I see what you are saying, and you have a valid point. I just don’t think you would qualify as “crazy.”
There’s a difference posters here have been trying to make between being treated for an illness you have (like you are) and not taking care of yourself and inflicting your crazy (which does not always equate with mental illness) on others.
Now, my ex was manic bpd - but he also self-medicated and self-adjusted - so he would get the manic highs and then not recognize when his chemical imbalance was off. He also had a lot of anger issues and bad communication habits learned from his family. So he was more than mentally ill - he was crazy.
What puzzles me are the seemingly nice men who stay married when they are so unhappy. I’ve been a single mom twice now, because I refuse to stay in an unhappy marriage (only the second one was crazy - the first one was narcissistic (sp?) but okay to live with if he wasn’t expected to be a loving, caring husband). I had broken up with #2, but then found I was pregnant, and we thought we could work things out. It didn’t work. Not only had I seen this train a-coming, but I tied myself to the tracks.
But I digress. I have a male friend/boss who had a crush on me over 30 years ago. I was single, he was married, and unhappy (of course he was, and she didn’t understand him). He made a half-assed attempt to move out and talk about getting a divorce so I’d take him seriously, but by that time I had moved on. She is bipolar, alcoholic, a chain smoker, her kids can’t stand her…yet he stays with her even though he still talks about leaving and showing up on my doorstep someday. He talked to one of his daughters (38) about it, and she summed it up for him: You’ll never leave mom because of the money. It’s the money. He doesn’t want to lose half of his assets or lower his standard of living. I have no pity for him.
Sometimes I wonder how some of those crazies do it. How do they stay married? I understand the ‘for better or worse’ clause, but at some point self-preservation should take over. I was shocked when #2 filed for divorce while I was still reeling from realizing he was crazy but still hopeful that we could find the right therapy/meds to make things work. If anyone would honor that vow, I thought he would be the one. His claim was that I was so crazy he had to leave for his own sanity. When no professional would declare me nuts, and in fact advised me to learn about schizoid personality disorder so I would know what I might be dealing with, he tried to portray me as an alcoholic (I rarely drink), a child abuser, an adulterer…none of that worked. After a year of trying to convince everyone that it was all about me, he finally told someone that he just couldn’t be married. He was 50 when our son was born, never married, rarely dated (maybe 6 years max in 3 relationships), preferred living alone (he never moved in after we got married, keeping his own house exactly as it had been)…and people wondered WHY I thought marriage would work? All I can say is that…yep, I thought the unwavering love and loyalty of a good woman would do wonders for that man. The only good that came from it was that 1)I learned to love unconditionally no matter how much abuse I received because I knew he was mentally ill and 2) my son. I’m not particularly religious, but I have sometimes wondered if I was Og’s brood mare to provide someone so he wouldn’t be alone all his life. One of the features of schizoid personality disorder is being close to only one person, usually a family member (from what I recall reading about it years ago). That person had been his equally strange sister. Now…it would be his son. I do worry that my son will absorb his dad’s odd views of the world, and I can only mitigate so much, but I try.
The members of this group seem to be the type who wouldn’t sacrifice themselves to a lifetime of misery, as most stories seem to be about exes, or near misses.
Speaking as the “Crazy” in my happy little triad, I wasn’t offended by the title. I realize what the OP meant. I have a mental illness, when it is not controlled, I am indeed crazy and wouldn’t think anyone could marry a manic, angry, hysterical, rage filled, depressed, anxiety ridden monster that I was. Thankfully, my partners knew me before my mental illness reared it’s ugly head, and believed that I could get better and did whatever they could to help me.
However, I have known people that have gone and married the “crazy” while they showed no sign of mental illness, or no signs of recovery if they DID have one. “Crazy” does not label the person who has a mental illness, Crazy labels the state that having a mental illness can bring you to. I have absolutely no trouble refering to myself as crazy in that state.
From my point of view (and I speak as someone who has a touch of the crazy - mild depression and I was once diagnosed with schizoid personality disorder, though I’ve managed to turn that around), “the crazy” is different because it involves irrational and often scary or dangerous personality changes. Sure, diabetes is serious and limiting, but, as far as I know, it doesn’t detach you from reality or compel you to harm your partner.
Not to mention that there is so very much we don’t know about mental illness. The unknown and unpredictable (see 'irrational" and “detached from reality” above) is always frightening. In comparison, a chronic health issue (and as it happens, I speak as someone with a debilitating chronic illness) is just a bummer.
My friend B.B. married one of her many, many husbands twice (I wanna say he’s Hubby #2 and Hubby #5 or something like that). Anyway, they got divorced the first time because she was young and wanted to party. She told me that after they got remarried, she thought he would be the way he’d been during their first marriage – affectionate, thoughtful, romantic. Instead, he started beating the hell out of her and cheating on her with her best friend. All those months B.B. had gone to cry on her shoulder about the abuse, and that ex-best friend was sleeping with him the entire time. B.B. divorced him and then a few months later ran into her ex-best friend at the store. She was covered in bruises. “I guess she thought he wouldn’t do it to her,” B.B. told me.
My grandmother has been married to The Crazy for more than 70 years; she is still in love with him and he with her. As his mother said when they got married “with those two getting together, it’s a single household that goes to shit instead of two.”
He considers her domineering as a sign of love; she considers that any woman whose ass he tries to grab was provoking him. A match made in Hell, but it works for them - just doesn’t work for everybody around them.
I’m afraid that I don’t understand the distinction that is made between “the crazy” and the one who is mentally ill. Some of you are substituting the word “insane” for both of those descriptions. “Insane” is a legal term and not a diagnosis. I am not an attorney, but essentially, you are insane if you can’t tell right from wrong.
