Being Married to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

My husband has always exhibited some sort of mental imbalance, usually depression. Or aggression.  Or aggression stemming from depression.  But 6 months after our daughter was born, he finally got a bipolar diagnosis.  He'd already been on anti-depressants a couple of other times in his life, and he realized after 6 months of an infant (who he didn't really take care of...but held sometimes?  And bitched to me about because he disapproved of my parenting methods...) in the house, there was something wrong with how down he was feeling.  So he got on meds.  But refused therapy.  And he fought the meds for TWO YEARS.  Then finally this summer got on better meds and got into an intensive program after a breakdown, and things seemed to be taking a turn for the better.  But he's always been a drinker, and seems to think it's more important to be able to do what he wants, and drink when he wants, and treat me however he wants, than to be a good person.

I'm facing the world-shattering possibility of losing both of my kids to him because we're looking at divorce.  One of this kids, I fought for once already and raised even though I didn't birth him, and the other who is the light of my life and who feels like a piece of my heart, walking around outside of my body.  I'm grappling with what I'm told is right - that kids should have their dad - and what I feel is right - that he's mean, hateful, inconsistent, and unpredictable and that I don't want him to have much exposure to the kids because in the long-run, if he stays like this, I feel he'll have a negative effect on the kids and his nature will end up damaging them the same way his own father's nature ended up damaging him.

I'm married to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  Over the last year, I feel like Mr. Hyde has been in charge a majority of the time, since I can count how many months at a time my husband spent calling me names or telling me to fuck off, every day.  (The number was 6...6 months of verbal abuse.)  There were maybe 3 months where he was a decent person.  And the other months, he was just grouchy.

He doesn't see it.  He literally blames me for all of his problems.  Including his depression.  He attempted suicide in late July of last year.  Tried to kill himself, he told me a week or so later, in his car, in the garage, by leaving the engine running.  The other day, he blamed me for driving him to be so depressed that he attempted this.  Because...that's a sane thing to blame on another person.  The moron didn't realize that his fancy sportscar with the Hemi engine also economizes fuel when it's idling...so it's no wonder that he said he was sitting in his car for a couple of hours with no results.  Still, I'm traumatized by that image.  And he doesn't seem to care.  I'm just supposed to care about his hurt, and his depression, and his feelings.  Not worry about my own.  Because his were worse, so mine don't seem to matter.  I laid into him a few weeks after the incident, and after I'd busted my ass to find a psych program for him and get him into his psychiatrist for new medication...  I laid into him for being so damn selfish and for not realizing how traumatized I was from his attempt, too.

I believe that suicide is a selfish act.  I've had friends die from it before, and the notes they left behind were always about ending their own pain.  Yes, sometimes they said they no longer wanted to be a burden, either, but even that sounds selfish to me.  Because when someone kills themselves, they leave behind a mess.  A physical mess, of course.  Which someone has to clean up.  And then an emotional mess.  Sometimes a financial mess.  A broken family.  They inflict so much pain.  So when my husband told me he tried to kill himself in our garage in his fancy, stupid, sports sedan that I didn't want him to buy in the first place and which he purchased without my permission when I was 5 months pregnant and after he caused a huge fight because he was being selfish and was calling me names for the umpteenth time...  I got PISSED.  I told him how DARE he try to end his life, especially like that!  How DARE he think of causing that scene, for me to find, likely on a trip home with the kids in tow after a long day.  He kind-of understood, but didn't really acknowledge what he was going to be leaving behind.  Which was a MESS.  Another one for me to deal with alone and clean up.

I want to rip up his "Certificate of Achievement" from his Intensive Outpatient Program which he participated in right after his suicide attempt.  I want to take his "sobriety" chip and chuck it through the window of his stupid, wasteful, sports car sitting in our garage where he tried to kill himself.  Because all of the other paperwork that was given to him to do in the IOP program is 90% blank.  Because he started drinking again during week 5 or 6 out of 8 for his program...which was meant to be a dual bipolar/alcohol program for people who abused alcohol and also have bipolar disorder.  At first...I was ok with it.  We had a deal.  1-2 trips out to the bar because the people there are his social circle, per week, and he'd go there with a limit of 1-2 beers/drinks in mind.  That worked for maybe 2 weeks.  Then, as has always been the problem in the past, he got comfortable.  And started drinking more.   I want to destroy the things he "earned" because he didn't really earn them.  But I won't.  Because then I'd look like the crazy one and I need to demonstrate control.

Then in mid-October, a week after I had gotten fired from the second job last fall, within 6 weeks of having been fired from the first job, and within almost 3 months of his suicide attempt, he decided to bring home alcohol again after having been out for 2 hours one Sunday afternoon.  I took issue...and it's now January and we've been fighting ever since.

I might have been having a harder time than I realized with my husband's drama.  I feel like I've been compartmentalizing well, but maybe not?  I also feel like I'd just been dealt a bad hand in life this last year.  Sometimes it happens.  I've learned from it.  I've grown.  I've done a LOT of soul-searching an self-reflection and tried to find my contribution to my problems.  I see where I wasn't proactive enough soon enough.  I've seen where I was a little too brash when I needed to be VERY delicate and just couldn't find it in me to be a wallflower, which is what the second job I got let go from, seemed to want.  I see where I didn't fit.  But I also don't know that I really could have done anything to stop it.  I tried to do a good job at those jobs.  I asked for advice, I accepted blame and accepted my weak spots and genuinely tried to work on them, but it clearly wasn't enough.  My husband was NOT supportive, at all, especially after the second job didn't work out.  He literally blamed me.  He said I was a bitch at home, so it makes sense that I was probably a bitch at work, and no one likes a bitch.  I...did not take that well.  Oh, and he managed to get a promotion during the same time period, and even just yesterday (because he got his year-end review, and it was positively GLOWING), he was on my case for not applauding his accomplishment enough.  Even though I said I had faith in him at the time, and he deserved it, and I was happy for him.  I wasn't happy ENOUGH for him...so, I'm wrong.  And he had every right to tell me my job losses were my fault, because, in his mind, he was just being honest, and there's nothing wrong with that, right?  Right....  After all, if he could have a complete mental breakdown, and "bounce back" and get a promotion, then there's something wrong with me, right?

