Breaking up with a bipolar person

[ravensfan]

Hello all. About 2 months ago I got together with a friend I was studying abroad with. We were friends for about a month before we got together. Not even a week after, she began acting like a very different person. Soon after, she needed to go to the hospital for an unrelated problem. Since she was already there, she decided to talk to a psychologist while in the hospital, and they determined that she needed to go back home.

 

She’s been back home for about a month now, but she has been in and out of the hospital. She has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and the sudden change I noticed in her was her going through a manic episode. Against every recommendation given to me, I continued to communicate with her. I still had feelings for her and I let her know of that. I think I had a naïve hope that things would come back to normal eventually.

 

I thought about it a lot, and especially after talking to her again, It seems that she is not going to change. Her disorder will continue to be with her, and unfortunately it is too much for me to handle. It was very stressful dealing with her for the week before she went to the hospital. Some nights she didn’t even let me sleep. If I stayed with her in the long run, I don’t think I would end up being happy.

 

I think I need to let her go, but at this point I’m not sure how. It’s also tough because I never really initiated a breakup in my life. I may have dug my hole a lot deeper by revealing to her that I still cared and thought about her. I did, and in a way I still do, but I feel that the bad outweighs the good in this relationship. It seems that she is pretty stuck on me. Ever since she left here she has been throwing around “love” and “soulmate” like it was nothing. I don’t know exactly what to do or what to say, especially considering that she is in another country all together. I would appreciate any help on this. Thank you.

[Silverbirch]

The thing about bipolar is that some people do manage to get back to their old selves - and that is mostly the situation with people who are compliant with medication. I was in a long-term relationship with a person who developed bipolar after 8 years. The last 2 years of that relationship were really terrible and that was probably because he was very unreliable in taking his medication. On the other hand, I've known people with bipolar who have taken their medication and become stable. In the relationship I was in, he dumped me, but when he came back, I had moved on. In my case though, I was told there was a strong likelihood that he also had borderline personality disorder - I don't know.

 

If it had been me, I wouldn't have been able to dump her either. I stood by my partner at the time, wanting him to become well again, but it wasn't meant to be. As far as I know, he is okay these days and marrying somebody else soon who knows about his bipoar.

[ut804]

From MY personal experiece, run run run!!!!!

 

My ex was wonderful for about a month when we got together. He did everything for me, was super nice, caring, wanted to see me all the time, excited about me, said he was falling in love with me, etc. It was going so fast I thought he would propose.

 

The second month he became really distant. Didn't answer his calls or texts, would go days not talking to me and then have the nerve to call me clingy, made up this rule that we could only see each other once a week (even though he had no job and no school). I asked if everything was OK between us (given this drastic change) and he just yelled at me saying I was insecure and I was demanding too much.

 

In the 3rd month things got REALLY BAD. He became verbally abusive. Said his friends hated me (not true), criticized me, made fun of me, pointed out my flaws, etc. He basically called me stupid and ugly. Then I was in a really bad accident and he didn't care. Was not there for me, blamed it all on me when the accident was not my fault. Then he stooped so low as to not want to see me because I had to wear a neck brace for 6 weeks from my accident.

 

I broke up with him. He came crying back begging and pleading he would change and give him another chance. I did.

 

One day later he breaks up with me!!

 

One week after that he comes back again. Got back together. He was nice for maybe a month. Tried to say "I love you".

 

Then he disappeared. Made up this whole big lie he was in the hospital when he wasnt (I saw pics of him dancing on facebook).

 

Then everything was OK again. I thought we worked it out. He was super nice again. Said he wanted to be with me forever. Said he wanted marriage. Said he wanted us to grow old. Said he wanted to live with me. Said "I love you".

 

Then out of nowhere, after saying all that, he breaks up with me.

 

2 months later he comes back. Said he missed me, wanted to make us work. He was officially diagnosed with bipolar and was sipposed to finally be on medication for 2 months now. I ONLY gave him a chance to talk about it because he was ON MEDS THIS TIME. So I had hope.

 

Then he cancelled on me.

 

Then he rescheduled.

 

Then he completely disappeared and fell off the face of the earth.

 

And that was finally the end.

[ut804]

And I just want to add, that the damage he did to me was tremendous. I know its partially my fault for staying so long though. But he shattered my self-esteem, I had to constantly "walk on egg shells" around him. God forbid I wore a color shirt he didn't like he would not shut up about it for 20 mins and practicially break up with me over it. He would make threats to leave if I didn't do things his way. I had to live in fear not knowing if he would be nice or just go crazy and hate me for no reason. It was so unpredicatable:

 

love hate love hate love hate love hate love hate

 

How much can a person take? I nearly went crazy myself. If we had plans and he called me an hour before I would start getting nervous because so many times he would cancel last minute. He ruined my birthday practically, and he was just so unpredictable. And it took its toll on me. I had to live in constant fear. Is he going to leave? Is he going to like my shirt?

 

Its not fun.

 

Go on any bipolar forum and all the stories are the same. Many women in relationships with a bipolar man needed therapy THEMSELVES because of what the bipolar person did.

 

If you can deal with the mood swings, the drama, the love-you-today hate-you tomorrow- then go ahead.

 

If you are not strong it will tear you apart. 7 months later I still cry over what he did to me.

[ravensfan]

I see. I don't think she is all about taking medication. For weeks they kept her in the hospital because she would not take her medication. Whenever I called, she continuously complained about how the doctors were horrible, and misdiagnosed her, and how she was going to sue them when she got out. She also seemed to be proud about how she caused a "riot" while she was in, and how she kept trying to test the workers there to see how far she could break the rules. I think she finally gave in and decided to take her medication, but all along she's tried to assure me that she is perfectly fine, and that she doesn't need medication (and that she is a lot healthier without it). I think she has a distorted view of reality, and I can't help but feel that she would be a huge amount of work and stress on my life if we were to continue.

