Having bipolar doesn't mean you can excuse all your crap behavior on a mental illness. You still need to take responsibility for the things you say, do and the people you affect. Yes, it's a horrible illness but the person who has it needs to seek treatment and follow recommendations. That means not skipping therapy appointments, not playing around with meds, not abusing drugs or alcohol and apologizing when you screw up. All of which my ex refused to do. His family thinks it's terrible that I walked away. I didn't leave him because his bipolar. I left him because of his choices.

My DH has bipolar disorder. So does my MIL and my best friend. When I complain about DH sleeping literally all day long and not being "motivated" to do anything around the house, they tell me I need to understand where he's coming from. I get that it's hard. But he's on meds and sometimes you just have to force yourself to do things you don't always want to do. I feel like mental illness is becoming such a common excuse for everything now. According to doctors, I have chronic depression, but I never make excuses for it. If anything I try to live like I don't have it as much as I possibly can. I don't know if that's the right approach or not, but I refuse to wallow in my diagnosis like every other mentally ill person in my life does.

I swear my DH is bipolar or something. Every day we go through the same thing. Ex- yesterday it was "I want you to order this particular printer and charger. Make sure you do next day delivery, etc." Today it's "I never told you to spend that much money! I just wanted you to research it and get back with me!" SMH I am seriously starting to doubt my own mind here. I swear, it's situations like this ALL THE TIME. I don't even know how to address it apart from buying some kind of recording device or something.

I had a friend suffering from bipolar who used to call repeatedly with emergencies, needing to talk for hours at a time. I finally set boundaries with her, saying I could only talk during certain hours. She'd also talk about feeling suicidal and would want me to drive to her house and sit with her. I finally had to set a boundary there too. I told her if she spoke of feeling suicidal I would call 911 and send them to her house. She stopped speaking to me after that. I do wonder what happened to her at times but on the other hand, feeling like you are being 'held hostage' by a mentally ill person is very real. You need to be firm but loving and some people see that as 'not caring'.

Ok, so it's been a few days now. Let me give some more context. Dh just made his fb account and isn't friends with her. She messaged him, after not speaking at all for 18 years, and the only thing she said was, "Your son is graduating tomorrow." That's it. No, hey can we talk. No, I have something important to tell you. Nothing. I talked to my mil, who still lives in the same tiny town as this woman, and she told me that this woman not only doesn't have any kids, but that there were no graduations that day (mil is a teacher). She's also a meth user and I pulled up her arrest record online, but couldn't find anything about her having any kids. Dh said she was sleeping with her ex when they were together, and she's also bipolar (actually diagnosed) and frequently quit taking her meds. He told me about her when we first started dating and knew nothing about her ever being pregnant. I'm leaning towards her just wanting to start shit, but still... holy shit, wtf.

I had a bipolar husband. There are different kinds of bipolar. None of them are easy for a spouse to live with or a co-worker to work with. Hell on earth, in fact. Because you never know what you're going to have to deal with next.

I refer to my CW as bipolar because her behavior fits the description of the disorder. One day she came in pretty chipper. Within 10 minutes she was agitated and saying she had to go home because "this place is toxic" when not one person had said a word. She can be happy, pensive, nervous, pissed off and raging at one or more of us and back again all in the course of a couple hours. Sooo after about a week of being her target, she's now done a 180 and has been as sweet as pie to me for the past several days. She even brought me coffee and a pastry. This reminds me of my mother, who was in fact bipolar, who would beat the shit out of me for no reason, and then buy me something expensive to make up for it.

Can we not refer to people who have rage issues as being "bipolar"? That term gets thrown around negatively so much and it's just not fair. Several very dear friends of mine are bipolar as is my MIL and none of them have rage issues. Mostly they have issues with sleeping too much sometimes and then having bursts of very productive time.

Things with SCW (sabotaging coworker) haven't gotten much better. I think she's bipolar. Nice one minute, raging the next. Per my job description, I'm available afterhours in urgent matters. But everything is urgent to her and I was feeling like a personal assistant. After doing much of her work over the weekend, and then having her rage when I stopped responding Sun night, she raged at me via email and in person on Mon morning. And raged some more when she saw she wasn't affecting me, lol. After talking to the boss, he announced that afternoon that from now on, no one is to contact me after 5pm or on weekends with the exception of the urgencies he outlined. She asked if <issue from Sun nite> was urgent and he said, "Somewhat, but it's something you can do yourself." So two more days of rage and a text at 7:30pm tonite, asking to do the same thing as she did on Sun nite. I said no. Can't wait until tomorrow!

My DH is mentally ill. He is also very pro-gun and doesn't think mentally ill people should be banned from buying guns. Yet it's exactly people like him who should NOT be allowed to have guns. They're more prone to suicide, homicide, etc. I would fully support legislature to prevent mentally ill people from buying guns. My MIL is bipolar and she thinks that no one with a mental illness belongs withing 10 miles of a gun. It's just not a predictable situation.