Just a response relative to my situation being married to someone bipolar. Hindsight really is 20/20...some of the characteristics that drew me to him I now see as part of his mania. I always thought he was so "passionate" (not romantically but enthusiastic about certain issues). Looking back, I see obsession, anger management issues, depression and psychosis. I remember seeing "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" with Richard Dreyfus where he gets totally obsessed with the volcano looking thing, making it out of his mashed potatoes and then out of clay. My husband became obsessed with metatron's cube and was drawing it on the wall everywhere over and over.....that's not normal but I accepted it. Six months ago when he was picked up by the police for thinking he saw his father at the gas station, freaking everyone there out and telling the police he was "Ya'd Hay Va'd Hay" and we found him in the emergency room was pretty bad. That's when they diagnosed him with bipolar instead of just regular depression. Our family has been stressed out, my kids see too much, the burden of keeping a roof over our heads is all mine along with the housework and dealing with anything unpleasant because he just can't handle it. He's left me 3 times but his parents won't help him so he comes back. The good news is that he found a doctor that is trying to help him and actually saved his life by putting him into inpatient when he was so majorly depressed a couple of years ago. He is willing to try medications to get it right. He hasn't cheated on me and trys so hard to keep a job. It's a roller coaster ride that can really suck at times. We love each other but honestly, I don't know if we would still be together if it wasn't for our daughter who just turned 8. I hope to learn more from this site, ways to cope, what to look out for, etc.
Good luck to you and everyone who has to deal with this disease.