AS wife needs help with bipolar husband!!

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i hope i am not the only one in this situation. It really is not the ideal situation for an aspie, living with the moods of a bipolar. I like my routine and stability so much, i hate any kind of change in my day. He upsets me with his moods and how he does not understand me. His lies he makes annoy me as he believes that what he is saying is real but its lies!
He is also paranoid, he thinks i do things just to get at him and i dont. He keeps tabs on how much housework he does and i do and compares, but im the one doing it all but he believes he does everything and tell others people these lies too.
we have 4 kids and both do not work at the moment. Im on maternity leave, I have a 3 month old and its hard work but he does not give me any sympathy or understanding at all as he is a depressive state at the moment.

Is he on medication for his bipolar disorder?

I have had lots of people with bipolar in my life (a brother, best friends, roommate, etc). He is sounding like he is in a bit of a breakdown. Yeah...check the meds, something is off.

I am really sympathetic to your situation right now.

thanks for your replies. After him taking off and drinking/driving to his brothers house and spending the night there he cam back in the morning and then took off again. I got him in to see a psychiatrist and he has changed his meds, He has been on Zoloft for 4 years and epilim for 2 years, the doc has now changed his anti depressant and made him take a higher dose of epilim. so we will see how this works. His father killed himself, so Im allways scared of him doing the same thing, so I try not to talk to him about how I feel in case he does something stupid. SO i have been keeping all my feelings inside and its driving me crazy.
Today he asked me if I would go see a DR too for medication ( im on nothing) and I said what can they give me im not depressed. ( just pissed off with him) I handle me social phobia ok. I still do school stuff with the kids/ birthday parties etc and work. So I dont think the Dr will give me a magic pill!! !! !! !! !
ARE YOU GUYS TAKING ANYTHING THAT HELPS WITH YOUR AS?
Does it work?

I have mild bipolar (cyclothymia), but am not taking any medication for it. I get cared for by my partner so we manage it well together. I take propranolol for anxiety but it doesn't do much. Thinking of going back to the doctors.

Please remember that what happened to his father happened to his father, and does not necessarily mean he might do the same.

I think, though you don't think you need any help, you might benefit by going to a support group for spouses of people with bipolar disorder, or simply some counselling for yourself just so you have someone to talk to. This isn't a unique situation; you're not on your own, believe me. My mum had to cope with my dad's cycling moods for ten years until he had a major breakdown and left the family. He was in limbo until a few years ago, and still has problems with his moods.

If you read any of my other posts you will see that I am seperated / working on things with hubby maybe...but had a relationship that grew from friendship to more. So as a result hubby moved to another state and I am heading that way too..hopefully we will have marriage counseling soon.

The guy I got involved with is biploar...unmedicated, ha self medicates with marijuana and alcohol. He totally sucked me in cuz he knew I had a bad marriage. He knew we were seperating and didn't care. He went from really nice and passionate, to moody and talking about how we had nothing in common. He was waiting for hubby to move away and when he finally did, he said we need to have a serious talk. Everytime we were supposed to get together he was either sick (or not leaving his house for a week at a time) or too tired, etc. So finally I got really upset and crying and started texting him saying that if he was really a true friend he would make time for what we were supposed to discuss. Then he asked when should we talk early or later, and I said come over and have some pizza that I got...and he texted me saying that he was "creeped out" because he thinks I'm trying to ignore the serious issues and we aren't getting together to have fun, or play, but to talk serious. UGH!

I was basically reeled in and was vulnerable. Then he just keeps bashing on me about how we have nothing in common,e tc. We can't communicate..yet he wouldn't answer any phone calls and only allow me to talk to him via text message. says he leads a stress free life and is happy being alone. I was very hurt and am going through the "withdrawls" of not having him as a "friend" any more. Gotta figure out my marriage problems first, but i was mad that I even allowed him to kiss me. Once he kissed me it was all over for me. I am so weak. I hate myself for it. So I'm ingoring him and have stopped all communication with him. The last thing I said was that i am moving so he doesn't need to worry anymore. He answered, "Your really moving, isn't that a little dramatic." I said, yeah, I need to get away from you .

Hi, well our situation is opposite to yours tweena! I myself have Bipolar type II disorder and my husband has AS (undiagnosed) and it sounds like my illness is not as severe as your partners is. BUT, I totally understand how very frustrated and hurt you must feel as my husband says to me at times. My advice is always voice to him how you feel, its not easy for you I know this with my husband, but do try if you can to open up those channels of communication.

