bipolar girlfriend- strange behavior

computerology wrote:I could move on and get another girlfriend in a couple days, I'm not trying to sound like an egomainiac but I have had more than a few offers including one girl offering me $30K to break up with her which I rejected because I love her.

Wow.

Moving topic to Relationships, sorry it hasn't been done earlier – I was unwell for a few days. Leaving a shadow which means both people from BP and Relationships forum can comment.

Note to Moderator: Actually this is more about bipolar than Relationships. I am trying to understand the disease so I know what is the result of her being off meds for months and what is just behavior

quietgirl2538 wrote:Without medication, it can be a different story. I've been manic and had delusions. I've become psychotic and felt crazy (after the fact), depression took everything from me, hope, feelings, love, anything...I've done some out of the way things that I wish I could undo but it was too late.

Her psych did say she was at high risk for psychosis. She came over saw that I had made my bed and went into a tirade accusing me of having my ex sleep over every night, because she never remembered me making my bed. Once she saw my ex's backpack in the room and accused me of having her sleep over. Putting the backpack into context, my ex and I are still friends and she goes right past the house on transit on her way to and from work; she had stayed at a friends all weekend and asked if she could leave the backpack here and pick it up on her way home because she didn't want to lug it all the way on the 50 minute remaining leg of her trip and to work at the airport. Making my bed is just a way of trying to make my room more comfy because I went from getting ready to buy engagement rings and now I'm sleeping alone. I even offered she could search the room if she wanted but this delusion still persists.

quietgirl2538 wrote:I can't drink like I used to, in fact I rarely ever drink. A margarita every non and then. If you want her on her meds, her social life has to change. It must change. Sleep is very important.

Yes. I have noticed that she has been blacking out faster and faster on alcohol, it has me worried. I have never seen someone black out on 2 or 3 drinks before. I'm not sure but I think that it may be a double whammy between anemia and the bipolar. I was really struggling to get her a liver function test and hematocrit to figure it out. She got to the point where she was embarassing herself and putting herself at risk. Its sad when you're sitting around having drinks with four or five people and she's stumbling around hitting the floor and everyone else is just fine having conversation and having a good time.

It eventually started gettting embarassing for both me and her friends - she passed out in a club at a friend's birthday once and once was so drunk on a Saturday that I had to cuff her to keep her from hurting herself, because she got a moderate concussion Friday from tripping all over the place and banging her head into all the kitchen appliances.

Do you find that your bipolar lowers your alcohol tolerance or is alcohol more a trigger for an episode?

quietgirl2538 wrote:in my opinion, you can have the same girl back. When she is truly stable and can make her own choices, then you will know where you stand. In the meantime, it's an illness you're dealing with. An illness that needs to be dealt with. And stability can take months.

Don't expect overnight success because some medications take weeks to be completely in your system and then after that, the dosage may be increased or decreased. Then there are side effects.
You sound like you really love her. You should try to at least see if she is willing or if her family is willing to get her the helps she needs. Then wait and see how she does and then talk to her while she is stable. This is a very serious thing. ... This needs to happen in your relationship.

Maybe then I'm on the right track. My suggestion to her when she was breaking up with me was to just hang on, dont make any decisions, wait a few weeks, get the blood test (STD, hematocrit & LFT) and take your meds, then we will see where we want to go. She moved out to her parents house, and her dad is forcing her to take the meds, even waking her up to make sure she takes them. I guess they've dealt with these symptoms for a long time.

I've been quite patient but I must admit at times the behaviors have driven me crazy. Her having no recollection of things she's said stone sober made me crazy because she was accusing me of imagining things. Her open defiance on things like getting the STD test after her crystal meth escapade or me trying to get her to bed because she's had too much to drink gets extremely frustrating - I rarely ever tell her what to do so there's no need to push back like that. The whole crystal meth episode was because I wanted to go camping because she promised and she didn't want to do an overnight. Hardly an argument worth marching off downtown and doing $100 worth of super hard drugs she's never tried in her life.

She has a psych, a drug and alcohol counsellor, and a therapist. She's on Abilify and a mood stabilizer. Thankfully her dad is getting her to take her meds.

