My wife and I have been together for 4 years, and have known her for more than 10. We're very close...closer than I've ever been able to be with anyone. We love each other very much, have kids together, and generally a fairly normal life. We opened up our relationship a while back to the possibility of other partners, and a couple of months ago I became seriously involved with my now girlfriend. My girlfriend and I became close and fell in love quickly, and I feel it's safe to say she's exactly what I have been looking for for years - every last detail. We both feel equally strongly about each other, and my wife likes her a lot and was very interested in seeing us my girlfriend and I established as a couple. The eventual goal with this situation was for my girlfriend to become a co-partner, and my wife would likely eventually find someone else as well. Things were going perfectly for a short while.
My wife was diagnosed with bipolar a couple of years ago, and has been medicated ever since. We've been through a couple episodes of having her admitted to the hospital for serious suicidal ideation, among other things. When she's depressed, she can't leave her bedroom for weeks. When she's manic, she's likely to take off on a hitchhiking trip across country, leaving everything behind, and has almost made it a couple of times. Regardless of her swings, some things are a constant: thoughts of suicide, paranoia, inability to form tangible bonds with our kids (which I know they feel), etc. The meds she's on now work very well for her, and she hasn't had a manic episode in quite a while. In fact, she's been doing very well: she's held a job for 2 years, got back into school, and started a successful blog. The meds dull the ongoing symptoms, but by no means take them away. She still can't bond with the kids, do house work, or interact socially very well. I have often come home to her in tears because she hasn't been able to handle the kids for a few hours and nothing has been done around the house. When this happens, she tells me she never wanted to be a parent and that she just wants to travel. This usually calms down pretty quickly, however. When we decided to open our relationship, she hadn't had any serious episodes in over a year, and the other symptoms were just something I figured we'd deal with as they come, probably for life, and not a major reason not to pursue the kind of relationship we wanted. She's otherwise a very strong, intelligent, caring person who usually sees things more clearly than most.
When my girlfriend started coming around more often, she and my wife became close quickly, which I thought was great. My wife was really rooting for the relationship to happen. But after several weeks I started noticing things getting weird. My wife started becoming particularly intense in conversation with my girlfriend, to the point of making things very awkward and uncomfortable. Each of us sat her down more than once and asked her to please stop and allow us to handle things in our relationship, though these requests were largely ignored after apologizing. It then escalated to the point that my wife started experiencing slightly heavier symptoms of her mental illness, and started involving my girlfriend in those symptoms. She would call and text her at work and unwittingly tell my girlfriend things that made her feel like a homewrecker and as though she was intruding. This finally came to a point where my girlfriend was ready to walk out after having several very stressful work days due to my wife's behavior. I didn't want to have to choose, but I knew that if I let my girlfriend walk out, I wouldn't be able to look at my wife without resentment for a very long time, if it didn't ultimately end our relationship as well. I finally put my foot down and told my wife she needed to back all the way out of my other relationship until her behavior could calm down, which was about when she began having issues and starting fights when I would try to spend any evenings/overnights with my girlfriend because she could not be away from me, and not being able to handle any spontaneous plans made with my girlfriend, though only at times we were not otherwise occupied. When confronted, my wife made it very clear how much she depends on my constant presence, and how unprepared she really was for our me to be in a new relationship, when she had previously believed otherwise.
To cut it short, yesterday I dropped my wife off at work, and she called me a few hours later to tell me she had walked 10 miles up the highway and was feeling like she wanted to end her life. I called the police who picked her up and placed her on a 72-hour hold, which is where she is now. My girlfriend is at the point where she cannot deal with my wife at all, and doesn't want to see her again...she recently came out of a very rough situation with her stepfather who was also bipolar, and does not have the mental faculty to deal with it. Trying to weigh the pros and cons of everything that has happened with my girlfriend, how my wife feels about the kids, dealing with breakdowns like yesterday, and coming to realize I don't feel comfortable being primarily in a caretaker role the rest of my life, I don't know what to do. I am in a position of having to choose one or the other, and I hate both choices. My heart is hurting.
My wife was diagnosed with bipolar a couple of years ago, and has been medicated ever since. We've been through a couple episodes of having her admitted to the hospital for serious suicidal ideation, among other things. When she's depressed, she can't leave her bedroom for weeks. When she's manic, she's likely to take off on a hitchhiking trip across country, leaving everything behind, and has almost made it a couple of times. Regardless of her swings, some things are a constant: thoughts of suicide, paranoia, inability to form tangible bonds with our kids (which I know they feel), etc. The meds she's on now work very well for her, and she hasn't had a manic episode in quite a while. In fact, she's been doing very well: she's held a job for 2 years, got back into school, and started a successful blog. The meds dull the ongoing symptoms, but by no means take them away. She still can't bond with the kids, do house work, or interact socially very well. I have often come home to her in tears because she hasn't been able to handle the kids for a few hours and nothing has been done around the house. When this happens, she tells me she never wanted to be a parent and that she just wants to travel. This usually calms down pretty quickly, however. When we decided to open our relationship, she hadn't had any serious episodes in over a year, and the other symptoms were just something I figured we'd deal with as they come, probably for life, and not a major reason not to pursue the kind of relationship we wanted. She's otherwise a very strong, intelligent, caring person who usually sees things more clearly than most.
When my girlfriend started coming around more often, she and my wife became close quickly, which I thought was great. My wife was really rooting for the relationship to happen. But after several weeks I started noticing things getting weird. My wife started becoming particularly intense in conversation with my girlfriend, to the point of making things very awkward and uncomfortable. Each of us sat her down more than once and asked her to please stop and allow us to handle things in our relationship, though these requests were largely ignored after apologizing. It then escalated to the point that my wife started experiencing slightly heavier symptoms of her mental illness, and started involving my girlfriend in those symptoms. She would call and text her at work and unwittingly tell my girlfriend things that made her feel like a homewrecker and as though she was intruding. This finally came to a point where my girlfriend was ready to walk out after having several very stressful work days due to my wife's behavior. I didn't want to have to choose, but I knew that if I let my girlfriend walk out, I wouldn't be able to look at my wife without resentment for a very long time, if it didn't ultimately end our relationship as well. I finally put my foot down and told my wife she needed to back all the way out of my other relationship until her behavior could calm down, which was about when she began having issues and starting fights when I would try to spend any evenings/overnights with my girlfriend because she could not be away from me, and not being able to handle any spontaneous plans made with my girlfriend, though only at times we were not otherwise occupied. When confronted, my wife made it very clear how much she depends on my constant presence, and how unprepared she really was for our me to be in a new relationship, when she had previously believed otherwise.
To cut it short, yesterday I dropped my wife off at work, and she called me a few hours later to tell me she had walked 10 miles up the highway and was feeling like she wanted to end her life. I called the police who picked her up and placed her on a 72-hour hold, which is where she is now. My girlfriend is at the point where she cannot deal with my wife at all, and doesn't want to see her again...she recently came out of a very rough situation with her stepfather who was also bipolar, and does not have the mental faculty to deal with it. Trying to weigh the pros and cons of everything that has happened with my girlfriend, how my wife feels about the kids, dealing with breakdowns like yesterday, and coming to realize I don't feel comfortable being primarily in a caretaker role the rest of my life, I don't know what to do. I am in a position of having to choose one or the other, and I hate both choices. My heart is hurting.
