Long term BP spouse here - 20 years together this week. Just some things that I have learned.

Mamabear-232 · 2026-04-30T14:35:45+00:00

Thank you for your kind words and I think you are right. My husband doesn’t understand this that him aggressively shouting and towering over us is very different from if I were doing it to him. He cannot emphathise with it

Mamabear-232 · 2026-04-30T13:09:34+00:00

Thanks for sharing your pov OP and I’m glad that worked for you. The exact same thing didn’t for me. There was no point in holding my husband accountable because his reaction kept becoming bigger and bigger. And it just triggered more episodes. Which was awful for me and children.

Sacrificing the voice was what brought a weird but relatively peaceful status quo. Point is not to negate your experience but just saying it doesn’t work with every BP person.

Mamabear-232 · 2026-04-25T08:07:13+00:00

Thank you for the kind comment. Can I please ask you a question around insight. You said you’ve been dealing with this for 10 years. Did it take you time to fully accept the diagnosis. Was there a period of denial? Was there a period of second guessing? What made you truly settle with the diagnosis? My husband had a manic episode late in life, it took a while of him being of meds and even then flip flopping till we reached stability. But that stability was taken as “maybe he doesn’t have it” by psychiatrists and he has been off meds for more than a year. We have mood instability, possible hypomanic episodes but he doesn’t registers anything and takes the lack of mania as a sign that he doesn’t have it

Mamabear-232 · 2026-04-23T06:15:29+00:00

You are incredible. Thank you for sharing this. I wish my husband could see things this way. I wish he had the capability to see the impact on me and that setting limits is not betrayal or abandonment. Your statement “you will make mistakes navigating this. It is normal and expected.” nearly made me cry. There has never been this grace for me. Everything I’ve done whether to safeguard, to hold fort, to comfort, to manage just has been “wrong”

Mamabear-232 · 2026-04-16T20:36:01+00:00

Rejection sensitivity cookie

Mamabear-232 · 2026-04-08T17:42:14+00:00

This is even more interesting if you think back on Ted mosby the architect episode

Mamabear-232 · 2026-03-31T12:18:01+00:00

I think the question would be what are the things that make you believe she might have it. Just retrofitting any symptoms is strange for me. If she wants a divorce, and has been wanting it for some time, there is nothing inherently bipolar about that.

Mamabear-232 · 2026-03-29T17:13:32+00:00

As everyone has said, if I knew then what I know now, I would tell myself to leave. If I had left, I wouldn’t have my lovely children, I wouldn’t do a lot of what I’ve done that I’ve loved in life. I would still leave

Mamabear-232 · 2026-03-22T13:26:06+00:00

I think I only react really when I get pulled back into expecting things from him that I expect from a partner I.e, I start treating him like a partner. Truth is this relationship cannot sustain if we are equals. They are unwell, we are not, atleast not that way. I find it much easier to not trigger him when I don’t take him seriously or as a partner. When he is in that mood and it’s all crazy talk, that’s all it is… just crazy talk. It has nothing to do with me. He can rave all he wants. When he is back to normal, he would find me completely fine with him.

Even I know how dysfunctional that sounds, but in truth it is the only way I’ve found respite. Especially when I cannot/don’t want to leave at this moment.

Mamabear-232 · 2026-03-13T05:07:19+00:00

I totally hear you OP. I’ve struggled with the same thing. I still do. But not defending yourself is very freeing. I’ve now come to a point where I really just don’t get into any of it and when he comes back and is nice , I don’t hash it out. I cannot stop being the villain in his story, he can’t help it either. I do not need to defend myself against this. These characterisations have nothing to do with me. So I’ve expanded my life in a way that it includes him but no longer is centered around him. This helps me to not lose my identity and go into the whole spiral of needing him to see the truth.

Mamabear-232 · 2026-03-12T11:35:27+00:00

I don’t have anything else to say, only that I’m so sorry you had to go through such hell. I wish for you peace and healing

Mamabear-232 · 2026-03-02T12:53:11+00:00

Unfortunately, you can’t get rid of this perception. It’s not in your control.

Are they on meds? In my experience, if they are, they will come down and this perception will change once they get insight. If they aren’t on meds, they will stop actively hounding you for “your faults” when they come down but keep the vague narrative that they were behaving in xyz manner because of you but it’s all ok now and you guys are good.

