Thanks to Lilit Marcus for finding this fascinating article about a bipolar woman (Bipolar II) who married a Bipolar I guy. The article’s author, Janine Millerton, articulates all the drama of the relationship in such incisive language that the bipolar person is sure to wince at similar situations, feelings and thought traps in his/her own life. At least I did, especially with her descriptions of what mania can look like and how it’s exhilaration can disguise it as romance, when, in essence, it’s the other side of depression.

I’ve excerpted some paragraphs below, but I urge you to read the full story by clicking here.

Between January and May of 2006, my husband, Leopold, attempted suicide four times, at nearly regular intervals of five weeks. In June, he disappeared for a month. When he re-emerged, he announced he was quitting me, his job, and the city in which we lived. He was going to teach at a high school in Appalachia.

Just two years prior, we’d met at a mutual friend’s birthday party and secluded ourselves on the fire escape, smoking. I lived in New York; he was in D.C. The following Saturday, we talked on the phone for six hours. I visited him two weeks later. Over the weekend, he asked me to move in with him; by Sunday night, we’d picked out the names of our unborn children. Like Tristan and Isolde, we were bewitched by each other. Leopold proposed to me four weeks after that.

My friends thought it was impetuous of me to go along with this breakneck courtship — especially since the ink was barely dry on my divorce from my first husband — but I could not be dissuaded. This was my lifelong image of what love should be like, and I was eager to start afresh.

Only later, after meeting with Leopold’s shrinks, did I understand that this wasn’t romance — it was a disease. Specifically, it was a symptom of the manic side of “manic-depressive illness,” also known as bipolar disorder.

Like many bipolar sufferers, Leopold had gone his whole life without being diagnosed. The mania was seen as part of his personality. He was a consummate romantic, showering me with flowers and surprises. We loved each other to excess. He would say he missed me if we were in two separate rooms of the apartment. 

Where I should have seen signs of a problem, I saw lovable quirks. Leopold was able to envision the distant future (like knowing what those unborn children would major in at college). But the short-term future — anything more than a few months in advance — eluded him. He had written the first 50 pages of a novel seven years earlier — but he’d bristle if I pressed him about finishing it.

I attributed tendencies like these to a combination of Gen-X apathy and traditional male immaturity. He once told me, “I’m the best damn writer in the world.” But he was unable to take concrete steps to test his abilities. (I later learned that hyperconfidence is also a sign of mania.)

What he couldn’t plan for tomorrow, Leopold had no trouble determining for today: Shortly after our wedding, he decided to buy a car. His parents offered him advice on finding the best deal, negotiating the financing rate, shopping around. Leopold left for the dealership at 2 p.m. At 5 p.m. he drove home with a new car. His parents gave him a tongue-lashing for his impulsiveness. He flopped on the bed and told me, “I want to hurt myself.”

All honeymoons end; in our case, it ended almost before it began. We often fought about his job, which required him to spend half his time in a Middle Eastern country that was on the State Department’s unsafe list. He said, “Everything in my life has been leading up to this job. If you deny me this, you deny me everything.” I didn’t know how to respond to that kind of extreme, unchecked zeal.

The funny thing is, for most of the time we were together, it was my mental health with which we were preoccupied, not his. Full disclosure: I am bipolar, too. I was diagnosed with bipolar type II years ago. In type II, the manic and depressive episodes are distinct from each other and relatively easy to recognize. It was strangely fortunate that my depression was so pronounced — I cried constantly, had an irrational social phobia, and didn’t brush my hair for months at a time — because it allowed me to seek help at an early stage.

Leopold, meanwhile, was bipolar type I. His manic episodes were much more pronounced than the depressive ones. Many bipolar sufferers don’t seek treatment because the manic side, which in mild stages resembles euphoria, is actually enjoyable. But euphoria can be terribly dangerous. Bipolar people are two to three times more likely to attempt suicide than those suffering from regular depression. They are also, say studies, more likely to complete their attempts.

Continue reading the story by clicking here.

Check out other articles and videos about bipolar disorder on Beliefnet’s Bipolar Resource page by clicking here.

To read more Beyond Blue, go to www.beliefnet.com/beyondblue, and to get to Group Beyond Blue, a support group at Beliefnet Community, click here.