Is all hope lost?
I (34f) have been with my BP wife (34f) for 13 years. We will (hopefully, maybe?) be celebrating our 10th wedding anniversary this June. I love her desperately and we are not in a good situation right now.
She was diagnosed BP1 and OCD back in 2018 I believe (after we had been together for 6 years and married for 2). She had a severely traumatic childhood (SA, grooming, homelessness, witness to domestic violence, neglect, the list goes on). Her mother was also BP. Her father died in a motorcycle accident. Her brother has been in an out of prison our entire relationship for drug abuse (he likely has BP as well).
We had our daughter in 2022, something we both desperately and tirelessly worked towards for years. When she was born (it was a traumatic birth), my wife went into depression and a very bad one. She had spoken of suicide but did not try. During that time, I was battling my own demons (likely PPD) and unfortunately, in 2023, I had an affair. I have such shame and guilt over this. I will never forgive myself for this, especially when my wife was so low.
I was ready to divorce her, but her mother died unexpectedly, so I stayed. A few months later I told her about the affair and we separated. I realized how terrible I was and worked tirelessly to fix it. I started therapy, she started therapy, and we both attended couples therapy.
During 2024, things seemed to be going much better. We were reconciling. Then, in April of 2025, she began having her own affair with a woman she “met” through Call of Duty mobile. I discovered the affair in June. Over that summer, she would tell me she had stopped talking to her only for me to find out that she hadn’t. This happened at least four times. Again, that September, I was ready to divorce. She convinced me to stay and that she would get the help she needed.
Some needed background: From 2018-2022 she was unmedicated. In 2023 she began medication but her psychiatrist didn’t really care, and never spoke to her to find out if the meds were working. She never took them consistently anyway. During the time of HER affair, she had started with a new psychiatrist and was trying to get on medication that actually helped her. So last year was the start of truly being medicated for bipolar (and adhd, a new diagnosis). She was put on Sertraline, Vraylar, and Azstarys.
Anyway, we were okay for a few months until her seasonal depression hit in November of last year. Again, she reached out to the online girl. I begged her to stay with me (I know, I know) and she did. Her new psychiatrist told her she needed to start seeing a trauma therapist and begin EMDR. In January of this year, she started going to this new EMDR therapist weekly. She also didn’t miss a single dose of her medication from January until March.
During those three months, I saw how hard she was working and began to notice a difference. She was finally processing all her trauma and realizing the impact it still had on her today. However, she continually sought out the online girl. I began to notice that this girl was merely a distraction from everything wrong in her life. She even admitted to me (and still does!) that she doesn’t love this girl, doesn’t see a future with her, and that she uses her as a distraction. Every time she would talk to the girl, I would beg her to stop and stay with me. It became almost a monthly thing, and it got to the point where I could begin to predict it’s coming. I kept staying because I could see she was truly working on herself and attempting to do better than she ever had before and because I knew this girl was meaningless (as much as I was hurting).
In April, like legit last month, her trauma therapist told her that she would be a good candidate for an intensive outpatient program (IOP). She started this program about three and a half weeks ago. Her psychiatrist also stopped her usual SSRI (sertraline) and replaced it with Wellbutrin because we all noticed that Brittany’s cycling, particularly the depression part of it, was not getting any better. Her psychiatrist also hoped that beginning this medication would help her during the IOP.
Coming off of sertraline, starting Wellbutrin, and beginning an IOP was NOT a good cocktail. I am 90% positive she has been rapid cycling all of April, almost weekly. She would go from “I never want to lose you” to “we need a separation.” Of course she began talking to the online girl again. But this time, I had enough.
I told her two Wednesdays ago that I was packing my shit and leaving to stay at my parents’. SHE begged Me to stay this time. She said that with the help of the IOP she finally realized that she was lonely from missing her mom, dad, and brother and trying to fill that loneliness with the online girl. She also told me that she realized she had been harboring resentment from my affair back in 2023 (I have been asking her for the past year if my affair had anything to do with her affair and she always told me no). She also said that she knew she wanted her future to be with me and that she wanted to start focusing on her present issues as well as her past issues. She told me she wanted to make it right and work hard for me and our daughter. She then reiterated all of this in couples therapy the following Saturday.
By last Monday, she completely switched. She told me she was hopeless. Last Wednesday, a week after telling me she wanted a future with me, she told me she wanted a separation. She told me she couldn’t do our relationship anymore. Said she could not be emotionally available for me anymore. Said she needed to focus on herself. She also told me, several times, that she still loves me and is attracted to me but that she just can’t work on fixing our relationship right now. I was devastated but knew it was time for me to choose myself, so I packed up mine and my daughter’s things and went to stay with my parents.
My daughter and I came back home Sunday night under the pretense that she would be staying out of the house for her therapies. For my own mental health, I could not be around her physically and since her therapies go until 9pm, I figured I would just go to bed whenever she came home. That way I didn’t have to see her and we would remain “separated.” I also told her that if we did it this way, that she would not be talking to this online girl. Well, what do you think I found her doing last night? This morning, I calmly told her to pack her things. She had broken my boundaries too many times and it was time for her to leave our house. She started yelling at me, cursing at me, mocking me, and all in front of our daughter. She’s never mocked me, and she’s never yelled at me in front of our daughter. I tried remaining calm the entire time and just kept repeating “please do not talk to me this way in front of our daughter.” Later, I told her I found her a place to stay and she told me she would not be leaving our house. She refused to go, so now our daughter and I are back at my mom’s for our own stability and my mental wellbeing.
I want so desperately to find hope in this very hopeless situation. I keep trying to make sense of things and find certainty but of course there is none. I’m so tired of being manipulated and lied to. I’m so tired of the back and forth, and hot and cold. But, God, do I love this woman. She is my everything. She’s my life. We have history and SO much love. Yes, the last three years have been the worst we’ve ever had, but we have always been a power couple. We’ve always made it through any hurdle that came our way. Shit, people used to praise us all the time for it.
I can see how hard she is working to better herself and that gives me some hope. But I also have never seen her act the way she’s been acting this past month in our entire 13 year history. Yes, there’s been typical BP1 ups and downs. Yes, she always gets depressed from November through the holidays and again in March around her birthday. Yes, I know her so well I can tell when she’s in a depression before she can. But this past month? I’ve never seen anything like it. She is meaner than ever, cruel even. She goes back and forth between loving me and discarding me. And the kicker?? She swears she is completely level headed this past week when she asked for the separation. Level headed doesn’t act like she acted this morning.
I know it’s time to work on me. I know that the way our relationship has been going has been completely unsustainable. I’ve lost myself over this past year. I am not as present with our daughter as I need to be. It’s definitely time for this separation (and if I’m gonna “should” on myself, this separation should have happened a LONG time ago). But I am still desperate for hope. I am so scared that this separation will further cement her desire to leave. That she will fuck up not only her life and future, and but the life and future of mine and our daughter’s. But most of all, I am so afraid of losing “my person.”
I keep telling myself: she is working hard on herself, she is finally getting treatment, she wants to be better. But it doesn’t make this any easier. If you’ve made it this far, thank you. Chat GPT has been good at helping me process but doesn’t replace real people who have likely experienced similar realities. I need a big hug and some encouragement. Maybe even some similar stories surrounding IOPs, trauma, the meds she’s been taking, etc. This disease is the worst, but I know my wife is still in there.