divorce with small children and spouse's mental illness...

[lostandsad55]

This is an abbreviated version of things. The whole story could fill a book. I might actually write it someday, because I can't find books about this. I've tried to find people who are in my shoes. They don't exist or I don't know where to look. So maybe my book will be THE book. Maybe that will be healing someday. Maybe my story will help actually somebody else. For now, I just need support because I'm breaking.

 

My husband and I have been together for 10 years, married for 9. He is ill. He probably has paranoid schizophrenia, although he has managed avoid the diagnosis so far.

 

Life was a fairy tale when our story began. We were passionate and in love. I always said that meeting him was like winning the lottery. He was perfect. I was perfect when I was with him. He adored me. I adored him. We were so attracted to each other. We were best friends. It was magic - fireworks - butterflies, all of it. There was no doubt that we wanted to spend our lives together. We got married 10 months after we met. I was 22. He was 24. He already had a 4 year old child. I was eager to become a stepmother. I adore my stepchild. I learned how to get along with his ex. We all co-parent together beautifully. We've gotten compliment after compliment from teachers through the years on how well we all work together. I took over childcare when his child was with us from the start. That wasn't just because I wanted the role, but also because he ushered me into the role. He's an amazing dad and provider, but he has always really busy with work. My stepchild is almost 14 now. We have a very solid and strong relationship.

 

Sometimes his moods and behaviors were extreme, but who's aren't on occasion?

 

My father-in-law was diagnosed with cancer around the time that we got married. We found out about it a week or two after we came home from our honeymoon. My husband was very close with his dad. Watching is his dad battle cancer was more than my husband could handle. He tried to help. He arranged much of the treatments that his dad pursued. My strongest memories of that time are of our printer running nonstop. My husband would research alternative cancer treatments with all of his free time. He would tirelessly print page after page of information. He would take information to his parents. He was directly involved in nearly every step of his father's treatment. Despite everyone's prayers, hopes, and best wishes, my father-in-law passed away from his cancer 20 months after his diagnosis. In that time he withered away before our eyes. It was awful and it shook my husband to his core.

 

While his dad was sick and after his dad's death, my husband started believing that he also had cancer. He was ordering all sorts of sketchy supplements online. We had huge bags of pills and vats of creams in our medicine cabinet. He was obsessed with taking and using these things. He believed that one of the lymph nodes on his neck was swollen - he told me he could feel a lump there. I didn't feel a lump. He went to a doctor once or twice. They couldn't find anything either. He had a scan done. He had to have dye injected into his body for it. He maintains to this day that the dye messed him up somehow. He said that the person performing the scan could see that the lymph node had been infected at some point and it had exploded. This very well may have been the case. He had a sinus infection at one point in the middle of all of this. He was prescribed one round of antibiotics and told to come back if they didn't work. They didn't work. He deemed the doctor a quack and refused to go back. He said that the guy didn't know what he was doing if he couldn't see that this was obviously cancer. He wasn't going to waste his time with another doctor. He decided to stick to his alternative treatments. He drastically changed his diet - at one point refusing to eat anything but green raw vegetables. He took out life insurance. He talked to me about how I needed to be prepared for his death. He was totally convinced that he had cancer and that he was going to die. As time went on, he eventually decided that he healed himself and life moved on.

 

I knew it was all strange, but I thought it was just an extreme reaction to his grief over his father's illness. He was so tore up over his dad's death. We went around and around about it sometimes. He was angry with me because he felt like I wasn't supportive enough through it all. I tried my best. I cared deeply for his father. I literally asked myself what more I could do for them everyday. I tried, and tried, and tried some more. I shouldered everything at home that I possibly could so that he could focus on his dad. I visited with his dad when I could. I helped the family in many ways. I babysat kids in his mom's place while she cared for his dad. I took care of their lawn a couple of times. I was there through funeral arrangements. I ran around getting things for family that came in from out of town for the funeral. I helped organize pictures for the memorial. I sat up late at night crying with them. His sisters got together at one point and got me a gift card for doing so much to help out with their kids. Everyone could see that I was trying but my husband.

