her baout her mom moving here, you can imagine where that got me.

my thoughts on what the pdoc said about if she would be happy if she moved is simple..
i think he knows that moving would be a decision based on a slim chance that she would be happy, but also realilzes that it may not make everyone happy. but he also thinks that if she is unresponsive to therapy, there really is no other choice due to the fact that she perceives this as the only way she could be happy.

i feel like i am walking on eggshells all day every day.
i feel my efforts to help her and this family are hopeless.
its worse than banging your own head against a wall all day, cause this wall hits back with vengenace.

she will no doubt be upset again with me after work, all though this time she will claim I am in a "mood" and am ignoring her. Thats how these things go. We argue, she gets upset, and do to her lack of empathy and irrational way of thinking, i end up upset as well.
then i am the bad guy again because she feels I am ignoring her for no appraent reason.

Why and how do I love someone that I hate so much?

Do you think she will be happy back at her mom's town?

(I am not suggesting anything, just want to know if you think she will be)

Lang,

All I can say is it is up to you.

I am not asking you to ask her that question.

Ask her doctor not her.

I mean I would ask what is going to happen. Tell him as a father and a Husband I have taken on the responsibility to care for my family. Part of that is planning a future and having contingency plans. So I would like to know if I decided on doing this I need to know what you would suggest in these situations.

What if her parents were to move? What would you suggest then? Do we stay, do we move, what.

What if her parents die. What do we do then.

What if we get there and she decides that isn't what was causing her unhappiness.

What if we move and I get so resentful that I have truly sacraficed my families well being to make her happy and I become very unhappy and resentful.

Please advise.

Oh and are you willing to gaurantee in writing that she will be happy because when you tell her that she will be you are putting me in a bad situation.

well there is 3 ways of that happening..
1 - we all move there
2 - she and the kids move there
3 - she moves there alone

If we all move there, I beleive it will forfill the need that she beleives is causing her unhappiness.
But, no, I do not beleive she will be happy. I beleive 100% that all the other stresses in her life, and any new ones that arise from the move will replace the stress she has now about moving. And I am certain I wouldn't be happy, and the kids will also not be happy due to the structure of their parents.

If she and the kids move there, again, I beleive she will not be ahppy for the same reasons as above, along with the stresses she will have from not having me, and the increased stress she would endure from trying to raise 3 children alone.

If she moves there alone, there is 0 chance of her being happy.

now, if you change the woring of the question to read "happier" instead of "happy"....

again, if she moves alone or just with the kids, no she will not be happy. how could she be? she may forfill the need of being near her family, but it will create many more unforfilled needs due to the fact that I am not with her.

if we were to all move, again, other stresses will take the place of this one.

ive seen it happen time and time again. its as if she has a jar in her brain for stressful issues.
the biggest stress is always at the bottomg of the jar, but any stress leads to the bottom one. if you take that bottom one away, the next one falls and takes it place...

Happiness comes from within.

frog,
it sounded to me like he can only do what he feels will get her stabilized.
He may not necasarily be suggesting we move, but he is suggesting that if she truly feels she just needs family to be happy, he cannot change that feeling, and the idea of her moving may be inevitable even if it turns out she isnt happy there.

let me rephrase that,,,
he beleives that if he gets her as close to 100% stabilized as possible here, under medication and with therapy, and if she still beleives at that point that she needs to move, he feels he wont be able to do anything.

Lang,

I think you need to join a support group of some kind that can help you cope with her illness and that will help you deal with her in a way that will minimize any potential emotional damage she may heap on the kids.

I think you really, really need some support for dealing with this.

She will not be happy, until she makes up her mind to be and works whatever program she needs to work to get her mind functioning in a healthy way.

I think you should tell her the three things we keep saying -

I will not move
I will not let you take our children with you
I will not live in a whacked out world with a miserable wife.

And then make these your boundaries.

Her perception of happiness and how one becomes it just might change. She may become committed to her getting whatever help she needs.

Let it be her choice to move, but she moves alone. And let it be her choice to stay, but she works on her illness and happiness.

weaver,
i asked her pdoc what i should do about the moving issue in the meantime, and although he realizes it may be false hope, he stated that telling her rock hard things like "i will not move" are not a good idea and will most certainly make his job of stabilizing her much more difficult.

thoughts?

My thoughts are listen to the doctor, but please find a support group of spouse's who are dealing with a mental illness. Okay?

I mean there is nothing you can do, because everything is determined by her level of mental stability.

What choices do you have?

