Posted on 07/28/2015 6:09:00 AM PDT by rfreedom4u
Then he's gotta leave.
If you do go that route use a lawyer and get a legal separation. Just making sure she has money isn’t enough, especially in her condition.
I think you need assistance, and perhaps a lawyer who has experience with these situations can help you out.
Since you are now in the Houston area, have you tried taking your wife to the Menninger Clinic? They are really an excellent resource.
http://www.menningerclinic.com/
You are an honorable man to have taken care of your children. I have a family member who also is in the condition your wife is in, so I have thought a lot about it over the years.
Unfortunately our society doesn’t provide for this catastrophic situation very well, as you well know. Your wife needs a quiet, simple environment away from all stress, and to be isolated from society, but society doesn’t provide this. I think that the Friends church at one time provided this. But all we really have are “mental health facilities” that are experimental at best. The drugs provided have worse side effects than the original illness. Physical illnesses are rarely even tested for. The talk therapy is as wise as the therapist, so that’s a crapshoot.
So let’s face facts objectively. Bottom line is that she has been severely emotionally abusive to you, and probably to the children. We excuse her because of her condition. But logic tells us that the more she abuses, the worse her condition will get, because when we continuously commit sins, we feel worse and worse about ourselves, unless we have no conscience.
This situation isn’t about who is right or wrong; let’s just look at the idea of self-preservation, which both you and she are interested in. I feel that to the degree her skewed ideas of self-preservation violate your well-being, you are to the same degree honor-bound to preserve your own well-being.
I do not think that a mentally ill person has a right to violate the people around them. I actually think that allowing that violation to perpetuate indefinitely could be considered a sin, because it contributes to their spiritual downfall. You teach your children not to hit each other because it is your responsibility to do so. You would never just excuse a child from being abusive to another. But we tend to excuse a mentally ill person’s abusive actions because of the “illness” and continue to perpetuate the situation. But does that really help? Or does it perpetuate the abuses?
You are in that situation of always feeling guilty if you don’t sacrifice your existence in order to preserve her existence. But that is where you trap yourself. You do not have to exist within the limitations of her insanity. You just don’t.
I would probably be inclined at this point to find a lawyer well versed in family law, divorce your wife, get her on social security, find a good social worker, and a find a good facility for her. You may find that harsh, but I find that sane. Thank you for caring as much as you have. Now you deserve peace.
But it might be that he's gotta leave.
I've left girlfriends for far less.
Brilliant. Seriously.
My comments are not from me directly; they are from a family member who has been through it.
You are a hostage, rfreedom4u. In the end you will not have helped your poor wife, you will have thrown your own life away and left your children with bitter regrets.
There are things you cannot do; sometimes success is impossible. You have to recognize that and cut your losses.
You have grown children. If they’re not taking up the slack, they are letting you suffer alone. They are either not as devoted and selfless, or they’re not as foolhardy and unrealistic as you are. Either way, if they’re not going to get involved in doing what YOU do, you should start doing what THEY do. Back away.
If you don’t, know that mental illness has a way of spreading. You are living with crazy, compensating for crazy, adjusting to crazy, and you will eventually do something crazy because it’s all so normal to you. It’s the boiled frog situation.
Right now, everyone (kids, support systems, social workers) has left you in charge. You’re holding the bag. You’re the one who will be asked later, “Why did you let it go that far?”
Don’t let it go farther. And don’t expect God to bail you out. He has let countless people endure far worse things. Often it’s because, like you, they choose to endure.
You cannot cure her. She can destroy you and anyone else too. If you can’t get her permanently institutionalized, back away.
Back away while you still have your faculties, friends, children, property, and good name. Back away while you still have control of the situation; that is, before the cops have to come to your door and sort it out and tape it off.
See a lawyer immediately. You need expert advice on the correct protocol for it, to insure her safety and yours, to secure her best interests and yours.
Above all, remember you are no less precious a human being than your wife. Sacrifice never yet cured insanity.
AMEN AMEN AMEN, Christ is the only hope in this life and the next.
Most mentally ill people like her are extremely paranoid, they don't just cooperate with your "rational" plans. They are irrational. It is not that simple. She will raise a stink hurt herself and call the cops and make it look like his fault.