 

After his father has passed, my husband spent a ton of time with his mom. She leaned on him. My husband took over the family business. At a certain point, I became jealous. All of this had been dumped in our laps at the very beginning of our marriage. I was ready to begin living our lives together. I told him that I was jealous that he was with her all of the time. I just wanted a little piece of him too. I felt like our marriage had never had a chance to really begin. I had been patiently waiting all of this time, but I was losing patience. He was obviously very angry over my voiced jealousy. He's never forgiven me for that. I regret it deeply now. I just wanted him though. I was 24. I was immature. I was jealous that my grieving mother-in-law had him and I didn't. I should have kept my mouth shut. If I could go back in time and unsay it, I would. I've apologized for it endlessly.

 

We decided to start trying to have a child together a few months after my father-in-law passed. Our oldest was born 15 months later. It was the best time in our relationship. It was absolutely magical. We were over the moon and we adored our baby. Our baby's first year was perfect and beautiful. It was the best year of either of our lives. We were so in love with each other and so in love with our child. Sometimes I felt like I needed to pinch myself. I couldn't believe how perfect my life was. I thought we figured out something that most people don't. I thought our relationship was so special.

 

I went on a week long trip to visit my best friend when our oldest child was 16 months old. I left a perfect relationship and came back a week later to a stranger. My husband had been distant and strange on the phone while I was gone. I kept getting notifications that someone was trying to break into my various online accounts. It was so strange. I was such a boring person. Why was someone trying to get into my Facebook and email? My best friend suggested that it was my husband. I was blown away and appalled at the suggestion. He wasn't a jealous person. We'd been together for 5 years at this point and he had never shown an ounce of jealousy. There was no way he'd try to break into my accounts. He wouldn't even need to break into my accounts. I had my laptop with my on my trip, but when I was at home everything was always logged on and accessible - not that he would ever access it. He wasn't on Facebook. He barely used the internet for anything beyond checking the weather or doing very occasional research on something random. He just wasn't interested in much beyond family and work.

 

He changed while I was gone. He spent his free time alone cleaning and organizing the house. He drank excessively. There was a big pile of empty beer cans. He wasn't a drinker at all. It was so strange. He was withdrawn and angry. I asked him to stop drinking. He did. In the days and weeks to follow it all came out. He thought that I was cheating on him. He was trying to break into my accounts. He was on a desperate search for proof of my infidelity. He had all sorts of memories of things that he had noticed that had caused him to conclude this. The memories were off the wall, things that I certainly didn't recall. I thought that he was on drugs or that he hit his head or something. He had several running theories. He thought that I was cheating on him with my best friend's brother. That it had been going on for a long time and that my best friend and my family were all part of a conspiracy to cover it up. He told me that he could remember that I called him by another man's name when we were having sex. I most certainly had not! I have always been faithful to him. I have never even considered cheating. Days and weeks stretched into months. He would have moments of clarity where he would realize that there was no way that any of this was real and he would be so very sorry, but his theories and "memories" became wilder and wilder in-between. He was convinced that my best friend's brother had video-tapped us having sex and put it on an amateur porn site. He spent countless nights without rest, scouring the internet for these videos. He thought that I was involved with some random guy that he worked with. The guy went to the same college that I went to, but I don't think that it was at the same time and I didn't even know him. He called the guy and got accusatory. He demanded to know everything. The guy wouldn't talk to him because he had no idea who he was or what he was talking about. He also said that he remembered coming home from work one night to discover that I had a guy hiding in our bedroom closet. He said the guy jumped out the window when confronted. Then the neighbors saw and then called the police because they believed we were being robbed. He said that everyone stood out on the street and talked about what happened with the police. He said that he later remembered waking up to me swabbing the inside of his cheek. That I told him at the time that I just needed to be sure of something and that he should just go back to sleep. He wasn't sure that our child was his. He thought that I had done a DNA test.

 

We spent night after night fighting over these things. I tried desperately to reason with him. I kept what was going from everyone. I knew my mom would hate him if she knew that he was doing this to me. Eventually, I broke and called her and asked her to come over. He was in the middle of one of his spells and she saw and heard everything first hand. She tried to reason with him but had no success. As time went on he scoured every cell phone I'd owned since we'd known each other, each computer, and our phone records all the way back to day #1. He made me explain the most random things, like 5 minute phone calls from years back. Sometimes I didn't have an explanation. I was in college then. I had lots of group projects. Who knows who I might have called or why? My explanations were never good enough. He figured that I had a hidden cell phone. He just needed to prove it, but it wasn't real so he couldn't. He finally gave up. I was hurt but I tried to let it go. Life resumed as normal.

