H
HisWife
Active member
My husband is having what his psychiatrist calls a "mixed" episode. He apparently has had this before, but this is the first episode of this type during our 14 years of marriage.
He is very angry by what he sees as me "controlling" him. The things he's angry about are real, but he doesn't connect them to his own behavior. For example, the other day he was very very agitated, moving constantly, very pressured speech. He decided he wanted to take our children somewhere and I refused, because I felt he would not drive safely. Or another night he woke me up, intentionally, every hour or so all night long. So, the next night, I slept in another room. Again, this led to him exploding. We also have struggles about his medication. I have made it clear that he if he doesn't take the medication, then I will make him leave, because the constant explosions are too scary for our children, who are currently refusing to be in the same room as him.
I am still hopeful that he will recover, and I would like to think that at that point we will go back to having a decent marriage, and he will go back to having a relationship with the kids. But I'm wondering how I can go about enforcing limits I feel are necessary, like not driving the kids when he is agitated, not waking me up all night, and taking meds, without doing long term damage to our relationship. I don't know if recovery would give him back the insight to understand my decisions, or if the anger would carry over. Certainly, before this episode he would have understood my choices.
Any thoughts on the best way to handle this?
He is very angry by what he sees as me "controlling" him. The things he's angry about are real, but he doesn't connect them to his own behavior. For example, the other day he was very very agitated, moving constantly, very pressured speech. He decided he wanted to take our children somewhere and I refused, because I felt he would not drive safely. Or another night he woke me up, intentionally, every hour or so all night long. So, the next night, I slept in another room. Again, this led to him exploding. We also have struggles about his medication. I have made it clear that he if he doesn't take the medication, then I will make him leave, because the constant explosions are too scary for our children, who are currently refusing to be in the same room as him.
I am still hopeful that he will recover, and I would like to think that at that point we will go back to having a decent marriage, and he will go back to having a relationship with the kids. But I'm wondering how I can go about enforcing limits I feel are necessary, like not driving the kids when he is agitated, not waking me up all night, and taking meds, without doing long term damage to our relationship. I don't know if recovery would give him back the insight to understand my decisions, or if the anger would carry over. Certainly, before this episode he would have understood my choices.
Any thoughts on the best way to handle this?