Anyone else get tricked?
My wife had her first episode before we met. She and her family swept it under the rug and pretended it never happened. No one told me anything, not once in over a decade, until she had her second episode earlier this year, which was triggered by an SSRI that wouldn't have been prescribed if the first episode had been handled responsibly.
So, we were totally unprepared and it was a disaster for the whole family. We had just had our second baby together.
Early in the episode I took her to her OB and they couldn't help. Things escalated so I took her to the hospital, and not only did they not help, they looked at me like I was the crazy one when I picked her up. Oh, and they lied to me about getting her an emergency referral to a psychiatrist. Mental health support in this country is an absolute joke.
We suffered through weeks and months of paranoid delusions, police visits to the house, the classic discard, and return trips to the hospital before she finally got the medication she needed.
She's mostly stable now, but I'm traumatized after all of it and I know my oldest, who turned three during the episode, suffered greatly too.
I can't process things with my wife because she's still in a fragile state and it'll spiral her.
Her mental health was never great even before the episode. She was always so wrapped up in her own stress and anxiety that I felt more like a therapist than a partner a lot of the time. I really tried my best to help her, I was so patient and understanding and supportive for so long, but the connection to her I once felt faded away after years of her being constantly stuck in her own world of negative thinking. That's on me for staying.
All I want is a happy family and life for me and my kids but I don't know how I'll ever get past the resentment, and what if my children inherited this awful disease? How am I supposed to forgive her for hiding this?
Now, I feel trapped with no good options. I feel angry and hopeless and alone. I know we can make things "work", but I just don't see a path to the happy, healthy, real relationship I want for myself and for our kids to grow up with. I guess I have no choice but to figure it out.