Update 8: She is seeing Psychiatry again .Wife's personality changed overnight, left me for a man on TikTok.
She says two psychiatrists told her it was not mania, but her explanation for the divorce keeps changing
I had another major conversation with my wife last week while we were continuing to discuss the divorce paperwork.
This was a significant update.
She told me she has now seen two different psychiatrists and has been doing mood/emotion tracking because she also wanted to understand whether what happened was bipolar mania or not. According to her, both psychiatrists told her she was not manic.
She said her behavior last year was caused by anxiety, depression, ADHD, and stopping/changing medications, including bupropion, fluoxetine, and Adderall. She said she does not meet the definition of mania.
She also told me that her sleep has fully returned to normal. This is important because she has always been someone who needs a lot of sleep. She said she has restarted therapy and psychiatry.
Her reasoning was basically this: from what she understands, mania would not last this long. She has wanted divorce for almost seven months now, and she believes that if this had really been a bipolar manic episode, then once the mania faded and her mood stabilized, the desire for divorce should have faded too. But she still wants the divorce, so she believes this is her real settled feeling and not mania.
Her reason for wanting divorce also changed again.
Earlier, the reasons were motorcycles, “fundamental differences,” the TikTok guy, and later that I was mentally and emotionally abusive. Now she says the reason is that we had long-term friction and incompatibility, and that I live a very self-disciplined life while she wants to live more freely.
When I brought up some of the behavior from last year that was very out of character and frightening to me, she started crying and said I was being mean for bringing up those “crazy” things from the past.
So now I am trying to process the fact that the reason for the divorce has changed again.
At the same time, she showed a lot of care and emotional interest in me during the conversation. She repeatedly asked whether I was dating or seeing other women. She asked this several times. She told me that since September, she has not seen or been with any other men. She also brought up a lot of details about our past sex life.
We talked for a long time, and the conversation was very friendly. At one point, I told her, “I love to chit chat, but I have to go,” because I was going out to dinner with a friend. She immediately asked whether I was going with a man or a woman.
She is now extremely friendly toward me. She talks to me almost like the person I used to know. She also seems very concerned about my life and whether I am seeing someone else.
But she still wants divorce, and her explanation for why she wants divorce keeps changing.
I am not trying to use the bipolar explanation to avoid divorce. At this point, I am the one moving the divorce forward because I cannot leave my life in limbo anymore. I did try my best to reconcile earlier, but now I know I have to move forward.
What I am struggling with is understanding what is happening psychologically.
Has anyone else experienced something like this, where the extreme behavior fades, the person becomes more normal and friendly again, but the explanation for why they left keeps changing?
Can someone have a major psychiatric or medication-related episode, later become more stable, but still keep a rewritten narrative about the marriage?
Or is it more likely that this is simply her real view now, and the changing explanations are just her trying to make sense of a decision she has already made?