A lot of the people described in this thread have mental illnesses. They may be “the Crazy” too, but damned if I’m going to blame them for being sick. I understand why they are often not very loveable. That goes with the territory.
I’ve been very lucky. My husband knew that I have a chronic mental illness when he married me, but he has handled it very well. I have many friends – although that hasn’t always been true. I was very much a hermit when I first started posting at the Straight Dope. Now I’m out of the house quite a bit. Unfortunately, my family has disintegrated because of someone else’s mental illness.
“The Crazies” can happen to absolutely anyone. I had a friend in college who just disappeared. We thought that she had been abducted and were relieved when she was found weeks later in another state. But she had had some sort of breakdown. It was sudden and she just went kind of mad. I think she was bi-polar, but it wasn’t like anything I had ever seen. She just wasn’t herself at all for months at a time. This has continued to happen every four or five years since.
No matter how bright or cool you are, you may go beserk in public and totally humiliate yourself. Brain chemistry is delicate and so easily altered.
And that’s what the OP was asking, “how does anybody end up marrying someone who is great at making other people’s lifes hell?”
Realizing that a person is making your life hell is not the same as blaming them. My niece made her parents’ life hell for the first two weeks because she couldn’t sleep, but saying “arrrgh, we are sleeping like shit, can’t wait until she learns to sleep” isn’t the same as blaming her for not having caught up the knack of sleeping yet.
I dated “the crazy.” We were even engaged for awhile, but thank goodness I was too young to get married at the time without parental consent (and my parents would have NEVER allowed it because they hated him, with good reason). For me, it was all about feeling needed and loved, and not wanting to be alone. When I met him, he was just so freaking NUTS about me and it did wonders for my shoddy teenage self-esteem. He told me he loved me and he wanted to marry me, and I ate it all up, despite the many many people who warned me not to mess with him. I think that was another part of it - I resented being told what to do, even by people I trusted. As stupid as it sounds, I thought I could “fix” him. So we were together for about 8 tumultuous months. We had some insane fights, and there was a lot of manipulation on my part and his. It didn’t take me long to realize my mistake, but it took me awhile to do something about it.
I ended up breaking up with him to date another guy. Looking back, I wish I had had the strength to leave him on my own, but I don’t know if my 18 year old self could have done it. I still think of the day I broke up with him as one of the happiest days of my life. The feeling of knowing I was finally free of him is indescribable.
Three weeks later, he killed himself. Blame was thrown all around at different people, and some of it naturally fell on me. I had a lot of issues with anger at him, anger at his family, anger at myself. I used to have some bad nightmares. I don’t regret breaking up with him…I can’t even imagine how miserable I would be right now if I had actually married him. What I regret is dating him in the first place, and not having the strength to tell him “No” when he asked me to marry him, even though I think I knew in the back of my mind that it was not right. But almost 7 years later, I have managed to move on, grow up, and make a life for myself. I will admit that I still think about him sometimes and wonder where he’d be today if he was still alive, but I definitely don’t miss him.
Its fine to be mentally ill. Been there, done that. Have my touch of the crazy.
But people get a choice about how much of the illness of others they want to put up with in their life. And if you aren’t willing to take responsibility for your own illness, you can’t expect people to put up with you.
Be bi-polar, don’t expect me to date you. And if I do date you and discover you are bi-polar, its fine for me to say “I don’t want to deal with that - bye.” Just like its fine to say “I don’t want to deal with your mother - bye” or “I don’t want to deal with the fact that you don’t pick up your socks - bye.” or “I don’t date people with kids” “I don’t date smokers” or “I don’t date people with herpes.”
Once you are married, your responsibilities to the other person change a little. Someone who is mentally ill who takes responsibility for their illness and the effect it has on the lives around them - I think a spouse has an obligation to try and stick it out as much as they can - though everyone has a limit and it really doesn’t do either party any good to go beyond that limit. Someone who refuses to get therapy, gets therapy but blames everyone else in their life, goes on and off meds - that’s no different that deciding not to watch a non-compliant diabetic kill themselves. Or deciding that you don’t want to spend the rest of your life married to an alcoholic that won’t stop drinking. Or being with a person with severe food allergies who thinks “rolling the dice” on a menu and visiting the hospital is a good time.
What if you and the other person are married and have a young child together? Still easy as pie?
Do you leave the other person and possibly permanently mess up the child’s life, or do you say to hell with your own needs and stick it out in a grim situation?
When you have an answer let me know, there is another message board I am on where this kind of emotional family calculus when dealing with mental illness is endlessly discussed.
If the other person is that unstable, it’s probably better to get the kids out of there. Going back to my MIL, she’s told me that she stayed with my FIL for the kids, but she should have left earlier. Being in that household was harder on all of them than she realised (or was willing to admit).
My college girlfriend was bipolar, though undiagnosed at that time. She seemed moody, but not that unusual. If I had been ready to settle down then, we could have ended up married.
Years later, we got back together again, after she had been married to someone else. By then it was obvious there was something seriously wrong. We eventually split up again.
What if the genders are reversed and it happens to be the mother who has the mental illness (I’ve been informed by knowledgeable legal counsel that in my state at least courts tend to award custody to mothers more than fathers, even when the mother has mental illness). The most likely result would be the children spending most or all of their time with only the mentally ill parent.
I’m not picking on you Jayn-Newell, I realize there are no easy answers here.
No worries, I was actually thinking the same thing. Obviously things will vary depending on the situation, but with kids I would say it’s more important to get out if you can. As a parent, its your job to try and protect them from this sort of thing.
I’ll echo this with respect to my wife’s parents. They can put on a very sweet and kind public face for a long time, which they did. But after about 6 months the batshit crazy started leaking out, and it turned out their skeleton closet looks like it was built on top of the Poltergeist burial land. They don’t even try to hide it from me anymore (though I really wish they would).