In support groups we often discuss whether “in sickness and in health” means that if your partner has a serious illness like bipolar, you should refuse to leave them because of their illness, after all you wouldn’t leave them if they had cancer or diabetes or some other serious illness.

My response is that you wouldn’t leave a bipolar partner because they have an illness, you’d leave them because their behavior had become dangerous or intolerable, and that while the illness might contribute to that behavior, the illness itself isn’t the issue–the behavior is.

If someone with cancer or diabetes or any other illness refused to comply with their treatment plan and started treating you like you were evil for wanting them to get treatment–would you leave? If they were threatening your safety and your sanity? If they decided to spend you into oblivion because they wouldn’t be there to pay the debt?

If they were doing the same stuff someone with bipolar might do…would you stay with them just because they have cancer or whatever? Nobody looks into divorce because their spouse has bipolar disorder–that’s not the issue–they consider and follow through with divorce because of all of the terrible behavior that comes with the bipolar.

Bipolar doesn’t make people do terrible things, it just makes it easier for them to do terrible things and harder for them to see the consequences clearly. They still get to choose. Many people stay with their bipolar partner until death because that partner does his or her best to maintain their stability and avoids doing things that harm the partner. It is always an option. Nobody HAS to go on a violent rampage, threatening everyone in sight for no rational reason. It’s still a choice.

In sickness and in health doesn’t mean that illness is a “get out of jail free” card. It means that we don’t abandon someone just because they happen to get sick and we might have to carry a bit more than our share of the burden of the relationship. It doesn’t mean that when someone is sick, they don’t have any responsibility in the relationship. That’s just crazy. It may tip the balance, but it doesn’t get them off the hook entirely. At the very least, they have to be able to love us back–otherwise what’s the point? Even an infant or a dog can do that much.

No, nobody would want to have bipolar and nobody would choose to be mentally ill, but we all get to choose how we will deal with the life we were given and if we choose to deal with an illness by destroying everyone around us, we probably need to be left alone.

Sometimes leaving is the action that saves the relationship. It might be the reason that the hurtful word or the physical attack that would be the ultimate deal-breaker never happens. In time, many hurts can heal and even after a divorce the marriage can be rebuilt, but the more abuse, the harder to rebuild. Stopping the situation, whether it’s leaving the room or leaving the marriage, keeps things from going too far.

There’s no sense in being angry or holding onto the hurt from things that were done in an episode–they really are meaningless and not worth your serious consideration. A person with bipolar is operating without rational thought. But there’s no sense in sticking around to watch someone explode when it puts you in the center of the explosion with no power to stop it. When you can’t disarm a bomb, you get everyone away from it and wait until the explosion is over to assess the damage.

Would you leave your partner because they have bipolar? Would you leave your partner in spite of the fact that they have bipolar? Would you leave bipolar out of it and make decisions based on what is in the best interests of the both of you?

When you learn that your partner has a serious mental illness like bipolar disorder, you go through some of the stages of grief because suddenly all of your plans for happily ever after are dashed. How can you have a wonderful normal life with this incurable disease hanging over you? Your planned life is dead and gone.

The first step to dealing with having a partner with bipolar disorder is to accept the life you have been given. It’s not the life you planned, but it can be a great life anyway. You may as well accept it and do the best you can with it.

Does anyone get the life they signed up for?

As I grow older and live through more, I realize that the life I have is really better in so many ways than the life I wanted. I’ve learned so much.

Do people who live the life they ordered know how to have a conversation with someone who isn’t rational? I’ve learned and programmed myself to speak more softly and calmly as he speaks more rapidly and excitedly. Sometimes it even helps to calm him down. When I use that same tactic with other people it’s almost magic. It is very calming. I certainly wouldn’t have perfected that skill any other way.

Do people who live the life they ordered really know how to set boundaries? Many people take their boundaries for granted and most of the people they know are unlikely to trample them often enough for them to worry about it. I was trampled a lot, though, and I had to learn to defend my boundaries (sometimes by walking away) as a survival skill for living with bipolar. I don’t take them for granted and although it sometimes seems like I allow myself to be trampled, I make a conscious choice about how far I let things go. That makes all the difference.

Do people who live the life they ordered know the difference between constructive criticism and verbal abuse? Do they know how to handle both? Verbal abuse is usually irrational–it’s criticism purely to be mean. I totally “get” irrational. I know enough to run most criticism through the “reality filter” and to calmly discard the stuff that doesn’t get through. I also know enough to discard the stuff that I already know and that is just being pointed out to make me feel bad.  Bullies depend on us accepting their abuse as valid when it really isn’t. Learning the difference makes us so much stronger.

Do people who live the life they ordered know how to live in poverty? It might seem pretty obvious from watching the coupon queens and the frugal living articles, but most of these “experts” have a lot more money to work with than someone who is recovering from manic spending, especially if their partner is now too depressed to go to work. It takes working capital to use most of their ideas. It takes some creativity and ingenuity to feed a family a healthy diet when you’re digging in the couch for change, but people who aren’t living the life they ordered can figure it out.

How do people who live the life they ordered learn faith? How do they know that they can survived the unthinkable, the impossible, the ridiculous?

I’m thankful for the life I didn’t order. I have learned so much that I felt compelled to share what I learned in support groups, articles and books. I have become strong in ways that I never even thought about.

If a cure is discovered for bipolar disorder we will drop everything to get it, If we could have our happily ever after, we’d take it in a heartbeat. But I’m not sure I’d ever want to exchange the life I didn’t order or the things it has taught me.

As I live and learn, I’ve come to realize that nobody really lives the life that they ordered. Those who have it all, really don’t. Disasters, diseases and death are not the burden of a few. We all learn our own lessons and we all develop our own strengths. Accept the life you have and the curves it throws you and enjoy it. Happily ever after is a myth, but happily today is up to you.

What have you learned from the life you didn’t order? How would you change it if you could? Please leave a comment so I don’t feel like I’m writing to myself.

We finally got wordpress installed on getolife.org. I am hoping that this will make the website easier to use and easier to update. I know that it will take me a while to find all of the options and to get this site set up the way I want it, but wordpress makes this site much more interactive than my previous site and I really want to know what you think.