The 80/20 Reality of Bipolar Relationships: Stability, Chaos, and What Partners Actually Live

0:00 The bipolar 20% hook, I'm going to talk about that today because quite frankly, if you're involved with somebody with bipolar, that's going to be you. That certainly was me. I'm even saying maybe 10% hook or 20% hook. What I mean by that is that 10 to 20% of the time, it's awful. It's just, it's just difficult. You're walking on egg shells. You're trying to figure out what they're doing while they're doing it, why they're doing it. So that means 80 to 90% of the time, it's a normal relationship.

0:40 My goodness, why in the hell can't that work? At least that's my thought process. Once again, bipolar is a spectrum. Everybody's different. I'm speaking from my experience, but my experience was 10 to 20% of the time it was pure chaos, but 80% of the time it was relatively good. Obviously, there were great times with my wife. So it's so confusing. However, the negative part, the 10 to 20%, that can be at least for me, gut wrenching because you're dealing with somebody that is literally does do not have brakes on their empathy or their ability to deal with people. And what I mean by that is that the person, OK, let's say you and I are talking to each other, we're good friends and we start going out with a girl and I think she terrible. She's just awful.

1:46 I don't think she's good for you. I don't want to do all those things. Well, I might say, you know, buddy, you might want to consider this woman, whatever and leave it at that. A bipolar person doesn't sometimes not all, doesn't have the ability to filter things. It's either or so they may look at a friend and say you're stupid to dealing with that person because of this, this and this and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and super negative. Or they're super positive because they don't have brakes on their emotional capabilities like you and I do. Be aware of that. And so you know, dealing with bipolar people, at least dealing with mine, that was the one of the hardest things for me to do when I left. And that's why I went literally crazy myself because she was great a lot of the times.

2:40 She was fun, she was exciting. We had all kinds of fun trip to Vegas and to South America and to China and it was awesome. But those I look back and that horrendous fights that would happen, I mean like fights that should be that big a deal turned into monumental horrible things because they can't control their emotions. That's what you need to realize. Yes, they do what's called masking. If you don't know what masking is, you need to look it up. I'll make a podcast about just that. But masking generally is they use a lot of brain power to overcome the racing thoughts and the bad thoughts that they have in their mind. They do that outside the home when they come back to the home, they can't do that all the time.

3:31 So they feel better to let down their guard when they get home. So therefore, a lot of times of partners in the house get hammered, but everybody else doesn't ever see it ever. So when you try to talk to somebody about it, and if you live this, you know what I'm saying, try to talk to somebody, a friend about this, they'll never understand it. They'll say no way in hell. That person's the nicest person I've ever seen in my life. They've never treated me bad. You're telling me that they're screaming and yelling and kicking you out of the house and throwing things at you and all of these things. Obviously you must be a bad person. It's not them. It's a it's just so difficult and just realized that 10 or 20%, I mean, mine threw me out in the middle of the highway in the middle of nowhere twice, OK, because of what they thought happened, which didn't. That's a reality.

4:31 I mean, those kind of things create what's called a trauma bond. If you don't know what that is or you've not studied it, you'd better you right now need to go and find out what a trauma bond really is. Don't just think, Oh well, it's I'm bonded. No, it's extremely difficult. Many people have likened A trauma bond to being hooked on heroin. All right, that's serious. If you're hooked on heroin, I guess I've never been hooked on it, but you have to it. It's extremely difficult to get away from because when you've been immense chaos and then they're really nice and then chaos even randomly, let's say over six month period, you've had a month of absolute chaos, but five months of good.

5:21 That one month of chaos a lot of times won't override the five months of good, but with a trauma bond, you're still waiting for the good person to show up. But it's absolutely tearing you apart if you're living it. You know what I'm talking about because I lived it. It's the worst feeling in the history of the world for me. And dealing, dealing with a bipolar person. I loved her more than I've ever loved anybody in my life. And I do believe it's because of the trauma bond, the push pull, the push pull that never seems to go away. And as they get older, yes, it gets worse.

6:01 If they're unmedicated or under medicated, the older they get the worse it gets. Period. That's not open for discussion. Don't think for a minute that yours is going to get better. If they're not going to a psychiatrist every month, going to a therapist every month. You're involved with those and you have a power of attorney to make them take their medicine if they stop because once again, if you haven't heard this before, in literally two or three days of not taking their medicine, they can slip into mania. Once it slips into a mania, they're not going to listen to you. They're not going to do what you tell them. They're going to do whatever they want and probably blow up their life or at least create living hell for you on earth. Be well aware, the 80% I still look back on my relationship, the absolute fun, crazy fun times we had together over 10 years.

6:57 It was awesome and it was the most chaotic, spine tingling chaos I've ever lived. I mean come on when they're screaming at yelling at you. I've said this before in my wheelchair, remember I got paralysed 2 years ago in my wheelchair. I'm living in in the living room and she's screaming at yelling at me to get out of the house. Leave, leave, leave, leave. You think I'd attacked her or something? I can't move. Anyway, bottom line is I was, I was just incredibly difficult to live there with her like this. But the trauma bond keeps you there and then you will find yourself.

7:40 If you're living this right now, do yourself a favor. Look over the last two or three years, what is your personality or how's your personality changed over the last two or three years? Are you still happy with your friends? Are you still going out with your friends having a good time? Or are you basically trying to monitor and manage their illness? Has your life been taken over by this? If it has, go talk to a therapist that knows about bipolar. If a therapist doesn't know about bipolar, do not deal with them because bipolar is such a huge deal. Believe me, if you sit down in front of a psychiatrist or a therapist that's not familiar with us, the person with bipolar will merely mask and they'll be perfect. I can't tell you how many stories I read where the couple was fighting horrendously.

8:33 The bipolar person threatens the other person or does something crazy against them. They call the police. The police show up and the bipolar person's perfect. They're absolutely calm, regulated, normal and the cops can't do anything. That's bipolar. Be very careful of these things. That 10 to 20% for me at least and what I've read over the last 10 months since I'm leaving. It happens. It can be so catastrophic and destroys yourself esteem, destroys yourself confidence because they're going to gaslight you and controlled you because for them to admit that they've got a problem destroys them completely. So everything's going to be, guess what, your fault. Everything that's gone wrong is going to be your fault. They won't apologize.

9:26 They won't be accountable. If yours does, that's a huge plus. That means they're somewhat self aware, but be aware of all of this stuff. That 10 to 20% can literally destroy you. God bless everybody. Thank you. Bye.