I am new here so please bear with me. My story is long and complicated, but I need some help. First let me preface by saying, I am in counseling...have been for the past year and so has my husband.

I am married to a bi-polar alcoholic who has been in recovery for the past year. He was diagnosed with bi-polar during a hospital stay one year ago which resulted from what he thought was a nervous breakdown. My husband had been seeing a psychiatrist for approximately one year prior to his hospital stay and the doctor had him on every imaginable medication available. The doctor never gave him an actual diagnosis, just kept throwing pills at him. Eventually, my husband got tired of the meds and quit taking them. After about 3 months of being off of the meds he literally brokedown. He admitted himself to the hospital and took his diagnosis well. He found an excellent therapist and another psychiatrist who has had been treating him since September 2006.

Along with the bi-polar diagnosis my husband admitted to alcoholism. I was very aware of his drinking problem, but he would never listen to anything I had to say about it. He only went to AA after his counselor in the hospital recommended he attend and made him promise to attend 3 meetings and then report back to her. Sure enough, my husband realized he was indeed an alcoholic and has been sober since Sept. 2006.

This summer (June 2007) my husband came home from church and told me he wanted a divorce. No explanation other than, 'I don't love you and I want out'. I was shocked. We had been having problems because of the mental illness and all that goes along with it, but I never would have imagined a divorce in our future. My husband had been attending a local church for approximately 8 months and had become a born-again Christian. He was attending this new church and even playing in the worship band every Sunday. I was not a regular attendee and this upset him. Because of the bi-polar and the mania that I have witnessed throughout the years I simply thought of the church thing to be just a phase and probably woudn't last long.

So, I was told by my husband that he didn't love me anymore. He wanted me and my son (not his biological child) to move out of our home, he wanted to keep the house. I was told I could walk away from the home with anything I wanted just as long as I moved out and agreed to an amicable divorce. I refused to agree to the divorce and my husband was livid.

The day after the announcement, I found out my husband was having an affair with a woman 12 years his junior who just happened to attend the church. My husband denied this affair, but I knew it to be true because I found emails he had saved that had been exchanged between the two.

For a month and a half my husband continued to deny his affair, as did she, and continued to tell me he wanted out of our marraige.

Finally, toward the end of July I moved out of our house. I completely cleaned it out. I knew for a fact that he was having his affair and I was done with our marriage. I retained an attorney and started the divorce proceeding. I found an apartment and made plans to move the second week of August.

Two days before I was to move into my apartement my husband came to me and begged me to stay with him. He admitted to his affair and the fact that he had been irrational. He begged me to not go through with the divorce and promised he would prove to me what a good man he really is and that he was trustworthy. Basically, he claimed he had a lapse in judgement and it after I had cleaned out the house and supposedly given him what he thought he wanted that he realized he had made a horrible mistake.

So, here I am living in my apartment with my son and I have literally been dealing with a rollercoaster of a storm that is ripping me apart. I agreed to give my husband another chance back in August. I called my attorney and told him to hold off on the divorce. My husband and I had been "dating" and working on our problems off and on for the past 3 months.

Now my husband is completely shutting me out. Two weeks ago he told me he took out a girl who he works with to dinner. He claimed it was just a friendly dinner and that she is in a committed relationship and would never cheat on her boyfriend. I found this to be extremely inappropriate especially considering our circumstances and I told him I did not want him doing "dinners" with female friends anymore. I also emailed the girl in question and told her the same thing. The girl then called my husband crying because her boyfriend was telling her to cut all ties with my husband. The boyfriend even emailed my husband and told him to stay away from his girlfriend. Now my husband is angry with me for 'ruining their friendship'. He was so upset with me last week for this that he has stopped talking to me. I could only assume that he had 'a thing' for this girl and because she has supposedly cut ties with him, he is now hurt.

This past week, even though I knew my husband was angry with me we continued to spend time together. We had dinner two nights in a row and enjoyed each others company. In the middle of the week he told me he needs his space. When I contact him, he screams at me. He has told me to leave him alone and that he will do whatever he wants. He will not return my phone calls or text messages, etc. I finally told him the other day that if he is back to wanting the divorce that I would appreciate him telling me before having me served divorce papers out of the blue. He responded by saying, "why do you always go straight for the divorce thing?". He tells me he is not ready to make a decision about our marriage and that I just need to leave him alone.

Because of his bi-polar I can only assume that he is being manic. One day he is screaming at me and the next he calls and acts as if nothing has happened. Then the next day it is back to him acting crazy.

This is driving me crazy. I love my husband, but I am having a very hard time keeping up with his mood swings. As soon as I make a decision he comes running at me with something different. I can't help myself from being vulnerable with him and it is causing me to be severly depressed. I never wanted a divorce and honestly believed that I could make my marriage work and deal with his illness. Sometimes I still believe this, but I am now starting to doubt my own judgements on the smallest of issues in my own personal life.

I am afraid that one day soon I will just get served divorce papers. I am also afraid that one day soon my husband will call me and want me back in his arms and he will act as if nothing has happened. I can't talk to him about this. He will not hear of it. I am completely lost.