Too true. And it’s only going to get worse for the next generation. I was reading an article on teachers concerned about abuse in teen relationships and a Justin Timberlake video came on. I forget which song, someone will know, but he’s grabbing a woman’s arm to the point where it’s clearly violent. How sexy.
My roommate, who is a sweetheart of a person and generally pretty normal, is someone I can’t watch movies with because of her reaction to violence against women. I’m not talking about BDSM kinda stuff, I am talking about stuff where the guy is trying to kill the engenue. So far during Fear, Enough, and Prom Night she has commented that not only is it okay that these men are abusing and even attempting to kill these women but she thinks it is sexy. Mark Wahlberg assaults Reese Witherspoon in a bathroom stall? Hot. The killer in the Prom Night remake stalks the heroine and kills 80% of her loved ones? She still wants to fuck him. It is like this with all similar scenes in movies. Then she complains that she can’t ever find a normal man. Well, duh!
Love is blind. Marriage is an eye opener.
As Dan Savage says, a fetish too far :-P. Maybe she’ll find a nice, loving man who will channel these impulses into a healthy desire to be flogged. Much safer, and without the painful death.
And yes, exes aren’t the most reliable sources. For some posts about breakups this might explain a fair bit of the “how were you ever with this person?” But then there are the stories that sound like case studies from my last abnormal psyc class. Hallucinations? Paranoid delusions? Entirely unprovoked screaming fits? Suicidal depression? Most of this thread has been about cases where we are past the point of “maybe the poster just doesn’t like them.”
Is it OK if I write a thread which includes “I dated the Cancer” or “that diabetes woman”?
I was not diagnosed with bipolar until my 40s. My meds now allow me to work (not a choice, it’s a necessity), enjoy music and movies, go on a hike now and then, write a book. Without meds, I was the life of the party and out of control. If that sounds like fun, it’s not. Neither are the side effects from the meds - persistent dry mouth, reflux, sexual dysfunction, diarrhea and/or constipation. The list goes on.
This topic has been covered over and over since I have been on the board. Maybe some self-education and tolerance is in order, for those who feel the need to share their horror stories. Some of the GUMS (great undiagnosed masses) kick the dog and beat the wife, but aren’t labeled in any derogatory way.
Just be thankful that you haven’t had to deal with your own racing thoughts, self-injury desire or other “impulses” (does an oncology patient’s vomiting come from an impulse or might there be a chemical disturbance involved?). It really really sucks.
Sure. I’d be interested in hearing how people cope with chronically ill spouses, and the decision making process when they’re dating and contemplating marriage with someone with an illness that will require lifelong treatment.
Oh wait, you were trying to passively aggressively* tell us you don’t like the phrase “the crazy”, were you? Try an I statement next time; it’s perfectly fine that you feel that way, but own it. Otherwise you come off sounding like the PC police, and I hate that. (See? I hate that.)
Me, I don’t care much. I’ve been mentally ill and I’ve been crazy, sometimes at the same time. The words don’t hurt me nearly as much as I hurt myself and others by my actions.
*using the term in its colloquial sense, not its technical one
- Come from a very conservative Christian home where you are encouraged to “save yourself until marriage”
- Wait 23 years for said marriage to occur.
- Throw it all away on a chance to finally have sex because you are just. that. horny.
- Immediately after that daring 56 seconds, be told by Crazy that they have an HPV and BPD.
- Grimly smile and accept that this is God’s punishment for your inability to save your virginity and set about to “fix it” by marrying Crazy.
Been there, done that. Burned the t-shirt and moved on.
for the record, I do not have HPV - even after years of routine testing - God was kind.
I have nobody to blame but myself for marrying the crazy. I lived with her for eighteen months before we got married. The problem was that she was mostly crazy only two days a month right before her period. She would just flip out, mostly at me. Nothing I did was right, she would be incredibly nit picky.
As soon as the red river began to flow all was well again. I asked her numerous times to see a doctor about it but she always refused. Why did I put up with this? Well, I did really love her and she was a tigress in the sack. I was still young enough to allow great sex to trump almost anything else.