 

He'd been begging me for another child ever since we'd had our first. I wanted another child desperately. I thought that things would be good again if we had another child. Everything had been so magical the first time around. I got pregnant again 6 months after the cheating saga began. Things were ok at first. He was over the moon that I was pregnant. It only took a couple of weeks for it to get bad again. He was keeping me up all night to hash over all of his "memories" and theories. I was 6 weeks pregnant and I started bleeding on and off - quite heavily at times. I have also suffered from stress-induced cluster migraines my whole life and I was having them almost daily. I lose my vision and throw up a lot when I have a migraine. I can't get out of bed for hours. The stress was unreal and medically debilitating. I thought that I was losing my baby. I was in the doctors office almost daily. The baby was still hanging on but they couldn't find a reason for all of the blood. The doctor was preparing me to lose the pregnancy. They told me they were so sorry but sometimes miscarriages stretch out like this and that there's nothing that they can do to stop it. I knew I needed to break away from my husband. I left for a night. I came back. He was the same. He didn't get it. He was killing our baby. He said that it wasn't his baby. He was certain. He would get a DNA test as soon as it was born. I made him leave. He went to his mom and told her everything from his perspective. She told him that she didn't think I was the type of person that would cheat. He asked to come home. I told him that I was ready to get a divorce and that the only thing that would save us was counseling. He agreed to do marriage counseling. I called a counselor immediately and we were in the counselor's office that day.

 

Counseling saved us. He committed to it fully. The counselor made him confront his "memories" and prove that they were true. He had to go the neighbors and ask them about the day that the guy jumped out of our window. They obviously didn't have a clue what he was talking about it. He had to face reality. He was tested for schizophrenia. The test was inconclusive. A psychiatrist told him that he had to accept that none of this happened because there was no proof, apologize, and live again. So he did it. Just like that, he did it. He apologized profusely. He became my friend and partner again. I got past the first trimester of my pregnancy and the bleeding stopped. That healthy, vivacious, newly 3 year old is upstairs napping right now as I type. I'm so thankful.

 

Things fell back into a normal pattern. I got pregnant again almost immediately. The pregnancy wasn't planned. It was hard for me to process. My second pregnancy had been so traumatic and I didn't even get a chance to catch my breath before I was pregnant again. My husband was amazing though. He picked me up and got me through it. He was loving and supportive and encouraging. Life was perfect again. The cheating saga was a distant memory. I didn't know what to make of it, so I tried not to think of it. My family concluded that it was unresolved grief over the loss of his father. The counselor hypothesized that there was probably a correlation there, but he had us watch the movie, A Beautiful Mind. He knew then what I know now.

 

Everything was going great until this Spring. Psychosis, as I've know come to know it, reared it's ugly head again. I can't even remember exactly how it started. It started small. It took a lot of time to develop into something too big to ignore. A car started following my husband around. This really happened. I saw the car. His mom saw the car. Actually there were multiple cars, I'm not sure that they were all following him around but he's convinced himself of it. We know now that a neighbor was being stalked. The neighbor's stalker is a very dedicated stalker - recently arrested on 155 counts of trespassing and stalking charges. We also are pretty sure that simultaneously a family member was being investigated by a PI over an insurance claim. My husband was possibly mistaken for the family member that was being investigated by the PI and followed around for a bit. I think he also had a few run-ins with the neighborhood stalker. At any rate, he was followed a couple of times and someone stopped to take pictures of him while he was working with another guy one day. This would be concerning to anyone, I get that. He's completely lost himself in it though and I'm not sure that he's ever going to come back.

 

He started carrying around a gun. He wanted me to get my concealed carry permit so I could protect myself when he wasn't around. He called the police multiple times. He finally went to the police station one night to report what was happening to him and he got very loud when he didn't feel like the police were taking him seriously enough. He told me that the police called extra policemen in the room and that they told him that he needed to calm down. He started putting up cameras everywhere.

 

My uncle works for us. It's been a rocky arrangement at times. My husband has been very frustrated with him over business for over a year now. My husband became convinced that my uncle was having him followed. From there he became convinced that it was a huge conspiracy that my family and I are also in on. My uncle has a close friend on the police department, so my husband has concluded that the police are in on this too.

