Bipolar BF.. I need advice.

Hi everyone! I need some advice on my Bipolar boyfriend from someone who is Bipolar themselves. He was recently diagnosed last December with Bipolar I. He is currently taking Trileptal, Prozac and for whatever reason his doctor prescribed him to Adderall which I do NOT like, the specific dosages I do not know.

We knew each other back in high school and I always knew something was different about him. He wasn't like any other guy I had ever met. I found him irresistible and intellectually alluring. We kept it platonic. We stopped talking for 3 years because of certain dramas that went on which doesn't matter now but anyways we started talking again in July 2010. We began dating a few months later and we fell in love with one another. It has been rough. A lot of ups and downs. He would randomly break up with me and has some rage issues which the meds calmed down considerably. He has more control now. Needless to say we are still together. We are deeply committed to our relationship, completely faithful to one another. Our relationship has only grown stronger since he has finally let his guard down and let himself be vulnerable to me.

The medication is helping him quite a bit but the only thing is.. he STILL has problems keeping a steady job. I am becoming so frustrated to the point where I want to end the relationship. I don't know what to do anymore. The longest he has ever kept a job is 3 months and I think the only reason is he worked with a family member. I am working and it is a daily struggle for me since I have Borderline Personality Disorder and I want to make the next step by moving in together. We talk about it all the time. About how amazingly happy we would be when we can be with each other every day finally! We talk about how we are going to decorate our place, picked out color swatches, decor, furniture, EVERYTHING! But I can't do it alone and he knows this. He was the one who kept bugging ME to get a better job, meet him half way and now I've been doing my part for a year. Yet he still takes jobs and is excited about them but a month later he comes up with an excuse such as I got screwed out of my job when in reality he just came in late one day or never showed at all. When I asked him about his last job a week ago that he lost, he tried to LIE immediately. He knew I didn't believe him so he confessed he got called in & just couldn't come in, they were going to make him so he quit even though he NEEDED that job!! These are a list of his other excuses.. an employee dropped a woman's tv loading it into a car but it was blamed on him so he was fired (Not True).. didn't set his alarm to daily so it didn't go off the next morning for work so he was fired (Probably True).. another no show no call.. failed a mouth swab for marijuana (this was a GREAT job which he ruined by coming into work way over the top on Adderall so people became suspicious and swabbed him). The lists goes on and on. He has had so many jobs in the last 2 years I lost count!! He even went as far in the beginning of the relationship (his Bipolar denial phase) to blame ME for losing his jobs.

Also the Adderall thing is driving me up a wall. He was supposedly prescribed to them as a child/adolescent for ADD or ADHD but he is BIPOLAR. I really don't think this co-exists in him at all. He abuses it as it is! The Adderall makes him into a complete psycho when he takes too much. He gets tired from his meds so he uses Adderall to level himself out but he will keep taking more than his prescribed daily dose to "keep up" with everyone and he loses sleep which turns him into this crazy person that quite frankly scares me. I just don't know what to do anymore. He just started a new job yesterday that is perfect for him and pays well but I don't have faith in him anymore. He will be eager to tell me about some new job he got hired for and I just say that's great. I'm not even happy for him anymore because I know it won't last. I have a terrible feeling he is going to lose this one too. I cannot get an apartment with someone like this. Anybody! please give me some insight on this and what I should do or what is going on here. I desperately love him and don't want to have to walk away from him because of this ridiculousness....

Hey bitter; I swear, I'm not following you around...

I feel for you; I just can't deal with the unstable nature of the bipolar in my life, either. I had to limit contact, since she has just become a trigger.

Haha! yes I don't know how much I can take. he really is a trigger for me in some aspects..

bittersweetx3 wrote:Haha! yes I don't know how much I can take. he really is a trigger for me in some aspects..

I'm going to be brutally honest here, I'm not really sure the relationship is going to continue be healthy for YOU... but I know how we are about letting go. Don't let me talk you into anything, but you should look at how you're going to be able to handle that lack of stability and evaluate the situation accordingly. Especially if you feel he's over medicating...

The thing is having so much of the responsibility on me frightens me. I already have my issues and I refuse to push myself too far by taking care of me and him. Working for two is what I am foreseeing in our future. It won't work. He HAS to stop this. He has thought about trying to go on disability for Bipolar but he is only 23 and newly diagnosed. Quite frankly I feel it is BS since I have a personality disorder and I can manage to get my butt out of bed to work 5 days a week even when I'd rather lay down in oncoming traffic then do my job. It has to be done in life if you want things. That's just my non-sympathetic borderline view lol.

bittersweetx3 wrote:The thing is having so much of the responsibility on me frightens me. I already have my issues and I refuse to push myself too far by taking care of me and him. Working for two is what I am foreseeing in our future. It won't work. He HAS to stop this. He has thought about trying to go on disability for Bipolar but he is only 23 and newly diagnosed. Quite frankly I feel it is BS since I have a personality disorder and I can manage to get my butt out of bed to work 5 days a week even when I'd rather lay down in oncoming traffic then do my job. It has to be done in life if you want things. That's just my non-sympathetic borderline view lol.

Chances of him getting disability are pretty slim without a long history. My mother took years to get on it and it still isn't a huge income either way.

And I could have posted the same thing about my mother; just didn't seem like she tried at all. It irritates me to no end and I felt like she used her diagnosis as a crutch her whole life. I even got her jobs just to see her quit after a week. And don't even get me started on how terrible she is with money even with a fixed income. When I hit 20 and got a great job I rented a 3 bedroom house for her, my SO at the time, me and my sister and paid everything but the power and water - like $2000/mo compared to $300/mo at MOST, and she still had to ask me to pay the electric for Christmas one year; which of course made me so angry that I moved out.

I have gotten him jobs also!! He sabotaged them. It sent me over the edge. I feel as if he uses Bipolar Disorder as a crutch also. At times he will say "I'm Bipolar Okay, I'm Sorry" but I don't care anymore. He uses it as an excuse for how he behaves too! I don't have any sympathy for it any longer. He is on 3 different medications and I'm on NOTHING. He acts as if I don't have a disorder as well because he thinks I'm such a STRONG person when in reality I am emotionally struggling to keep my sanity every single day. It just isn't fair but then again is it ever?

Look at us; a couple of borderlines walk into the bipolar forum and start bashing bipolars.

Uhm... sorry! Don't hate us!

Oh gosh, I just realized.. that is not what I meant to imply. Lol I'm more bashing just my Bipolar boyfriend not Bipolar individuals as a whole so I am sorry if anyone is offended!!!!

bittersweetx3 wrote:Oh gosh, I just realized.. that is not what I meant to imply. Lol I'm more bashing just my Bipolar boyfriend not Bipolar individuals as a whole so I am sorry if anyone is offended!!!!

Aaaand then we both break down in guilt after realizing what we've done. Yeah, there's yer typical borderlines for ya...

I'm just gonna shuffle back off to the BPD holding cell and self flagellate for a bit...