I don’t think it’s unfair for them to turn tail and run at all! Have you seen the support forums online for the spouses of people with bipolar disorder? You’d be hard pressed to find a more miserable group of people! People need to take care of themselves first, and that means quit dating someone who you know for a fact is going to be emotionally abusive.

I agree with the previous post. Everything revolves around the bipolar sufferer and THEIR needs. Even the services will not give information to supporting friends….unlike any other illness. If you get involved with a bipolar sufferer, believe me….YOU WILL GET ABUSED….again and again and then YOU are the one that ends up ill. All because many sufferers are so grandiose and do not believe that they are ill…..and swear, scream and abuse all the time…..as many WILL NOT take medication.
Steer clear of them all.

I am afraid I must agree somewhat with the two previous responses. At this time, I have just ended a relationship with a bipolar sufferer. Before you judge, please understand a few things. 1) it is very much in my nature to be loyal, and this decision did not come easy at all. 2) every effort has been made to participate in counseling, etc… 3) every effort has been made to be open to anything my girlfriend could share about what she was dealing with. What was learned is this. 1) She was not taking her medication as it was prescribed. 2) She had learned the art of using this condition as a menthod to manipulate others, and consequently relieve herself of any burden of responsibility for her actions. 3) As incredibly intelligent as she was, she avoided using her own better judgment which was readily available to her ie. abused alcohol even though she was well aware of the fact that it would initiate a drastic mood swing, etc..
When it was all said and done, as much as I felt the desire to stay and help see her through this, it was all ultimately obvious: She was unwilling to make the effort, and she had no desire to change. In this case, it is pretty difficult to stand by someone with bipolar disorder when they are not willing to deal with it themselves. I don’t know if this is a common trait, but it is definitely what I dealt with.

I have to disagree with the above posts. I have bipolar disorder, and I have learned to manage it quite well. I am not at all abusive, and have been in a happy relationship for years in which he and I are able to be supportive for eachother. People should not generalize. Not everyone with bipolar disorder is “abusive” or in denial.

Thank you Catherine. You simply cannot clump us all into one category. It sickens me that people like the above posters are so naive and unwilling to educate themselves instead of judge and dismiss.

I have found the most amazing man who seems to have accepted this disease. I am not abusive to him only offer my love to him and in return he offers his. When he sees something that will trigger it, he merely takes control of the situation. Thus saying not everyone should run, they should just learn that areas of a bipolar person are weaker than others. So again i disagree totally that it is all out the ill person. Its a mutal understanding between both parties involved.

So I meet this guy and we have this crazy connection, unlike any other. We have a lot in common and I feel like I love him and he say he loves me too. Well the other day he says “I’m bipolar”. My feelings haven’t changed, but now I’m like well does he really know how he feels?, how good of a boyfriend/husband can he be? And most importantly at what risk does he have for passing this on to his children. I think he said its hereditary….please help.

Marisol, I have bipolar and sometimes my feelings seem more intense than others, but I can still distinguish when I love someone and when I don’t. AS for being hereditary, when one parent is bipolar, each child has a 15%-30% chance of developing the condition. When both parents have the illness, the risk jumps to between 50% and 75%. In my opinion, the risk of having a bipolar child is pretty low, considering that you can have a bipolar child without being bipolar or having a bipolar partner.

I would also like to say that I am not abusive or in denial, I take my meds as prescribed and pretty much have it under control. I don’t let the disease define me or control me nor do I use it as an excuse for bad behavior. It’s not right to generalize, I live a normal, healthy life. I just have to work harder at staying balanced that non bipolar people.

I just got out of a relationship with a bipolar girl. She didnt have enough money to get her medication when I was with her. I offered her to take her to a doctor, called around for a good one, and set up the appointment. She cancelled it for some work related thing which she never did anyways.

The worst relationship of all relationships I have ever been in. It was really great in the beginning and then it turned upside down. From trying to jump out of a car (while trying to get to a destination she had to get to and I wasn’t driving enough for her - I was going the speed limit). From cheating (from telling me she had been raped in the past, sex was a difficult topic for her - she brought it up) and then to communicate with another person with sexual stuff you would hear on porn sites and such). At first, she was very normal. She still had her Lithium 300 and xanax. She ran out of her Lithium 300, and only much later did she tell me about it. She got kicked out of where she was living (she was already homeless and staying with a friend when I first met her). I tried to get her help with a doctor, helped her financially, and out of the blue she started changing. She didnt initially say why. She would disappear for days, not return any calls, and then call me during the work day after the weekend as if nothing happened. I suspect she was having more affairs than anyone I ever heard of (maybe 3,4,5) besides our relationship which we became boyfriend and girlfriend (no sex was involved whatsoever in the relationship). She was overconsumed with anxieties (real everyday problems - financially related and family related), hung out with those which took advantage of her (getting her drunk, putting ectasy in her drinks, etc). She missed big events for her own work - modelling because she was too drunk or drugged up by others putting stuff in her drinks.

Currently, we are not seeing each other and it came out of the blue - I discovered that one of her friends was a sexual maniac with her. She swore that they were just friends up to that day I found out. Ever since, she has been drastically changing, with problems with another sibling of hers who apparently might also have bipolar disorder and was rushed to a hospital.