Beckwall: I’m sorry if the thread title rubbed you the wrong way. “The crazy” is a reference to the classic advice that WhyNot repeated in his initial reply. I had initially intended to go with “mental illness” but that was both broader and narrower than I wanted. Broader in the sense that mentally ill does not always result in the kind of “crazy” I was thinking of (especially if properly medicated) and narrower in the sense that I didn’t want to limit the thread to confirmed cases of mental illness.
Apart from the perhaps unfortunate wording, I think this is a legitimate topic. A thread discussing living with someone dying of cancer is somewhat more support-groupy than SD normally goes for but I don’t think it pushes any limits.
That has to be one of the worst first time stories I’ve heard in a long while. I’m sorry. I have an ex who came from a similar background. She was a very conflicted woman… still may be for all I know. It’s not the sort of thing you ask about :D.
I never married the crazy, but I dated her. Had she played her cards a little better, I could have married her.
I think I empathize a little too well. It’s been a long process but I’ve been discovering that you really have to set boundaries for people. Others have posted upthread that sometimes they thought they could “fix” the person…I guess I thought I could be patient and with time, the problem would get better. Operant conditioning has proven me wrong: the more people get away with, the bolder they get.
Tending a romantic relationship may be more like raising a child than we’d like to think, and that works both ways: women have to keep men in line, and men have to keep women in line.
Awww - thanks. I should point out that althought that was when I lost my virginity, it was not technically my “first time.” But that’s another story.
/hijack.
I married the crazy. He was nuts in the layman’s sense and he ended up on anti-psychotics. He was also a pathological liar. I knew the day I married him it would never last.
I have to get ready to do some stuff tonight but I am subscribing to this thread and can come back later to give a brief of our relationship and why I married the crazy.
Looking back, it probably wasn’t the best decision of my life…
I don’t care what you hate. And I’m not passive agressively trying to tell you anything, except maybe that mental illness is a legitimate disease caused in general by a chemical imbalance. And calling someone “Cancer” or “Heart attack” instead of their name would never be acceptable, so why is “Crazy”? The last great acceptable stigma, mental illness. Maybe some people are scared that it might be contagious? I have read more crap from uneducated people who just want others to feel sorry for them. Hey, if the other person is “Crazy” and you don’t like it, GET OUT of the relationship. Easy as pie. Otherwise, no tears for you.
Many (perhaps most) people with “the crazy” are not mentally ill.
Hardly. Try being fat, or skinny, or short, or tall, or ugly, or get a boob job. We have lots of stigmas left to go around.
Who doesn’t have racing thoughts?
Bingo.
Well…
Either the person here telling the story WAS married to a crazy, OR the person here telling(making up) the story is crazy. Either way evidence of some crazy shit going on!
My thoughts exactly.
For the record, my crazy was not just mentally ill - he was crazy from a crazy family that would throw plates at each other and then laugh about it - the whole family was a little bit off. My ex was just the only one to put a Mental Health diagnosis on part of his problem.
A friend of mine is probably going to marry her abuser/rapist and raise a family with him. She is so fixated on becoming respectable/“normal” by being a SAHM that she is willing to use any rationalization* to justify her absurd behavior, and he has so successfully quarantined her from the people who care about her and gradually worn down her self-esteem that she really believes that nobody else could ever love her “the way he does”–despite the fact that men and women fall head over heels every time she walks down the street.
I don’t have a theory or an answer, I just thought I should share that perspective on the interplay between emotional fragility and mental illness.
- “He’s not driving across state lines to beat you up because he’s delusional and batshit insane, he just really cares about me.”
“What? Why wouldn’t he be a good father? I’m sure having kids will calm him down.”
“We’ve always felt that ‘love will overcome’, and I need to be here for him while he sorts out his issues.”
Well ok, speaking as the “crazy” (bi-polar disorder) in the relationship (diagnosed 8 years into the marriage) we are still married for the simple reason that a) he is too stupid to function on his own (he can barely make a sandwich) and b) I need his medical coverage to get my psych meds within a reasonable cost. Isn’t it romantic?! :rolleyes: You think it’s bad for him? Thanks a lot.