So now, we're looking at getting divorced.  He's been threatening for years, and this year, after he flaked on me and decided 2 weeks before Christmas that he didn't want to take the trip he promised he'd take with me to go see my parents for the holiday, and after he told me the night before I was leaving that he was also taking "my" son with him on a trip to Arizona and he'd chosen to leave the day after Christmas, which was also the day I was supposed to be getting back, this year I told him I was going to give him that divorce.  He doesn't seem to believe me.  Or maybe he does?  But he thinks he's going to just move back to Arizona (where he used to live, and where yes, his old close friends and what little family he has but doesn't talk to, live.  Even though he forgets that he HATED it there...), take his son (who I raised) and get 8 weeks of parenting time, with 6 weeks of them being consecutive during the summer, with our 3 year old daughter, who he has never bathed in her life and who he only picked up from daycare 2 times in the last 2 years.  And one of the times he picked her up was just a few weeks ago, and in the process he busted a tire on my car on the way to the school because he wasn't paying attention, clipped a median, and my tire got sliced.  He had to take my car that night because he refuses to put a child seat in either of his two vehicles (he has that stupid sports car, and a work car).  He then refused to help get the tire fixed until after I had a HUGE fight with him the next morning, and even then, he was insisting on watching the morning football game before he would go anywhere with me.  Also, the day I had swapped cars with him, it turned out that the car I took had a failing battery!  It died as soon as I got to work.  And I got to spend 2 hours getting that fixed for him...while he was breaking my car.  And which he later refused to fix.  Even though I fixed his car for him, no questions.  I wasn't even mad about my tire.  Accidents happen.  I was just pissed about his refusal to clean up the mess he caused, and which he was refusing to fix unless it was on his terms.

But in his mind, he's completely justified in EVERYTHING he's done.  After all, I call names, too, so he's justified in calling names (and I shouldn't stoop that low, but sometimes I break, and I do) and he's justified in telling me to fuck off at the drop of a hat because.....I have no idea why he thinks that's ok.  And it's ok that he puts football above family, because he LOVES football, and I should support that.  And in his mind, he OFFERED to help with my car, I just had to wait until his football game was over because he loves it and I should respect that...Nevermind that he's literally been blowing me off for football every time the games are on, all season, and he's done that for years (which is a big reason why I love/hate football.  I think it's exciting, but I am very sensitive to letting it run any part of my life).  And in his mind, he's just "being honest" in telling me I'm the crazy one and clearly a bitch because I can't keep a job (even though I can...I've just had a rough few months and I've been working for the last few months anyway, and the longest I was out of work this fall was 2 weeks.  Even though I've told him what I do, he claims he still doesn't know what I do).  And he's FINE, and NOT DEPRESSED and the drinking DOESN'T AFFECT HIM because at work, he's AWESOME.  I'm the problem, to him.  And he has literally told me I need to take responsibility for my personality?  Which I've told him doesn't make any sense.  I've told him he needs to take responsibility for what he's done, and he deflects and gaslights.  There are times when yes, I think I'm crazy, and I think that I do need to do some soul-searching.  But then I stop, and realize that no, calling names and berating me is NEVER ok, and that I've done the work to examine myself and my actions and I feel I've been honest, but never have I heard him say in 3 months that he recognizes my hurt and he's sorry.

Being married to someone with bipolar disorder is not what I thought I was signing up for.  But it's what I got.  Now I have to try and get out of it, because I can't keep doing this.  There's "in sickness and in health" and then there's leaving sickness because it's robbing me of my health and there's no end in sight.  He's supposed to be going to therapy, but unless I make the appointments, he doesn't make them.  He'll go...but getting in to our therapist is difficult because the schedule fills up fast.  So he's gone 2 times since October.  Again, as I write this, it's January.  He's still telling me to fuck off every day.  Still calling me names every day.  I can't keep putting up with this, I can't keep putting my kids in a hostile home environment.  So I'll be filing for divorce in the next couple of months.  My heart breaks.  I want another baby (but...not with a crazy person who doesn't contribute and never has), and I want my family in tact, but I can't keep looking around the lovely photos in my house and remembering, "Oh yeah...he was drunk in that photo," or "Oh...that was before he got drunk," or "Oh, and he yelled at me later in the evening on the day we took that photo..."

We had an awesome wedding.  I've become friends with many of his friends.  I will never listen to "September" again the same way because we got married on the 21st day of September and when we were doing a site visit, that song was playing at another wedding happening while we were there and I took it as a sign.  I don't want to share holidays with him and not have my kids moving forward.  It's just not fair.  I feel punished.  But I'm praying for strength, I've gotten a lot of support in unexpected places, and I'm hopeful that I won't end up alone, but that I'll get to keep my family and that I'll have a new partner in the future who is everything I need, and who I can really support without getting shit on.

In the end of Robert Louis Stevenson's book, Dr. Jekyll lost control of Mr. Hyde, and Mr. Hyde took over.  I fear the same is happening with my husband.  The only thing I can choose is not to stick around to see which side takes over in the end.  I can choose to get off of the crazy train, and step away from all of the emotional and verbal abuse.  I can only control exactly what I've been controlling -- myself. So that's what I'll do.