I worked with a guy and met him at one installation, and worked at a second base with him. Totally nice character and he was level-headed. Six years pass and he comes back to the base where I was stationed....admits he has an alcohol problem and gets some help with that. Then, on some relapse, consumes a fair amount of alcohol and has some mini-stroke.
Military doctors could not figure out what he did or how his body reacted. My description would be ten-percent loss of motion in one leg and maybe twenty-five percent loss of control in one arm. Beyond that....he seemed mentally OK. Six weeks would pass and the military was consuming time to figure out what they should do with him (he had almost nineteen years in).
His wife pressed them for a rehab deal and she kinda figured out that it’d consume a year, and he’d just retire. Then apply for disability after retirement.
What I noticed at the six week point though...he was not himself, and was acting like you describe your wife...a totally different person. He could be intelligent and charming one day, and the next be hooked up with another woman (not his wife).
A year would pass...they’d give him the twenty-year retirement and he applied for disability. He had serious issues in walking, and had to always be within six minutes of a bathroom. He was losing control of himself and I don’t see how the wife kept staying with the guy.
In your case....I’d read over bi-polar because it sounds an awful lot like that. Course, the issue is that they always seem to think the meds are bad for them and want to quit...which means they turn into the freaky nut that you can’t stay around. I’d have a lot of patience, but I’d admit that after ten years of this and no change...I just wouldn’t be able to stay on...I’d probably pack up the car and go find some place in Iowa to just hide out and rebuild a life on. There’s a point where you have to admit defeat, and an individual has to see the overwhelming burden of trying to keep someone on a straight line.
I have a good friend who is bipolar and she talks to me a lot about it. (I guess I am her gay friend even though I am not gay). Bipolar is wide swings. When they swing to the good, it is awesome. When they swing to the bad, it is terrible. The meds force them into the middle. That’s good except they miss that swing to the good. So they go off the meds thinking “I’ll swing good but if I swing bad, I’ll go back on the meds”. But they swing bad, go into their dirty hole and don’t take the meds.