Kathleen writes:
“I'm curious to know if there is a way for both people in the relationship are bipolar can make it? If so, what has helped them? I heard once that if a couple with mental illness make it to 5 years in a relationship/marriage the success rate is better. How true is that?
“I have been married twice, both had mental health problems as I do and those relationships both ended in divorce. But I was much younger then and wiser now than I was back then. My current relationship with my fiance has lasted longer than both my marriages combined. We struggle but work so very hard to make it work.
“I guess my question is...can you make it work and have a life-long relationship with both partners bipolar? Any advice?”
Funny, Kathleen, that you should ask.
I have bipolar and have been in two loving relationships with bipolar women. One of these involved a marriage (my second) of three years which broke up just before Thanksgiving of 2006, the other a short-term relationship that perversely ended around the anniversary of my 2006 break-up. Just an hour or two ago, I was confiding in a friend that maybe I should call it quits with bipolar relationships. I jokingly suggested I should seek a woman with a different diagnosis.
Nevertheless, I did learn quite a bit from my failures, and I’m happy to share some of that with you.
First: Bipolar was not the relationship-killer. Both my partners were extraordinarily sensitive to my illness and my needs, and they would probably say the same about me. My “crazy” was fairly easy for them to handle, as was theirs. I’m sure someone without my diagnosis would quickly lose patience with me. Not the case with a bipolar partner.
It was also comforting being in a relationship where I was not constantly being judged.
Unfortunately, our diagnosis tends to come pre-loaded with a number of co-occurring ills and personality traits, which leads me to my second-point:
Unresolved personal issues turned out to be the real relationship killer. Everyone has personality issues in abundance, and when these fail to sync with those of your partner we have trouble in paradise. With the personality issues, in my second marriage, I kept banging my head against brick walls. Finally, I ran out of patience. In my short-term relationship, we called it quits before reaching the head-banging stage.
After the break-up of my second marriage, a good friend lent me her copy of “Why Marriages Succeed or Fail” by John Gottman PhD of the University of Washington, who conducted a decades-long study of more than 2,000 married couples. Dr Gottman’s thesis is two-fold: 1) It hardly matters whether couples live in peaceful or volatile relationships, as the success/failure rate is virtually the same. 2) What matters is that couples have ways of resolving their inevitable differences.
“Volatile” couples who blow up at each other at the drop of a hat tend to make up just as quickly. Their explosions have the benefit of clearing the air. And the upside to excess emotion is unsurpassed levels of passion and nurturing.
“I'm curious to know if there is a way for both people in the relationship are bipolar can make it? If so, what has helped them? I heard once that if a couple with mental illness make it to 5 years in a relationship/marriage the success rate is better. How true is that?
“I have been married twice, both had mental health problems as I do and those relationships both ended in divorce. But I was much younger then and wiser now than I was back then. My current relationship with my fiance has lasted longer than both my marriages combined. We struggle but work so very hard to make it work.
“I guess my question is...can you make it work and have a life-long relationship with both partners bipolar? Any advice?”
Funny, Kathleen, that you should ask.
I have bipolar and have been in two loving relationships with bipolar women. One of these involved a marriage (my second) of three years which broke up just before Thanksgiving of 2006, the other a short-term relationship that perversely ended around the anniversary of my 2006 break-up. Just an hour or two ago, I was confiding in a friend that maybe I should call it quits with bipolar relationships. I jokingly suggested I should seek a woman with a different diagnosis.
Nevertheless, I did learn quite a bit from my failures, and I’m happy to share some of that with you.
First: Bipolar was not the relationship-killer. Both my partners were extraordinarily sensitive to my illness and my needs, and they would probably say the same about me. My “crazy” was fairly easy for them to handle, as was theirs. I’m sure someone without my diagnosis would quickly lose patience with me. Not the case with a bipolar partner.
It was also comforting being in a relationship where I was not constantly being judged.
Unfortunately, our diagnosis tends to come pre-loaded with a number of co-occurring ills and personality traits, which leads me to my second-point:
Unresolved personal issues turned out to be the real relationship killer. Everyone has personality issues in abundance, and when these fail to sync with those of your partner we have trouble in paradise. With the personality issues, in my second marriage, I kept banging my head against brick walls. Finally, I ran out of patience. In my short-term relationship, we called it quits before reaching the head-banging stage.
After the break-up of my second marriage, a good friend lent me her copy of “Why Marriages Succeed or Fail” by John Gottman PhD of the University of Washington, who conducted a decades-long study of more than 2,000 married couples. Dr Gottman’s thesis is two-fold: 1) It hardly matters whether couples live in peaceful or volatile relationships, as the success/failure rate is virtually the same. 2) What matters is that couples have ways of resolving their inevitable differences.
“Volatile” couples who blow up at each other at the drop of a hat tend to make up just as quickly. Their explosions have the benefit of clearing the air. And the upside to excess emotion is unsurpassed levels of passion and nurturing.
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