 

My husband worked himself into an agitated state that he's never been in before. He couldn't sleep. He couldn't sit still. He couldn't work. I started finding recording devices all over the house. He was recording me! He told me that I allowed men to come into our house and drug him and drag him away. He showed me his arms where he thinks that there are needle marks from when this happened. There isn't anything on his arms but he thinks that there is. He said that the men took him into a field and made him manufacture meth. My uncle was the mastermind behind it all. He told me that I also drugged our oldest child and didn't send that child to school to cover up the fact that my husband was missing for a week when all of this happened. He was following me around the house one night, taunting me in front of the kids. He was telling me that I was a horrible mom. That he would protect our children from me. It was awful. I kicked him out. He stayed with his mom. She became involved in everything that was going on with him. The first thing she did was take his gun away and make certain that there were no other guns in our home. We were able to convince him to go back to the counselor that we saw during the cheating saga. Over the course of a few days, the counselor spent hours with him. He told the counselor that he just wanted to protect me and the kids. He told the counselor how much he loved me, but he was terrified that I was letting all of these things happen to him and his kids. It just kept getting worse and worse. I witnessed an auditory hallucination - he heard flute music playing in our house but the house was silent and our kids were at his mom's house. He was terrified! I also think he was visually hallucinating that we were being followed by a car once when there was nothing there, but he adamantly denies that.

 

The counselor eventually called us all into the office - my husband, mother-in-law, and me. He said that my husband needed inpatient care. My husband eventually agreed to go voluntarily. We took him to the emergency room. He was convinced that there were drugs in his system and he wanted a drug test. He had to have blood drawn. His tests can back clean, but he then thought that the nurse poisoned him when she took his blood. I tried to rub his arm to comfort him. He was so angry. He told me that I was rubbing poison on him. The ER doctor got an judge's order to hold him involuntarily in the psychiatry unit. They told us about it after it was in place. I didn't make him stay there. His mom didn't make him stay there. He walked in voluntarily and the doctor was so concerned about what he saw that he had the state step in and make my husband stay there.

 

He was in the hospital for a week. I visited him every day, sometimes twice. I told him that I loved him even when he said awful things to me. He though it was my fault he had to stay there. He told me at one point that he knew that my parents owned the hospital and that this is all just to make him look crazy so we can steal his money and assets. He was diagnosed with a "psychotic episode". He was sent home with me. He was to take anti-psychotic medication twice daily, see the counselor regularly, and follow up with an outpatient psychiatrist in a month. He was so sorry when he came home. He could see much more clearly. I thought we would survive.

 

He slowly dwindled his way off of his medication, claiming that he couldn't work when he was on it. He refuses to take it all together now. The counselor told him that he needs to stay on medication, but instead my husband decided that the counselor is part of this conspiracy and refuses to see him now. He won't see another counselor either. My background is in social work. The counselor knows this and talks to me a little more frankly than I think he would talk to the average person. The counselor told me in private that this is probably schizophrenia though it's not his role to diagnose.

 

He went to one follow-up appointment with the outpatient psychiatrist. The psychiatrist diagnosed him with depression with psychotic symptoms. He's written psychiatrist off as invalid too.

 

Things just keep getting worse and worse. He has become obsessed with religion. He spends his free time reading about satanic cults. He thinks that my family is one. He thinks that we're plotting to have my stepchild raped as an initiation into it. He's determined to protect his child from me. He hovers over me like a hawk so I'm not alone with my stepchild.

 

He told me last week that he knows that my family and I killed his dad. He started telling me a few days ago that he doesn't love me anymore. He wants me to divorce him. He refuses to divorce me though. He wants it all to fall down on me because this is all my fault. He's NEVER said that he doesn't love me. He's ALWAYS maintained that he does even if he doesn't think that I'm being genuine or truthful. His eyes have turned black in way that I've heard described in books but never thought was real until I saw it. I beg and plead with him to see reality. He doesn't think he's sick though. He thinks that this is all real. He hides it from everyone else. He tells me he can't talk about it with other people because my family will find out and punish him if he does. I think that the real reason that he really doesn't talk about it with other people is because a part of him knows that that other people will see though it. Instead, he pretends like things are fine and dandy in front of everyone but me. It's like a switch that flips on and off. He totally fakes it for everyone until we're alone. I told his mom what things were like last week. She said that she doesn't understand how he can be productive with work if it's that bad. She said it in a tone like she doesn't believe me. She hasn't seen 90% of the things that I have. I've told her as much as she has been willing to hear, but I don't think she gets it.