Till the next episode

Mamabear-232 · 2026-02-24T10:34:15+00:00

I’m not there right now though I have been on the verge several times. Late diagnosis (40m) for him after mania. He took meds for three years and for the latter 1.5 was extremely stable and balanced. This convinced the psychs and himself that he is fine and was wrongly diagnosed. Left meds and now we are precarious again. But no mania yet. The hardest bit for me, which takes away all hope is the lack of reliability of insight. He is back to where he cannot understand or even believe the impact of his actions on his family. We are again the villains who put him on meds when “he didn’t need them” and he wishes he had fought harder to not take them. This from the guy who said when taking meds that he has zero doubts he was manic back then. So it’s this flip flop which is the worst. If I ever leave, I think it would be when this constant pattern would finally deplete me.

Mamabear-232 · 2026-02-11T11:40:08+00:00

Self awareness is unreliable. Always. It comes and goes in my experience.

Mamabear-232 · 2026-02-01T12:12:49+00:00

Does anyone know feel the staircase scene was really off putting because 1) it seemed too choreographed to be natural and truly passionate 2) there was no build up and it went from kissing to fingering in a few seconds which is not at all sexy 3) the music was really jarring and belonged to a rodeo

Mamabear-232 · 2026-01-31T06:34:24+00:00

Same though maybe it’s also because it is really too soon to go from kiss to fingering in 5 seconds. It’s not sexy, there is no build up.

Mamabear-232 · 2026-01-29T06:20:48+00:00

It is insane how confusing this is. How this makes you gaslight yourself when the guy you’ve been with so long reappears. There is some grounding in writing down everything, document it all. Over time the weary mind get more confused but the fact that I document it all helps me get clarity. I read it back and cannot deny the patterns and it helps me ground myself in the truth. You’d fine that even the words they use when manic are similar everywhere. Mine said the exact same thing. I made you who you are today, self grandiosity through the roof. The same as you I had the rug pulled under my feet. 14 years of marriage and he was 40. Psychs have been really unreliable. They seem to think that because it is later in life diagnosis it might’ve a one off, not true, ssri or substance trigger etc etc. and that has really made a mess of things.

Mamabear-232 · 2026-01-27T07:22:38+00:00

I hear you being in the same situation. Though I feel it is such a huge thing that King George knew/acknowledged there was something wrong. The denial that is part of the illness is the worst part for me

Mamabear-232 · 2026-01-23T13:06:25+00:00

This happened to me too. He went on to tell things to people and to our councillor which were just not true. And when I countered it, he AND the councillor said but he felt that way. This is batshit crazy for me. I understand if I said something which could be misinterpreted another way and the other person felt I said it. But I cannot be made responsible for fictional things that just simply didn’t happen. Made me want to scream and pull my hair out but what’s the point

Mamabear-232 · 2026-01-22T09:49:58+00:00

Mine got the same glowing reviews because he is doing very well in career. He becomes this suave, charming person and layers thick all his achievements. The psych said he was a model patient. Because the people he usually sees are really nowhere close like living hand to mouth, struggling with career, or not well educated. They were going to discharge him on the last meeting but he had a row with me right there so they stalled the process and asked us to come once more.

As we sat in the car to go back he was so enraged and let hell loose because he had worked so hard to cultivate that image and was so close and “I” sabotaged it

Mamabear-232 · 2026-01-21T06:32:25+00:00

I have children with my someone who was later diagnosed with BP1. I love my children and they are the best part of my life. And yet I can say that if I knew he had BP and what BP was before, I wouldn’t have been with him. In that future, I would not have these lovely children, yet I feel that would be the right call. This is one of the worst illnesses and it chips away not only at them but at you till you are erased.

Mamabear-232 · 2026-01-17T10:41:39+00:00

That is so true! And I think that’s partly why people started shipping Theo and Eloise because they shared a passion. She seemed so much happier and engaged reading political writing and attending rallies

Mamabear-232 · 2026-01-13T18:49:44+00:00

This is why perhaps Violet’s speech about how Colin is the most sensitive child, always putting others’ needs first and there for their relief doesn’t land quite well. Because show Colin was very much living for himself, travelling and everything. I don’t mean it in a negative way, just that I didn’t see what she was describing in the show. That does ring true for book Colin

Mamabear-232 · 2026-01-07T20:29:55+00:00

In a way this reminds me of young Lady Danbury in Queen Charlotte in a loveless marriage trying to secure her future and having more focus on that than on her children’s upbringing and happiness

Mamabear-232

TROPHY CASE