mentally ill stbxw

WartimeDad · 2024-03-23T21:05:37+00:00

Yes I do. And I have a feeling you can understand me when I say my story is absolutely brutal and insane beyond what any normal person or therapist can understand. Like truly only you can maybe grasp the depths of it.

It’s truly hard. I have no solutions. It never seems to get any better. Boundaries are pointless. The manipulation never ends.

My life has been just about ruined by her. I fortunately have full custody now. And you’d think it would get better from there. But this just amps her hatred of me up x1000 (even though she is the one that put herself into this situation and I can’t get her out even if I tried).

I’m literally going through a sea of shit every single day because of it. Fucking awful and I feel for you man. I’d say it’ll get better but in these cases, I really don’t know. Doesn’t seem to get better, only worse.

KingWenceslasTheIdle · 2024-03-19T21:51:26+00:00

Not what you want to hear, but mental illness is in a pretty wide spectrum of "things that can go wrong in a marriage."

You can't reason with the mentally ill the same exact way you can't reason with a shopaholic, a bad driver, a cheater, a lazy person, a disrespectful person, a narcissist, an abuser, an overeater, an addict, etc etc.

I'm not sure what certified means. I was diagnosed Bipolar Axis 1 by a state licensed psychiatrist. I've had two psychotic episodes at ages 26 and 27 but none in the 20 years since I started treatment. Both of those episodes were triggered by sleep deprivation. One was linked to my first son in his infancy. My ex wife wasn't a very good mom. I tended to him alone which led to a lot of sleepless nights.

So, point being, I'm as solidly mentally ill as it gets.

My mental illness had an effect on my marriage. But honestly, it played a minor role. It made fights a little more mercurial - favorite word of a particular author Kay Redfield Jamison. Bipolar disorder made me take a few more sick days. I am more introverted because I clam up about it. But I still performed well. There are some empirical metrics there to support that claim. I lapped her ten times on salary ($26k vs $250k). And I got into 12 fewer car accidents than she did (2 vs 14).

The core reasons for my divorce were parenting, overspending, car accidents, a lack of common goals, etc.

All of her criticism lands on my mental illness. "He's bipolar!" "Ohhhhhhhhh!" Peanut gallery fodder. That bandwagon is full of people who swallow that stuff whole.

But mental illness covers maybe 10% of the problems. The real issue is that she earned a very meager salary, wasn't a good mom, spent money on stuff like Farmville, and actually hindered my goal of owning a home and putting my kids through college debt free. And I resented all of those things.

I had to chase her around like a third child and clean up her car accidents, job changes, and overspending. I wrote her resume. Cringe. I literally subsidized her... unwillingly. We had a socialist state of two.

So here's how to handle it.

Keep doing what you're doing. You want peace. It sounds extremely mature.

You have kids. That's a link that will bind you for a long time. The right thing to do is some karma inspired version of letting go for the greater good. It takes two in divorce just as it does in marriage.

Still... I've had zero success with this philosophy. Hahah. It's the right thing to do. But it usually doesn't happen. I recognize my ex as a pretty solidly flawed human being and I'm okay with that. I'm also okay with my own flaws.

She views me as pin cushion. It's just our different temperaments. Wish it weren't so but in the great words of Bruce Hornsby, that's just the way it is.

I return frowns and hatred with genuine smiles. Eh, there's a little bit of f-u in my smile. Maybe 10%. But the other 90% is genuine. That's an A-. I can sleep at night with that.

I hope it works out for you and your kids. Things will most likely improve with time.

Comfortable-Angle660 · 2024-03-19T18:06:59+00:00

You just need to cut her off completely, and parallel parent. Have all communication go through a court approved app like OFW. Don’t answer her calls or text messages, everything through OFW.

If any OFW message is outlandish or off-topic, don’t respond, in other words, don’t feed the beast.

There is no possibility of reasonable conversations or being amicable with her. Never talk to her in person either. Always record.

You might think this is over the top, but trust me, it is necessary. Eventually she might/will cool her jets.

Title	mentally ill stbxw
Author	JimSevere0271
Upvotes	12
Comments	7
Date	March 19, 2024 4:43 PM UTC (2 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/Divorce_Men
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/Divorce_Men/comments/1biotf9/mentally_ill_stbxw/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/Divorce_Men/mentally-ill-stbxw.1428504 https://theredarchive.com/post/1428504

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