 

My mom and dad and best friend have all told me that I need to get away. I get it. My parents are setting up a consultation with an attorney so that I can do it without him knowing about it just yet. Our finances are so complicated because of our business. We have one massive loan for our business and home. Our home is brand new. We've only been living in it for a month and a half. We spent 3 years building it, and our whole lifetime together dreaming it up. It was supposed to be our happy ever after. We can't sell this home - it legally can't be separated from the business. We still own our former home but we were going to sell it. We need to sell it to pay down some of our loan on everything. It's such a complicated mess.

 

I'm a 31 year old stay at home mom. I have a couple of degrees but I've never used them. I went to school and then I immediately had kids. I've never worked. I don't know what I'm going to do. I don't want anything from him. I'm so tired of being accused of being after his money and assets. He's wealthy but it's all wrapped up in his business and so much is owed on this brand new huge house. I really only wanted his heart. I want to make my own way but how? I'm so tired from all of this. I'm so sad. I'm getting migraines again. I have a 5.5 year old, a newly 3 year old, and a newly 2 year old. I'm probably going to lose my relationship with my stepchild. I'm losing my spouse. I'm losing everything.

 

How do I decide what's best for the kids? He's always been such a good dad. He lives for his kids. Our oldest worships my husband. How do I even know that it's safe for my husband to be around our kids though? He's never threatened or been violent but he's so off and out of touch with reality. What if he tells my kids lies about me? I don't want to destroy their relationships though. I just want them to be as untarnished as possible.

 

I'm not the kind of person that walks away from marriage vows. I never thought we'd get divorced, moreover that I'd abandon my sick spouse. I can't tell you how good it was when it was good. I even don't have words for it. My real husband loves me so deeply. It would kill him to see me go through this. It's like he died and didn't leave me with any provisions. I'm so sad. I can't even go to Walmart without breaking down in the parking lot over thinking about all the times we stopped there together. I'd run in just to grab something small real quick and then come back out to jump back in the car with him and return to our normal perfect lives.

 

I keep trying to remember all the good times and to remind him of all the small things that made us good. He tells me that he can't remember half of them or that they were the real delusion. My heart actually hurts. There is a real ache in my chest.

 

We were going to have more kids. I wanted to have more kids. I feel like our life was stolen from us. I wanted him. I wanted my family. I wanted my family to grow and be beautiful. Everything is so sad and ugly now. I'm so lost.

[newmoon]

my brother is a paranoid schizophrenic. although you think your story is interesting and unique, it's not. families with schizophrenics go through this stuff all the time, even worse. the stories i could tell... wow, they could definitely fill a book. the thing is, it's a book no one will care to read. because, unless you live with this you don't get it. my brother was whack for many years - the CIA was following him, i was a spy sent to kill him, his ex gf was stalking him, the toaster was talking to him, just utter nonsense. there is really no hope for your situation unless you husband is medicated - it cuts out the paranoia and delusions and helps them stabilize. your life cannot be ok if he is not being treated with both medicines and therapy. it's a huge struggle. schizophrenics are often great parents - my brother has a child and is s stepfather to 2 kids - they have a youthful quality and mentality that kids relate to. the ting with schizophrenia is that it's not curable, it's only able to be controlled. and it gets worse as someone ages, not better. my brother used to have psychotic episodes about 1x a month and they might last anywhere from a week to 3 months or more. with medicine the psychotic breaks are much less.. maybe only 1 or 2 a year now. he's still not 'normal,' but he functions better and you can reason with him. you can't reason with someone with this illness if they aren't being treated. so, stay with your husband if he's getting full treatment (knowing he may not be able to work and provide as he once did as years march on), or you exit your present situation. do what's best for you because his condition, sadly, will only worsen with time. my brother is now on complete government income and medical and cannot work any longer. and, you also already have the risk that your kids have inherited this.

Edited September 25, 2015 by newmoon

[Clarence_Boddicker]

I'm sorry that your life is upside down. The reality is that you have to divorce your husband to give your kids a good life. Your husband can't be fixed. His condition will get worse with age. The current mental health system can't treat his problem, only drug him up to mask or reduce his symptoms, while turning him into a dazed semi zombie. They don't know what exactly goes wrong in people's heads, so they can't treat the problem. Do you want to live the rest of your life in agony while grossly over paid & clueless "professionals" sell you false hope, while experimenting on your husband, searching for that right combination of drugs that doesn't exist. Non MIC research suggests that mental illness such as schizophrenia actually causes more irreversible brain damage. Drugs can't fix their terrible disease & have tons of nasty side effects. The ethical culture of the mental health system is also suspect. They want you to watch a beautiful mind, but don't like one flew over the cuckoos nest.