Reply to Therapy for Infidelity

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]
You are a rational person.  What you want is rational and reasonable  - a sincere and full apology, some remorse, amends, and a sense that the betraying spouse has enough of an understanding why they did it so that they can stop themselves from doing it again. The problem is that you want it from someone who has mental illness and is fundamentally not rational, so it is not reasonable to expect that you will get it.

It takes a mentally ill person years to stabilize, IME.  Years to find the right psychiatrist, get on the right meds, find a good therapist, be honest with oneself, develop insight, and change habits and develop healthy skills.

There is a difference between being “positive” and being self-delusional. I am positive. My ex cheated. His cheating was not about me or our relationship. It was about him, his relationship/communication/interpersonal skills/illness.

I am positive - I believe he can get his mental illness treated and have a better life. I believe I can create a happy life for myself.

But, I am not self-delusional.  He will not get healthy with me. It is not my job to force him to see doctors and therapists; his doing this just to please me is not healthy.  It is unlikely that he can recover within the context of our relationship.

I let him go so we both could have healthier lives. That is positive and real. 
[/quote]

NP here.  Thank you for this.  STBX is bipolar and cheated with strangers, and at first I thought I owed it to him to treat that cheating as merely a symptom of the bipolar and not an offense in and of itself.  But sadly, because of the mental illness, he just wasn't capable of the remorse I needed to see to consider staying.  At a certain point, you have to be held accountable for your actions, whatever they're caused by.  I'm sad for me, but I'm especially sad for HIM, because wherever he goes, there he'll be.  [/quote]

Interesting.  I am PP who wrote the top post.  My ex is also bipolar.  Did you know that hypersexuality is a little-discussed aspect of manic behavior in bipolar depression?  Not everyone becomes hypersexual in mania or hypomania, but many do.

I agree with you that even if a hurtful behavior is driven by mental illness, that does not mean that the spouse is obligated to stay or to continue to expose him/herself to that hurtful behavior.  Although I understood that my DH's affairs were driven by manic hypersexuality, I could not and did not want to stay with him and be continually exposed to that.  In fairness to him, he was improperly diagnosed and medicated at the time (which was not his fault), but he was also not committed to seeing a psychiatrist and therapist and taking medication, etc.   Not being committed to treatment is also quite common in bipolar patients (who wants to give up that nice manic high?). I was not willing to stay with someone who was not willing to get and stay in treatment.    [/quote]

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