Self medicating with bipolar is not a good idea and he needs help, he is on the edge. You can only do so much for him, just be there. He has to want to get help himself. I hope that he will. Pm me if you need to chat more. take care

There isn't anything that helps with AS. Conditions often associated with AS, like depression and anxiety are treatable.

My brother was bipolar and his main problem was stopping the meds when he was feeling good. Then crash. Totally freaked his wife the first time it happened. She didn't know he was under treatment.

Note: I'm not a woman, but she did ask about "GUYS"

My wife was recently diagnosed with Type II, I have AS. Things had been getting worse and worse between us. Then, there was a suicide attempt, a stint in the state hospital and the diagnosis. They put her on Abilify and...

It was like night and day. She has always been sensitive to sounds. Like to the point of freaking out at times. Not an issue now. She has always been mercurial, no matter what, the slightest little thing to go wrong would cause her to flip out. Doesn't happen any more.

I dated a guy with bipolar and he wanted me to marry him, but everytime he say the M word I would break up with him because I really did not want to because he was so moody and unpredictable and tempermental. You know my mom says...it is all about finding someone with compatable neursis. In a more politically correct way, It is best to end up with someone whose issues compliment yours rather than contradict yours.

I have both bipolar, ocd, and autism. How did I get so lucky??
Anyway, from my experience abilify works well, so does zoloft, but his zoloft may be losing effectivness, so he needs to change. A good antidepesant is effexor, but has nasty side effects from sudden withdrawl, like psychosis.
Ones to avoid are seroquil (crazy maker), zyprexia (rapid weight gain and diabetes), rispidol (same reason), prozac, (if you miss meds by a few hours can become suicidal), paxil (causes a melitonin deficienty which will cause him to stay up all night and sleep all day)

Ones that work well (mood stabilizers) ambilify (number 1), geodon (works very very well for some and disasterous for others), other types of anti-convoltants work well for mood stabilizing and lithium (which is reserved for hard to treat bp and has a host of nasty side effects like neuromuscular tics)

ones that work well (anti depresants) zoloft (at about 100mg...higher than 120 can cause dangerous mania)
effexor (works very well, but like I said...he cant just quit taking it for more than 2 days or he will nut up), lexapro ( did not work well for me, but some have reported good results)

That is far as I know of meds do and dont

As far as YOU going on medication, he is playing with your head. (he is implying: if I have to go on meds, then so should you...if you dont then I wont either) Dont fall for that, just tell him bipolar and Asperger's are two totally different diagnosises. The only real treatment for bipolar is the right combination of antidepresants and mood stabilizers, while drugs have shown little success with autism spectrim disorders (to the drug companies dismay), but cognitive/behavioral therapy has shown an ability to help us with coping skills.

He sounds like he may need to be hospitalized for the short term to get his medication adjusted under close supervision. This has three benifits, one it makes adjusting go faster and doctors can be more quick to respond and change to anouther med until it is right , and two it is easier under these conditions to get things fine tuned and three you dont have to suffer his mood swings as much while he is adjusting.

But all in all, you have a tough road ahead of you two because autism spectrim and bipolar are not compatable unless you have very open and honest communication. the biggest problem is that people with undertreated bipolar tend to be unpredictable and maniplative and read into whats not there, and not very honest and ppl on the sprectrim like structure, predictability, tend to be over trusting, value honesty, and miss important but subtile social cues.
The first order of buisness is to get him properly medicated, second would be marriage counseling, not because your are in dire danger of divorce but because your fundamental differences that make honest communication difficult. Between his manipilation and oversensitivies and your need for structure and your difficulting picking up on his subtle hypersensitve cues. Do you see why you need a neutral third party to help you communicate?

Hi there -- I just hope you read this and know you are not the only one.

I raised four kids -- three his, one mine -- with a bipolar man who was controlling, mean-spirited and a liar. I can now look back and say he was a very bad person who pretended to be a very good person to someone very young, for a very short period of time; then capitalized on the fact that I stayed around hoping to catch a glimpse of that good person again.

He was extremely unkind to me, verbally abusive regularly, and then would get so paranoid about me leaving, he even recorded everything I typed in my computer. I could not drive, diet, dye my hair (I have the coloration of a skunk ), have a job or have friends. I could not contact my family. So I think my situation was a little more complicated, even.

He made me think I was the problem, and so I started taking meds as well. I took prozac, then a mixture of prozac and wellbutrin, then added tiroxin to the mix. Not a shred of change, even on higher doses. Turns out they don't work on me for some reason. But then again, turns out I was not sick. Please don't take meds.

