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[quote=Anonymous]OP and others here, I hear you. My XDH has severe depression that was ineffectively treated with Prozac, plus untreated anxiety and undertreated ADHD. I also think he may have bipolar: for the first six months after leaving me, he spent like there was no tomorrow, dated widely from OK Cupid, bought a new sports car, traveled, and then at month sixth he crashed and was admitted to a psych ward. I don't know if he has a formal bipolar diagnosis, and I won't find out now, but it seems likely to me. XDH has two siblings, one of whom is on SSDI for various severe mental issues and a second who has been fired from multiple jobs, most recently after 5 months, and who probably suffers from similar undiagnosed or undertreated mental illnesses.

Our marriage was tough, in part because several of his issues went untreated or undertreated. I begged him to go to couples counseling, to no avail. His money habits were atrocious and after the divorce I was on the hook for his $50K in debt, despite the fact that we both earn in the six figures. We definitely had the typical ADHD parent-child dynamic going on, where I picked up after him in the kitchen at least (we were getting mice, ants, fruit flies and moths) and did all the moral and logistical heavy lifting for the family.

I have big shoulders and was able to handle the logistics and maid service. I didn't even complain, although occasionally I'd point out stuff. Why? Because I understand that ADHD, depression and anxiety are illnesses, although I wish he had done more about treating them. He would, however, comment that he felt pressured when I cleaned up his lunch after he left food out on the counter for a few hours, etc. The only reason he managed to hold down a job is because he was in a minor government agency where they couldn't actually fire him, although he got repeated bad reviews.

Unfortunately, XDH had a range of mental defenses that don't necessarily have to come with mental illness. XDH embraced low achievement. Like his siblings, he's low achieving: extremely entitled but unwilling and unable to work for the gadgets and cars and lifestyle to which he thinks he's entitled. XDH told me multiple times that his extended family (siblings, cousins)  usually "drop out" (said in a proud tone) from challenging jobs, marriages, and so on.

OP, here's what bothered me most: XDH tried to transfer his values and insecurities to DC2. XDH seemed incredibly threatened by DC1, to the point where he refused to pay for DC1's dream top Ivy (he said nada to stop DC1 from applying and then when DC1 got in he claimed he didn't "believe" in Ivies but said he would have been willing to pay $55K for an out-of-state public, go figure). So for DC2, he tried all the codependent and enabling strategies that his entire family is expert in. When DC2 was getting D's in high school, I'd tell DC2 to study for tomorrow's test, and XDH would tell me I was "putting too much pressure" on DC2 and XDH actually texted DC2 not to bother studying. (Bear in mind that DC2 has an IQ of 125 and doesn't have ADHD according to an extended battery of tests that we did given XDH's family history and to see if the D's were the best DC2 could do.) XDH smoked pot with DC2,  refused to help pay for ACT 's SAT prep, made DC2 move mattresses to his new bachelor pad the night before DC2's first AP test of junior year (talk about mind games), urged DC2 to drop out of high school to become a guitarist, and so on, and so on.

Why is he XDH instead of DH? I didn't leave. I made a vow for in sickness and in health. XDH left. Everybody who knows him says it was part of a mid-life crisis. Plus, like many severely depressed people, he has a habit of trying to upend his and our lives every two years, becaue everything will be better if he ust had a new job, new city, new house, and I had to keep saying "no" (for example, he wanted us to move to California without either of us having jobs lined up there). Finally he decided that his life would be fine if he left me, the mortgage, and DC1's tuition, although he did in the nastiest way possible, telling everybody he was leaving to "save" DC2 (who choose to live with me for his entire remaining year before college, with DC2 telling me constantly he appreciated my structure and what an awful role model XDH had been). Unfortunately, people like XDH who think changing everything will make them happy always take their mental illnesses with them, and XDH is now living in somebody's basement to pay off all his debt.

Anyway, OP, my advice is to look for bad habits, entitlement, laziness, and and that grow out of mental illness but don't have to be tied to it. If your DH is a victim of self-serving mental rationales, get yourselves to a marriage counselor stat, and insist that he get his illnesses treated better.

If there's even the slightest possibility your DH might try to influence your kids, or use your kids as pawns, or try the type of enabling and codependent behavior on your kids that some families with endemic mental illness use on each other, that's a complete and total dealbreaker. Unfortunately, I can't recommend leaving--another thing that stopped me from leaving was not wanting DC2 to spend days at a time only in XDH's orbit. Instead, it's really imperative that your DH get the right meds, experimenting as long as necessary to find the best ones for him, and that he see a therapist to get past these behaviors.[/quote]

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