My Wife Is Scared of Me and Wants a Divorce After My Bipolar Episodes?
For 4 months i have dealt with a crippling depression. It really peaked when my wife reached six months pregnant and i became convinced she was cheating on me. I was convinced that i could do nothing right ever and so i just didn’t do anything. I was abusing alcohol and drugs just to keep calm. I slept an four or five hours a night. I never wanted to get out of bed because once i got out of bed I was expected to do stuff. My wife wanted to work out together and i couldnt motivate myself to work out. I couldnt motivate myself to do anything. She had to keep house and basically run everything for us because i wouldnt do anything. I was constantly on edge ready to explode about everything. I thought she wasnt showing me love and didnt respect me. Torwards the beginning of August i started hurting myself. Running headfirst into concrete walls, punching walls, cutting myself, on many occasions i was close to suicide and talked myself out of it for her and my sons sake. I told her about everything going on and she didnt really say or do much because at this point she had already withdrawn from me. it made me so mad that she withdrew and wouldnt talk to me. Then the serious suicide attempts began after i lost my job. I was smashing my head on the wall until i passed out, my wife had to pull a loaded shotgun out of my mouth, i even tried jumping out of a moving car with her and my son inside just because we were fighting. Then one night we had a big blowup fight when we were drinking. I told her i was leaving and taking our son to her parents house and took him and started walking there. She chased me down and swung at me, missing, and hit my son. I snapped. I told her to swing at me again and she hit me in the face and I slapped her. Then she hit me again and i slapped her again. Then she tried wrestling my son out of my arms and i felt he was in danger so i pushed her down and covered her mouth until her parents showed up. After this i walked away and was going to kill myself. I broke one of my fundamental promises, not to ever hit a family member. and it tore me up. I called her, asking for her forgiveness so it wouldnt be on my soul when i died and she kept me on the phone long enough until the cops showed up. I was arrested and she got an exparte against me. Now she wants a divorce. I have since been diagnosed as bipolar, and i am going through treatment and i am on medication. I feel like i can look at stuff objectively and act on reason and not on emotion. I can tell when i am having an episode manic or depressive and i am able to think things out during these episodes. I love my wife very much and want to patch things up. I believe i can be a loving supportive husband and want to be. Most of all i want to be a good father for my son. She is so mad at me about hitting her that she refuses to go to counseling with me for our marriage and is taking steps to try to make me not love her anymore. I want to show her that I can be different. I know that for months i told her i would change, but this isnt something i could change by myself. Now i am starting to see the path to change i need to take and i want my soulmate to be a part of it. I dont feel like I deserve another chance and neither does she but we promised each other in sickness and in health and i believe i was acting the way i was because of my sickness. Its not that i didnt want to do anything ever, but i couldnt motivate myself too. Idk. Any ideas or suggestions?
edit: I have been clean since the last incident and understand now that i was using those things as a crutch instead of facing my problems. I should have been talking to her about them instead of burying them in a daze
and i am seeing a counselor and a therapist for my disorder and i am going to two marriage counselors, one professional and one religious.