Yes, Anika, you and I think on similar levels, and I agree with you on this.

What Dark Heart X's explanation seems to me to be is this:

1. Her emotions are at the root of her problems with paranoia--not her intellectual thinking. The emotions whack at her thinking almost immediately upon experiencing a trigger.

2. She is intelligent and gives rational reasons for all her thinking.

3. If she could, she would very likely do everything possible to clear her emotions of the strong sensitivity which is characteristic of the illness as well as the rapid mood changing.

It was an extremely intelligent psychiatrist who first told me that it was my emotions that got in the way of my thinking. That's the way it was, Farmer Girl, for me.

If you look closely at what Black Heart X is saying, it is the depth of her feeling that is causing her intellect to be clouded by the emotions she has about her husband's behavior. If her emotions were cleared of those feelings there would be no need to think such ideas about the fact that her husband enjoys someone else's friendship. She would likely be glad for him that he is able to share a friendly relationship with someone different. She can't do that because of feeling threatened by the friendship he has...if that's not the emotions driving the thought, I don't know what is.

Her intelligence keeps telling her " it's not real, it's not real".
She has a lot going for her if she can just free herself from the entanglement in the emotions that overwhelm her intelligence in this specific matter. She hints that it's relevant to other things, as well, but we don't know about the rest of her life's feelings.

I think she would be fine if she has the opportunity in another country to proceed with therapy to remove the hangup with that emotion regarding her husband's behavior.

Farmer Girl, you have a perspective that is different from mine. I've never experienced paranoia as part of the illness.

Finally, one must allow for a wide variety of moods in bipolar patients. Not everyone is going to experience the illness as Farmer Girl and Black Heart X do. Some of us are going to have the thought pattern that Anika and I do or that any one of 30 other people on this forum may have. That, in my view, is the truth of this.

There is also a question of boundaries regarding triggers here. What causes one to be so engrossed in the life of another that it's impossible to let the loved one have an independent but compatible relationship in the marriage?

It takes a lot of living to learn where one stops and another begins. And what about Dark Heart X's respect for her inner being? That needs bolstering, in my view, to give her the independence to live a life of her own beside her husband.

I'm glad to see different points of view being accepted on the forum. I have respect for most of them from everyone, but still have my independent thoughts.

My earnest hope is that Dark Heart X will find a therapist in the country that she will be living in and seek recovery that way. I understand that paranoia can be deeply ingrained in the personality if it is permitted to grow. She will be much stronger in her thought that she can overcome it than to resign herself to its prevalence in her life indefinitely--an opinion that is meant igenuinely in her best interests.

My view is that she can't afford not to do something about it for her future and her relationship with her husband. That relationship could be in jeopardy, since marriage is an intellectual, emotional, and spiritual relationship for most people capable to deep love. Love like that isn't threatened so easily by paranoid thinking, but it could become wearisome and stress both partners unless the emotions fueling it are corrected.

Behind all of the skewed emotional reactions lies a deep insecurity that needs to be resolved, in my view, especially a view of one's real self.

And Paranoia is often a separate illness from Bipolar Disorder altogether.

Hope you all have a good day.