Does anyone know how to tell if the sufferer is "just" depressed or might perhaps be Bipolar? I know bi-polar has bouts of mania and depression, but it seems like the emotions and actions my DH exhibits when I thought he was depressed (anger, risk taking, blame, resentment, affair) also overlap somewhat with the manic parts of a bi-polar person?
So on Saturday when I found out DH had been Facetiming the girl he had an affair with last year, I kicked him out of the house. Or rather, I took my kids to my mother's house and told him to be gone by Sunday when I get back. On Sunday morning he was very apologetic. On Sunday night (yesterday) when I got home he was still there although he had packed up most of the his stuff. He said he put down a deposit on a one bedroom apt nearby. We talked and he finally seemed like he snapped out of whatever it was. He kept saying "It feels so real. But I see that it was not" and "I was just trying to do something to make me feel alive." It seems like he has to keep pushing and pushing until he wants to escape me and our family and once he gets to that breaking point, he suddenly realizes he is going to lose everything and snaps back to reality.
I told him if he wanted to stay there had to be some ground rules:
1. He has to absolutely have NO CONTACT at all with the mistress. I asked him to email or call her in my presence and tell her it was over and to stop contacting him. She's the one who emails him from time to time. When he is "well", he ignores it but when he is depressed, he starts to fall for all her false promises and flirtations. She knows we have our own successful business and is always wanting to take my place and have him "rescue" her from her sad life.
2. He has to show up when he tells the kids he is going to.
3. He needs to get healthy - continue to see our marriage therapist and insist on changing his meds with the psychiatrist.
The psychiatrist he is seeing is pretty good, but seems conservative. I see him as well, as I've been on Zoloft the past year to regulate my emotions from the Fallout. He was prescribed 20mg Prozac in January but started to relapse in June. He went back in July and got it increased to 30mg and then decreased again in August back to 20mg. Our marriage therapist suggested that he should try Paxil, but the psychiatrist insisted that he should just stick with the Prozac. What if he is bipolar? Then Prozac wouldn't have any benefit during his manic phases, right?
Today (Monday) he is already a different person than the last three months. Back to my normal, sweet, loving husband and father of our three kids. Wedding band back on after disappearing in July. Does depression just suddenly clear up that quickly? Last time he kind of slept for two weeks and then seemed like he woke up out of the fog and returned normal again. Last night he said he felt so tired, like he could sleep for a week. I thought it was the aftereffects of the Prozac, but maybe it was the mania starting to settle down the first time?
So on Saturday when I found out DH had been Facetiming the girl he had an affair with last year, I kicked him out of the house. Or rather, I took my kids to my mother's house and told him to be gone by Sunday when I get back. On Sunday morning he was very apologetic. On Sunday night (yesterday) when I got home he was still there although he had packed up most of the his stuff. He said he put down a deposit on a one bedroom apt nearby. We talked and he finally seemed like he snapped out of whatever it was. He kept saying "It feels so real. But I see that it was not" and "I was just trying to do something to make me feel alive." It seems like he has to keep pushing and pushing until he wants to escape me and our family and once he gets to that breaking point, he suddenly realizes he is going to lose everything and snaps back to reality.
I told him if he wanted to stay there had to be some ground rules:
1. He has to absolutely have NO CONTACT at all with the mistress. I asked him to email or call her in my presence and tell her it was over and to stop contacting him. She's the one who emails him from time to time. When he is "well", he ignores it but when he is depressed, he starts to fall for all her false promises and flirtations. She knows we have our own successful business and is always wanting to take my place and have him "rescue" her from her sad life.
2. He has to show up when he tells the kids he is going to.
3. He needs to get healthy - continue to see our marriage therapist and insist on changing his meds with the psychiatrist.
The psychiatrist he is seeing is pretty good, but seems conservative. I see him as well, as I've been on Zoloft the past year to regulate my emotions from the Fallout. He was prescribed 20mg Prozac in January but started to relapse in June. He went back in July and got it increased to 30mg and then decreased again in August back to 20mg. Our marriage therapist suggested that he should try Paxil, but the psychiatrist insisted that he should just stick with the Prozac. What if he is bipolar? Then Prozac wouldn't have any benefit during his manic phases, right?
Today (Monday) he is already a different person than the last three months. Back to my normal, sweet, loving husband and father of our three kids. Wedding band back on after disappearing in July. Does depression just suddenly clear up that quickly? Last time he kind of slept for two weeks and then seemed like he woke up out of the fog and returned normal again. Last night he said he felt so tired, like he could sleep for a week. I thought it was the aftereffects of the Prozac, but maybe it was the mania starting to settle down the first time?