My Mom was like that. It all started with postpartum depression too, after my older sister was born.
She was committed to the mental hospital for a number of years - things were different way back then, I guess.
There are times when I think the treatments they gave her might have been worse than the disease. Hundreds and hundreds of electro-shocks. Horrible.
It was all like a bomb in the middle of my family’s somewhat idyllic 1950s and ‘60s suburban existence. None of us were ever the same. Even me, even though I wasn’t born until after she first got sick, and didn’t actually meet her again after I was born until I was a teenager. Our lives were all irrevocably changed.
My big brother has also suffered from mental illness since he was in his twenties. Which is another whole story of its own.
The only counsel I have for you is first to completely cast your cares on the Lord Jesus Christ. Second, at least find some way to have some life separate from the disease.
I commend your faithfulness to her, and to your vows, but you’re not God. You have limits to what you can do for her. May God show you exactly where those limits are, where your duties to Him and to her actually lie, and help you find forgiveness and peace within them.
Life on earth is short but life with Jesus is eternal. It’s easy to forget that but we must try to remember our happiness here is not our main goal. Loving Jesus is our main goal.
Marine;
From one oathkeeper to another, keep your oath.
Being a warrior isn’t easy, neither is being a husband or father, but it is yours to do honorably.
Semper Fidelis- to God, Family and Country.
I pity those who would jump ship or tell another to so do. I do, however, feel your pain.
What about prayers? I've no comments or advice that would help, but I have (and so do you) a direct prayer line to God. And I'm praying now that God comfort you and your wife as only He can.
I have an aunt whose “mental illness” began to exhibit after the birth of the first (and only) child. To make a long story short, my uncle had every opportunity to leave her and he did not - he stayed true to his vows “until death do us part” for over 40 years. He was blessed in the years after she died for his faithfulness. He always had the peace of mind in knowing he kept his vows and did the best he could for her until the very end.
I also have a friend whose wife has mental issues - she was very paranoid and became quite abusive. She would not let him manage her meds which meant she often didn’t take them which of course escalated everything. He finally got her into a facility (I don’t know how he did that) and it has made a huge difference for him - it’s given him a lot of his life back & he has the peace of mind that she is getting the care (medical & otherwise) that she needs.
You are in my prayers .... after taking care of someone who was dying over a two year period, I found that God does not give you more of a burden than you can bear. I had a few conversations with Him and told Him I was at the breaking point, but my prayers for the strength, calm, and wisdom to deal with what I was facing were always answered, sometimes in a very direct manner.
Probably been said somewhere but here’s something simple.
Take a piece of paper and a pencil. Subject: Leaving.
line down the middle of the paper. One side Postive results of leaving. Other side negatives.
If the positive outweigh the negatives then go.
Conversely. subject: staying. Positive outweigh the negatives then stay. You can try it both ways but I guarantee that the results will be the same.
Sounds cold, and it is. Logic is often cold. Emotion never is.
I’m sure not going to tell you what to do. But I did the same “internal poll” I guess, in my last relationship. If I had listened to the results it would have saved me about 8 lost years.
“We’ve all told her about her behavior but she doesn’t seem to believe most of it.”
Telling won’t do it. Deep down, she knows the issues. The only way she will confront it is if she HAS to confront it. If there is no choice, she will have to deal with it. That’s what happens when they get committed to an institution.
You don’t want to be the enabler and you don’t want to be blackmailed. My brother threatened suicide to my mother for decades. After she died, he went after my sister. Even though I have the only money in the family, he knows it won’t work with me so he doesn’t even try.
To the advice of my elders I would add that even crazy people have a sense of self-interest. If your wife’s material needs, food/clothing/shelter, depend on her behavior and the purse strings are held by a dispassionate conservator whom she cannot emotionally manipulate, she may improve in behavior. The alternative, to be institutionalized, might be a useful negative reinforcement.
That said, if she were institutionalized she would have social contacts she wouldn’t be allowed to bully, people with whom she would be obliged to behave better than she does with you. So don’t consider it a hellish snakepit out of a 19th-c novel. As long as they take their meds peacefully, it’s polka, bingo, movies, pizza, and gardening.
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