Another might as well be my full time job meltdown with my husband. I am so tired and am in so much pain. You can only handle being someone’s enemy so much. Today I am trying so hard and he’s furious with me. I pushed my sleeves up ealier and he starts laughing and said go ahead. It would be easier. I wasn’t contemplating suicide but damn if that doesn’t want to drive someone to it. I am trying to mourn the man I married that I am losing to this horrible disease. It makes it worse that he hates me so much for what he thinks is me intentionally making him think he’s ill when he doesn’t think he is. I have had to resign myself to the idea that I don’t have to love him as my husband anymore. I can love him as a human being…as God requires, but it’s too hard to look at him and continue to with he was what I married or even a resemblance. I missed a friend’s funeral today because he was screaming. He literally now thinks I am turning the dogs against him, my doctor, family, my friends of which I don’t see much anymore. He has isolated us too much for that. It’s amazing how someone can make you feel so absolutely worthless day after day.
I’m so sorry to hear you are going through this horrible time
Is your husband on medication? Has he been ill for a long time?
Remember there’s only so much you can do. Dealing with loved ones suffering from mental health illnesses take a huge toll. It affects your mental health too !
Of course you should try to help him but he has to accept the help and help himself too.
Do you have access to therapy and/or meeting with group of people on similar situations? That could be good.
I hope things get better and that you find the best solution for this difficult problem.
It may not solve your issue but you know you have this forum to vent and talk to people who can totally understand and sympathize with you.
hug
Hi George, I know this is really hard but try as much as you can to not take the anger and nasty words and insults personally. It is the illness of the brain talking, not the heart of your husband. However, it’s still abusive and there are plenty of people with SMI who don’t torment their partners with insults and aggression. I have PTSD from my own months of abuse during my loved one’s psychotic break, and I found it almost impossible not to get sucked in because, honestly, he knows everything about me and my deepest insecurities so when he attacked me he knew exactly where to go, and indeed, he admitted that at the time all he wanted to do was “hurt me as bad as he had been hurt.” However, his feelings of pain and victimization are distorted by his disease. Now that he is stable and loving again, it is hard to forget that he voiced to other people that he wished I would “just die already.” The one time I tried to talk about he, he just cried and spiraled into staying in bed for a few days. He didn’t mean it and barely remembers saying it. Honestly, I think all of the viciousness comes from the brain’s distortions and this deep feeling that “if I were only free, my pain would subside. I could have everything I want”. Somehow the closest loved one becomes the target because we are perceived to be responsible for shackling the sick person from their true destiny. The problem gets worse because, of course, the sick person goes out into world and is met with terror and condemnation and misunderstanding so they get the opposite of what they though they’d get (often jail/homelessness/impoverished) so there is this excruciating tension of needing you so badly (and I do believe that the “well” person inside the illness is always there, fighting to regain control) but hating you for that dependence. My saving Grace was my healthy relationships and NAMI family2family classes, a therapist who specializes in the cult-of-two aspects of trauma bonding, and finally letting him go. It was awful and he sank to rock bottom, but the two months I had away from him allowed me to recalibrate, and when he ended up in hospital I could re-enter and really help. Our relationship is a shadow of what it was, because he is finally doing what he needs to do to face this illness, but it is also much more true and real now. I love him with detachment now, and I am much healthier for it. I am building my own life and when I am with him, I bring positivity and joy but I can also leave. He is free to do what he wants. And, ironically, in this stage, all he wants is to be with me (after wishing me dead when he was ill). But now, I get to choose how much and how often…long answer but I feel you, and I want you to know you can choose.
@GEORGE , I am sorry your life is crumbling around you into an isolated existence with a man you used to have a good relationship with. After 3 years of my daughter’s psychosis, my life was so full of upset and worry that I knew it couldn’t go on like that forever. Thankfully she got arrested when on her own outside of my home and that opened the path to court ordered meds. Please try to remember one thing, HE himself does not wish you were dead, the illness that is controlling him much like being possessed by the devil, is what makes him act and speak in so terrible a fashion. Only you can decide how much more you can take. My mother in law told me at my wedding reception to always love my husband but put taking care of myself first. She suggested saving up weekly grocery money in a secret place in case I ever needed to escape for either a short or long time. She was married to a mean alcoholic for her adult life while taking care of 8 children on a farm. I was shocked at her suggestion, and resented it, but should have done what she said. Eighteen years later, I left that marriage with just a few suitcases and my car to sleep in for several months until I could afford a place to live. You have to take care of yourself, whatever choices that leads you to make.
Thank you @Gennyg134 for sharing a bit of your history, and how only leaving your own loved one actually helped him face his illness.
Each loved one’s illness is different, yet similar to others with severe mental illness, and each handling by caregivers must be specifically tailored to the lives involved to be successful. I don’t think anyone on this site can judge anyone else’s actions when dealing with a loved one who is no longer well and who might never be well again. We can only hope that somehow the twisted path of survival leads to a workable new life.