Talking about meds... He used to stop his medications without warning once every couple of months and completely freak out. Just like someone else here on the thread said. This is an unfair, unkind thing to do. But he did it because he liked to feel less medicated once in a while, and didn't consider me in the mix. I didn't know what I was doing wrong until I found out that he hadn't taken medicine for a week. This happened every other month. Over and over and over. It was horrible, and because of the kids, I waited 9 years. For the nine years I was with him, he did not work ONE SINGLE DAY. For the first three years we lived in some money my father left me, and then we got help from the government and some obscure insurance he had taken which I was able to unearth and activate.

This insurance thing required him to be under supervision at all times which was great because I was never able to make him keep his appointments with his doctor. He tried everything, wellbutrin, paxil (which did work for his anxiety but turned him into a drone), zoloft, and finally lithium which helped him a bit but not much -- basically gave him strenght to be on my case on a more thorough manner. We even tried electroshock therapy as a last resort, to "reboot" his brain, but it did not help one bit.

I started getting seriously self-conscious and thinking I was the one to blame. He dragged me into his pits of hell and I stayed there, avoiding human contact and basically feeding him in bed and caring for him for the better part of 9 years. Even our groceries were delivered at the house.

Close to the end of our relationship, he was pretty sure I was not going anywhere because he had taken every shred of human dignity from me, openly humiliating me in front of my daughter. We lived thousands of miles away from my family. I was such an easy target.

Another thing -- the suicide card. Nicely played. He talked constantly about committing suicide, and I was SO scared he would, it probably kept me around longer than I should have stayed. Who wants to walk around with that guilt in their minds? He bought a gun and hid it in his sock drawers, which he knew I organized. I got the gun and buried (! !! !) in the back yard. How soap opera is that?

I had tried to leave him two times before but he always pulled on my heartstrings saying that the older kids (who were his) were heartbroken and missing me, and I could never see them again. So I returned. Because I love kids in general, and loved them particularly.

When the older kids went to college, and the little one was able to help me move, I told him I was thinking about leaving; he buys a second gun and leaves the house with the gun on his front seat. I called the police. They showed up on my front door minutes before he returns with the gun inside the car. They told him to get on the ground and ended up taking him in handcuffs to a medical facility.

It was a bizarre show for our upper-class neighborhood.

I ran off that same day as fast as I could, taking nothing but my daughter's things and my paintings, with NO money, nothing; one of my daughter's little friends talked to her mother and we got to stay in her house. They released my husband the same day -- turns out they deemed him "not suicidal" and not a real danger to anyone. He could certainly be convincing. When he came back, he pretty much threw away anything I had left behind.

I got a job answering phones for Sprint. I threw all my medicines on the trash bin and did not even suffer whiplash. I was just so elated to be finally free. I slept in a sofa for three months before being able to afford to get a room in a shared home with my kid. I got nothing at all from the divorce, not even my personal things, really. It was the hardest thing I ever did, but I am SO happy I did it.

I was so young when we got together, only 22. Now I am 35, but my life since 2005 has been great and I think the best of my life is still ahead of me.

I own two companies now (one tailoring shop for clothing alterations, and one online business), and am very happily remarried (we are together four years and counting -- I met him six months after I left my ex) to a cute and funny dyslexic engineer that understands everything about me... I am finally finished with my book which I had written for my kids when they were younger, and am in the process of illustrating it (because I am a children's book illustrator). Even contacted a publishing house! My life could not be better, and everyone seems to like me a lot. Obviously I was not the problem.

It is NOT you. AS is not a disease. However, it makes us harder to leave a bipolar person because when they are good, we start to imagine that maybe it isn't so bad, and maybe things will be different. And we actually believe it, because (at least for me) I could never understand that it was a cycle. Inevitable. I live on the NOW, and so if people hurt me yesterday and then are nice to me today, it really confuses me. I am not stupid by any means, but have always been very gullible, and he fooled me for 9 years into staying. I loved him, after all.

I am not a doctor, and I usually try not to tell people what to do. I am only saying something because you said bipolar and four kids. Which was my case. This is going to be the hardest thing for you, but if you have the courage, then it would be very beneficial for your mental health and that of your kids, especially with you being Asperger's, if you could leave him. If not for you, then for the children.

In my case, if I had left him too early on, I would have to leave the older three kids behind, as they were his. But you can take all of them. And remove them from the house. Hopefully you have someone to ask for help, which I didn't.

I am sorry for opening my big yap. It's just that when people start saying "his meds this" and "his meds that" they are probably not taking into consideration the red flags of keeping track of housework, not caring when you are tired. etc. They don't understand that sometimes saving a marriage means nothing if you lose your mind.

Save yourself FIRST.

Anyway. Good luck from the bottom of my heart to you.

I sure can talk a lot.