If you have a mentally ill spouse

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why do so many people have mental health problems these days? Was it always this prevalent?

I think it cuts both ways. Some of it was always there and just ignored or swept under the rug by the families. But some of is is a result of the way we live now with information and executive function overload pushing more people to the edge. Imagine someone prone to anxiety before internet. They'd hear a couple of scary local stories related to whatever their trigger is, but that would be it. Now they can easily find every tragic case within 1000 miles radius AND will conveniently be served more stories as they come up due to social media algorithms. Think about all the paperwork that floods your inbox requiring your immediate attention - just deciding whether it's truly important, some sort of a sales pitch or an outright scam is exhausting.

I work in risk management and one of the exercises we do to teach people about phishing is sending official looking emails asking to click on a link. Our most "successful" email was saying that if you don't immediately fill out this form, your paychecks will stop. We caught the CEO!!! It's a sad commentary on the current state of life that people truly believe it is a possibility.

To prior, prior poster,

My husbands grandmother thought the exteme cases of mental illness now are due to the fact that most people are not doing hard work outside. She said back in her day it was extremely rare for a man to get mental illness. She said young males and men were working from sun up to sun down on the farm out in the sunshine doing hard physical labor all day.

Women also worked hard back in the day. The grandmother said women would get post partum depression. Other forms of mental illness in would have been extremely rare in women.

Yes and no.
Many families had the Crazy Brother, who just stayed inside all the time out of the way.
For those who sent out the Crazy Brother, tragic no-common-sense accidents ensued: walking off the cliff, went in the bear cave, stuck their arm in the combine, forgot to plant or harvest the crops on time, got hit by a train, lost an eye gifting about.
They didn’t reproduce back then.

Today someone like that could make money doing a tech programming job in their basement, marry some hard up lady, and have kids. Go on to drive everyone crazy.

There’s another variation of this- the beautiful, charming woman who is waving red flags all over the place but the man who falls in love with her ignores ALL OF THEM. I have seen multiple instances of this and their families sort of shrug and hope for the best, they know who their Crazy Sister is and feel pretty good knowing she’s about to be someone else’s problem.

[Anonymous]

Yes, I have a friend like that. Got married and spiraled worse and sleeps in unto 2pm daily. While he works. Never goes out, on lots of meds so has muted energy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m the ADHD poster and have been reflecting on the comments and realize I was projecting my situation onto many posters.

In my specific case, which is too complicated to summarise, I had to reject the help I was receiving in order to step up and take responsibility. My spouse only wanted to take things from me to make my life easier, but it just enables and stressed me out. Then he’d criticise me for clutter and other things. Nothing I did was good enough and the more i tries to explain myself, the more resentful he got. Like he just wanted me gone.

It actually made me worse mentally, but now that we are split and there are clear lanes for coparenting, I feel less stressed and overwhelmed and able to manage the increase in responsibilities.

I am not bitter, I don’t blame. This is just the reality I am dealing with. I have found help and support from other friends and professionals. But not from my ex-spouse or parents.

So in your case, you probably had some way of emotionally dealing with him that didn't work out well. I'm going to guess some sort of defense mechanism which is often the case with people who have ADHD. He probably also had some emotional issues that led to the split.OCD or something. And you weren't taking responsibility for things. I think understanding that your health led to the dysfunction is healthier than thinking the dysfunction stemmed from someone else and that you had to get away to get better. Both are actually true, but it's due to an inability to be healthy from the beginning. It's like someone who can't do the job and the boss doesn't understand why the person can't do it and takes things away and complains when still that isn't enough, but then when the person leaves and gets more skilled than they are better on their own. It's the skill that makes the person healthier and the lack of past trauma/distrust dealing with a new person.

Yes, agree. There’s a lot of truth to this.

This is the healthier outcome for me mentally, even if I’m now less financially secure in the long run.

This is not a thread about your experience. This is a thread about what your spouse’s experience might have been. Please start a different thread for this.