I might give it six months, but I would not live under the conditions you are being forced to live in, and I would not subject my children to them. It was very, very important to me to be a happy mom to my DD, as my parents were addicts. I loved them, but they died very young and lets face it, they were addicts. I look at my beautiful DD's face and thank gawd she has a mom who she does not hear yelling, or crying, or throwing fits. You're W, even if not mentally ill, is selfish, entitled and immature. But you can't even enforce boundaries, which normally go a long way to force a person to reach a certain level of maturity or leave.


Ask the BS's who have recovered their marriages about what it took to take the entitlement out of their W's behaviour. It took not allowing it. end of story.

I'm sorry Lang, I really feel for the sitch you are in.
I hope UVA or someone else with experience in bipolar/ocd comes back and gives you some ideas.

I said that earlier in the thread to you.

I know what he is saying.

I guess what I want you to understand is that you are not responsible for her happiness.

Here is what I thought when it came to me. You are looking at your side.

I used a modified Ben Frankling test.

YOu line up the postives on one side, the negatives on another but then you weight them, I used a scale of one to five.

Positive-
FWW is happier 5


Negative-
NO job 5
I will not be as happy 2


I think from reading yours the impact on everyone but her is negative.

So just to make her Happier, everyone else should sacrafice.

I could gaurantee what I was saying on the negative side but the FWW couldn't gaurantee what she was putting on the positive.

Even after that the negative clearly outweighed the positive.

I decided I wasn't leaving and she could. She retaliated by being mean to me and having an A and feeling entitled to everything because she was giving up so much to stay here she shouldn't sacrafice anything else.

I have told her before that I wont live in an unhappy marraige like this, and all she does is say "what are you going to do, leave?"
if i so no, i would want you to leave, she laughs.

ive joined several forums/support groups for bipolar, and they help with venting...
but the fact is all i can do is vent.

I just asked a coworker who has a married D in her 20's that is bipolar how her SIL copes, and this is what she told me:

Now that her DD is on the right medicine, and she is in therapy their life is much better. They all went to see the doc, including my coworker and he did say that her perception of what will make her happy is very important in her stability because if that were to be upset she could not handle it. But for her, her happiness is based on her child and her husband. She has focused all her energy on them and if they are okay/happy than she is happy and her brain produces more happy endorphins and that helps with her illness.

So what the Pdoc is saying holds weight, according to my coworker. What you are going to have to do is get her to realize that her happiness is not dependent on her being with her mom and siblings. It is in being with her H and children.

Maybe you can find a way to change your behavior, so that it causes a change in hers. For instance if it doesn't work what you are doing now (with the way you act after your fight last night and her reaction), then try something different...try to see what brings about positive behavior in her. Keep a notebook if you need to on what works, and what doesn't.

Try and see if you can change this power struggle the two of you have going on.

Have you tried practicing the four rules of marriage? The 15 hours of quality time? Meeting her top five E/N's?

All ideas for changing the dynamic in your marriage to where she relies more on you than her mother for happiness and/or emotional connection.

All ways to make you become closer to each other.

(now remember, this is trying to change her perception since you can't enforce any boundaries right now)

any chance your co-worker would read this thread and give any other advice?

thanks so much you all of you

yes.
her perception at this point is that I am a great husband and father, and meet all of her needs, but in her own words "I am still not enough to make her happy"

Yes, I will ask her to and try to help her get a login so she can respond. But it will have to be after work.

thanks so much for this weaver/frog/owl and anyone who has helped.

Hello, I am weavers co-worker, I managed to get log-in. As my co-worker was saying about my daughter, yes she is bi-poler and she has been a handful.

It is very hard to keep up with the many faces of Eve if you get my drift. One minute she was a darling the next an evil, witch, always wanting her way, we called her a hurrican, she can suck the air right out a room.

Now that she is on the right meds she is a lot better.

In the early days of this she was selfish, self centerd, malipative, demanding, and unrealistic in her thoughts. She was all consuming on material things, spending money on things she and her husband could not afford, and hate towards me. She drove her husban crazy, I told him to grow bigger cajones and step up and just say no. He had to do that because when ever she thougth she wanted something, she had to have it. She would not take NO for an answer. He just gave in to save a fight. He was suprised that I would say that about my own daughter. However I seen what he was going thru, and could understand it.

Before she was diagnesed she got PJ and had a son. Things got a little more hard, then she was forced to go to a Pdoc. She is better now with the meds she is taking and she is very much into the 3 of them now, and hubby controls all the money. Much happier family.