My Wife is Bipolar – Help me Save our Marriage

My wife was diagnosed bipolar about ten years ago. Since then, she’s been under treatment off and on and on a string of different medications. We’ve had three children over that time, and she would occasionally dodge treatment and go off of her medicine during her pregnancies or while nursing.

Needless to say, it was a challenging time, but it was often hard to separate what were symptoms of her bipolarity and what were the results of the normal stresses that come with babies and maybe some postpartum issues.

Recently, I found out that my wife was off her meds again with no plans to go back on them. Our youngest child is two years old, and I knew my wife had gone off of her meds while pregnant with and then while nursing him, but I’d naively assumed she have gone back on them after that time passed (about six months ago).

And she’d seemed like she was doing better–in fact, we were really doing well as a couple, despite some rough moments over the holidays. But today, things went south in a big way. It was awful for everyone, but especially the kids. And nothing I could do would calm her down or relieve the situation.

I can’t take another blowup, and I need to protect my kids from the emotional hell they go through in those moments. I want my wife to go back on her meds and to take her illness more seriously. But I don’t know how to accomplish this. If I talk to her when she’s happy, she replies, “But I’m doing well right now, aren’t I?” and “I haven’t been that bad.”

And she’s not all wrong–her up times are wonderful, there’s nothing she can’t do during those times. But the down times are unbearable–and obviously, asking her to return to treatment or go back on her meds when she’s down just isn’t smart.

I feel powerless in this situation. I would threaten to leave her–but she knows I’d never leave my kids (and would it really help the situation to leave her with three small children to manage on her own while she’s struggling to handle herself?).

I can’t figure out the right thing to say or do to help her manage her illness. Since she blows it off while doing better and sees me as the source of all of her misery when doing poorly, all I seem to be able to do is start more arguments.

I love her, and I feel like I’ve been very supportive and continue to be willing to do anything to help her–and to save our marriage but I can’t figure out what to do.