Hopefully I can get the girl I fell in love with back, because she's been a Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde scenario and it seems Mr. Hyde has been slowly taking over for 2 months and I think he's in full effect now. The crazy accusations stone cold sober are frightening.

Wow. I don't even know where to begin.. these are just my opinions and personal experience though, so here it goes.

You say your gf has been off her meds and began to act strangely in a number of ways. Excessive drinking, sudden drug use, and irritability can all be signs of mania. In my case, I'm never irritable while manic, mine is more of a euphoria and includes excessive spending, I drink more, I dabble in cocaine, and I feel invincible. BUT being off my meds gives me some gnarly anger issues. I snap at everyone and everything offends me. I'm not a nice person unmedicated.

About the drinking.. I know a lot of people here stay away from it, but I don't. I wouldn't say I'm an alcoholic, but I do enjoy beer. A lot. Never once has alcohol caused me to black out or aggravate my bipolar symptoms. That's just me though. Although I do tend to stay away from alcohol when I'm depressed.

I think the admin was right about moving this topic to relationships, as this thread seems to be more about your relationship to her than her symptoms. In my opinion, this just sounds like a toxic relationship. You say you get offers to be with other women and you want her to get an STD test.. sounds like trust issues on both ends. And all the fighting.. it sounds like you're trying to blame it all on bipolar disorder when, based on all you have said, sounds to me like possessive behavior and trust issues. Then again, I don't know either of you and I'm no relationship expert.

In my opinion, let her be. She's back at home taking her meds. It will take a while to get the benefits from medication so she needs this time to straighten her life out. But nobody can make her, she needs to figure it all out for herself. If you really love her, like you said, you'd give her the space she needs to recover. And maybe you can use this time for yourself as well.

All the best to you!

Jellybeanery wrote:You say your gf has been off her meds and began to act strangely in a number of ways. Excessive drinking, sudden drug use, and irritability can all be signs of mania. In my case, I'm never irritable while manic, mine is more of a euphoria and includes excessive spending, I drink more, I dabble in cocaine, and I feel invincible. BUT being off my meds gives me some gnarly anger issues. I snap at everyone and everything offends me. I'm not a nice person unmedicated.

Sounds about right. Pretty well everything you said above maybe with the exception of the excessive spending, other than pulling $100 out of her bank account to buy drugs.

Jellybeanery wrote:I think the admin was right about moving this topic to relationships, as this thread seems to be more about your relationship to her than her symptoms. In my opinion, this just sounds like a toxic relationship.

Thing is we spent nearly 14 months together nearly every day. We rarely fought about anything for the first 12, we were always inseperable. As I said in a previous post, in the first 12 months we fought maybe 3 times over major issues worth fighting over. For the last 2 months we were fighting several times a week. Actually, I wouldn't really even call them fights, more like one sided rants about bizarre topics that came out of nowhere. One was just a half hour rant about a variety of things, another was about me saying "I love you" too many times in a night. I tried to listen and validate but I wasnt able to get a word in edgewise so I'd not call it an argument.

It's like she became a completely different person. Feeling this weird air of superiority even on topics where I'm definitely more of an expert than she.

I see where me complaining about the past 2 months you could consider this a toxic relationship, and it has been. The previous 12 months though, everyone around, friends family etc. thought we were the most compatible couple they've ever seen. It's like night and day.

Jellybeanery wrote:You say you get offers to be with other women and you want her to get an STD test.. sounds like trust issues on both ends. And all the fighting.. it sounds like you're trying to blame it all on bipolar disorder when, based on all you have said, sounds to me like possessive behavior and trust issues.

My ex girlfriend who I dumped for her wants me back. Another girl tossed out a soft offer. You may not have had time to review the previous posts in he thread. The reason for me requesting an STD test as I said above in a previous post was that she took off mad ended up blacked out downtown doing crystal meth (which she has never done before) and got picked up by the police wearing someone else's shirt over top of hers. You can get STDs from sharing glass pipes and how someone else's shirt ended up on her is puzzling. I wanted the test for peace of mind; I think that's perfectly reasonable considering she can't remember half the night and meth makes you raging horny. I doubt she went out to cheat but blacked out on meth wandering the streets downtown who knows.