 

The question is, now that she is far away, what would be the appropriate way to break this off? Is via phone/skype the best way to do this?

[ut804]

They are manipulative. They will make you believe that YOU are the one with the illness and who needs therapy, not them. Only ONCE did my ex had any insight to his condition. He said something in his head didn't feel right, he admitted he had issues, and said he didn't want to hurt me. But that only lasted a day. Then he back to making me cry and getting pleasure out of it.

 

End it any way you can for your sanity, especially because she won't take her meds. Skype is fine I guess.

[ravensfan]

So as it stands so far, I have not been able to contact her via skype. Either she is not available, or I'm not available, and we are 6 hours apart in time zones to talk. It makes things difficult. She is very unstable mentally and is convinced that nothing is wrong with her. I log into Facebook and almost every day I get over 100 messages from her. All she is doing is writing what is on her mind with no rhyme or reason to what she is saying. The other day she literally wrote me messages for 3 hours straight. I wasn't even logged in, but I was able to determine this through the time stamp. This needs to stop, and I don't want to deal with this anymore, but in this case do I still need to hold out and wait until finally we can talk together via phone/skype?

[ravensfan]

Looks like i was able to talk to her via skype tonight. As I figured, she's pretty mad about it. Either way, I'll deal with the fallout one way or the other. The hard part is done. Thanks everyone.

[Fudgie]

Break up as quickly as possible. Get your stuff back, give back your stuff and CUT ALL CONTACT. DO NOT TRY AND BE FRIENDS WITH HER. If she gets manic and starts to stalk you or threatening harm, begin to document everything so you can threaten her with harassment charges so she will leave you alone.

[ravensfan]

Break up as quickly as possible. Get your stuff back, give back your stuff and CUT ALL CONTACT. DO NOT TRY AND BE FRIENDS WITH HER. If she gets manic and starts to stalk you or threatening harm, begin to document everything so you can threaten her with harassment charges so she will leave you alone.

 

I could not agree with you any more. She has literally gone crazy, she not only think she is fine, but she is convinced she is superior to everyone else in the world. She even claims she has a plan that will solve all of the world's problems, and somehow she is the "chosen one". Time to run away from this situation and never look back.

[Lansing]

wow. That is sad... It is amazing how little attention mental illness gets in society but causes so many problems!

 

I am glad you are able to step away, I know how hard it is to leave someone that you care about but only so much you can do for someone and it sounds like she really needs medical attention.

[ravensfan]

wow. That is sad... It is amazing how little attention mental illness gets in society but causes so many problems!

 

I am glad you are able to step away, I know how hard it is to leave someone that you care about but only so much you can do for someone and it sounds like she really needs medical attention.

 

Thanks for the words. Honestly, I felt pretty rotten breaking it off with her. It almost didn't seem fair that I would break up with her over something she couldn't control, but I suppose it was serious enough to do so. It wasn't easy. I probably waited much, much longer than I should have to do this. I held on to too much hope that things would be just fine in the end as long as I hung in there. As a result I can't help but still think about her and the things that attracted me to her. In the end though, I feel that us being around each other would be bad for both of us; she might try to continue to act "fine" to ensure the relationship keeps going, and I would have eventually gone mad trying to tolerate her inappropriate attitudes. I wish things had turned out differently, but unfortunately, for whatever reason, it turned out the way it did.

[ut804]

Wow thank you so much for taking the time to write all that and for the advice!

 

I have also wondered if he also had Borderline Personality Disorder. I know he had issues with depression in the past (his childhood) and "anger issues" for many years, and only recently he was officially diagnosed with Bipolar. I think he really is Bipolar because I have done much research and read hundreds of stories and they all seem the same. Then again, what you said does make sense. I will research BPD more (well he's out of my life now but just out of curiosity).

 

I have always know about Bipolar and from what I have known, it is cycles of depression/ mania but I had no idea the person can change their romantic feelings for someone, so perhaps he has more than just Bipolar or in fact BPD. I always thought it was more than Bipolar, that it was something with his personality or something much deeper/ serious than Bipolar. He almost seems to lack a conscious and gets pleasure from hurting people, which I think is more than just Bipolar! And to me it seems like it's part of his personality, not just a mood.

 

Wow I will definitely look into this...

 

And it is truly sad because personality disorders are Axis II in the DSM.... it is not like a clinical disorder that can easily be changed with medication. This is something more deep rooted (personality rather than mood swings). I know something about it because I have degrees in Psychology, but unfortunately when I learned about it in school it was very brief and didn't go into a whole lot of detail. I need to brush up on what i learned!

And actually I didn't catch on or think it was Bipolar that he had because although I thought his mood swings and lov/ hate for me was weird, I remembered learning how people with Bipolar can get hypersexual in the manic phase and spend/ blow all of their money which he was not doing. He was actully saving money and his sex drive seemed normal, plus it was hard to tell if he had "racing thoughts"

 

But actually that made me heal a little better. I always had hope he would have improved with all those years of therapy and now going on meds for Bipolar, but now it could actually be something else that is not so easy to fix. So I am glad I got out.

 

I am sorry for what you went through, but thank you so much for sharing! I'm about to read your post and do a google search....

 

Thanks!

 

And to ravens,

You did the right thing! Unfortunately it is impossible to have a healthy relationship with someone who is unhealthy. The person you need to focus on right now is yourself.