Wow, multiple personalities, etc. Too bad because inside the real person is very nice, sweet, etc but then she started flipping out. She told me she had sex with this other guy because she liked that he had forced it on her. She said she had been raped in the past by others and tried to commit suicide on multiple occassions. Very tough to deal with this girl in any capacity.

Gosh….I have read all these posts and and it just makes me sad. I was diagnosed with bipolar about 4 years ago. I was a mess. It took 3 years to stabilize, and even that has been a dificult road.

I deeply simpathise with all the post above by non-bipolars…you had a hard time. Controlling this behaviour is a daily struggle, and too often we make it the responsibility of those around us to fix us. They can’t.

I have allowed it to hurt a man I love very much….and I have no idea if he will be able to forgive me. I am also very afraid that I will keep on being abusive and that I cannot change. This is my greatest fear.

I’m a little curious on some feedback about a girl I WAS dating recently who is bipolar. She never told me she was bipolar - we’ve been friends for 2 years and only dated a few months. I actually found out about her being bipolar from a mutual friend of ours who is friends her ex who she dated for a very long time, and this was after we broke up.

anyways - we started dating this past april and things started off really fun and natural. I’ve always known her to be very happy, and VERY intense which makes sense now because she was probably in a manic stage. Either way after a month we were together her life started flipping upside down. She got a management position where her boss literally handed her the keys and credit card and told her to manage a salon of 5 girls, on top of that she abruptly got kicked out of her house literally out of the blue and she was having family problems, etc. Among that and some other things that were going on our relationship went from very fun and natural to her literally distancing herself and being very closed and different which I didn’t understand until my friend told me what it probably was - her being in a depressive state more than likely. because she was always quiet and somber on the phone and at times she would tell me she was extremely irritable.

Either way when we were together for some reason we would still talk on the phone everyday and go out maybe once a week but after just casual dating for a few months and me wanting to take it to the next step (still not knowing she was bipolar at this point) she would say she “couldn’t have/deal/support a boyfriend” right now. I still am not sure, part of me believes that it’s just that she doesn’t want to be with me and the other part of me is wondering if it could be because of her being bipolar and how everything is still effecting her life right now that she literally just cant have a boyfriend right now.

I’ve been very confused by it because she has ALWAYS really liked me and I still care about her tremendously though we decided to stop dating. A professional told me in casual conversation that yeah maybe shes being honest and can’t handle a boyfriend right now because she can’t even handle herself with everything going on in her life. - has anyone who is bipolar ever felt like that or does this sound along the right line?? From knowing what a great girl she is I’d like to believe she wouldn’t just try to string me along but I don’t know!

Also, though we’re friends right now I would really like to tell her that I know she is bipolar or talk to her about it. She told me once when I saw her taking a pill that it was lithium but she said she takes it was for her “depression and anxiety” (this is still when i didn’t know for a fact but it made me start to wonder. - but regardless I would like to tell her i know and it’s okay but i don’t know how or if I even should. any suggestions? because part of me also thinks that she isn’t sure about us because she might think that I might judge her or wouldn’t understand what she is going through bceause of her illness.

Please let me know your feedback I’d really like to know because I still care about her a lot and want to be there for her regardless if its a friend or boyfriend. Thanks!

in addition: i forgot to add… I know there is different types of bipolar. A lot of what I have read describes her to the max though. Whenever we have gone out in a group she is the life of the party, she recently moved home to pay off credit card debt because she literally would rendomly decide to go on shopping sprees, she does what she wants when she wants and doesn’t care what people think, when we were dating there were times where we would be a week where we would hang out all the time, then another week where she wouldn’t want anything to do with me (or so it seeemed) and she’d hang out with her friends and be very short and passive with me on the phone.

She went to college her first year away from home then moved back - our mutual friend who knows about her disorder told me that the reason why she moved home was because her stress level and mood swings were out the roof because she didn’t have a support system while away. So i was thinking maybe that is what she is going through since I’ve heard and read that someone who is bipolar can go into a depressive state for not only days or weeks but months at a time. With a stressful management job and working 45+ hrs a week in her early 20’s, and everything else she is/was going through to me it makes sense..but I don’t know if anyone else has experienced this or not or if it could in fact play into her illness??

Also there were times when we were supposed to go out, two times i can remember in particular where she was incredibly late because she overslept. I was incredibly pissed at her at the time because I thought it was her just being inconsiderate (and I didn’t know at the time yet she was bipolar) but after researching it a ton i learned that people with this illness at times will go with little to almost no sleep (which I’ve seen her do before) and then at other times when they are in a depressive state they may require a ton of sleep - which i see now that I know is probably what the case was when she would be late because she “overslept”

There were also times where like i said she could be the sweetest girl in the world. and then other times where, I don’t want to say she would be verbally abusive, but she would be very short and passive aggressive with me with her words, etc.

I really want to tell her that I know and I understand now but I don’t know how or if I should. Part of the reason we stopped dating is because she said she didn’t know if i could “handle her” which I see now her illness is probably what she meant, but once again i didn’t know at the time because she never told me. any feedback would be appreciated. Thank you again!