Jellybeanery wrote:In my opinion, let her be. She's back at home taking her meds. It will take a while to get the benefits from medication so she needs this time to straighten her life out. But nobody can make her, she needs to figure it all out for herself. If you really love her, like you said, you'd give her the space she needs to recover. And maybe you can use this time for yourself as well.

I do really love her. I think she's in good hands with her parents. I'm trying to keep a decent relationship going with her while she's there but she's uncharacteristically snappy and making accusations when she does come to visit snapping at me. She's never been like this before in the over a year I've known her. Everyone has bad days or wakes up on the wrong side of the bed; this is an entirely different thing. It's like an argument just comes out of nowhere completely unrelated to whatever is happening or that we were talking about. I know it's not, but it almost feels like Tourettes - like she just has the urge to pop and the topic itself doesn't even matter she just wants to rage out. I know she doesn't have Tourettes but it seems like that because she just feels the need to blow out.

"I know it's not, but it almost feels like Tourettes - like she just has the urge to pop and the topic itself doesn't even matter she just wants to rage out. I know she doesn't have Tourettes but it seems like that because she just feels the need to blow out."

Even now after reading the entire thread so far and now that she's back on her meds, I can't help but feel there's something else going on here besides bipolar.

realityhere wrote:Even now after reading the entire thread so far and now that she's back on her meds, I can't help but feel there's something else going on here besides bipolar.

The meds take at least a few weeks to kick in, but that's why I'm (or was) in the bipolar thread was I was trying to determine what was likely due to the bipolar and what might just be bad behavior. I mean marching off over a minor argument whether to go camping overnight or to do a day trip shouldn't send someone to the sketchyest part of downtown doing crystal meth and ending up in jail.

Going to a park to cool off? Sure. Deciding to spend a night at a friends house? Little overboard but sure. Turning to something harder than crack? I dont think so.

This is all very out of character.

Do you find that your bipolar lowers your alcohol tolerance or is alcohol more a trigger for an episode?

No it does not necessarily lower the alcohol tolerance. It is, I'm sure, affected by the medication. No doubt. I don't think alcohol triggers an episode but it does affect how our medication is in your system and it does lessen the effects of the meds overall in her, so that it appears she is not taking her medication like she is supposed to.

I know you did right by the crystal meth night, that is not too much to ask of you. But as you can see things are not quite as easy as you would expect.

Are you sure she hasn't shown any signs of having had bipolar before since you've been together?

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are my descriptions I give myself when I am ill, or manic or depressed. Even my therapist tells me that when I am sick I am like a completely different person.

quietgirl2538 wrote:I know you did right by the crystal meth night, that is not too much to ask of you. But as you can see things are not quite as easy as you would expect.

Thank you. She was trying to make me feel like I was being unreasonable, I had to show her an NIH report showing the Hep-C transmission rate of crystal meth smoking using glass pipes and how it encourages risky sexual behavior because she was like telling me that nothing happened; but between the blacking out, glass pipe sharing and coming out of blackout wearing a shirt over her shirt that she didn't know where she got it from I just couldnt take the chance. I dont want to be stuck in a situation where I have to advise any future girl I'm going to get intimate with that I have hep C or something worse when the mistake wasn't even my mistake.

quietgirl2538 wrote: Are you sure she hasn't shown any signs of having had bipolar before since you've been together?

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are my descriptions I give myself when I am ill, or manic or depressed. Even my therapist tells me that when I am sick I am like a completely different person.

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She is fully diagnosed. I knew about the bipolar and was trying to get her to restart her med regime but it annoyed her. I was gentle about reminding her but she would just get annoyed. I had no idea it would turn her into a completely different person.

Bear in mind that this is a girl who usually had a problem even expressing difficult feelings for the first 12 months I was with her. Every time she brought up a problem I took great care to validate her feelings and try to solve the problem or come up with a compromise that worked and to validate that she was comfortable with it. As a couple for those 12 months, we had an amazing chemistry when it came to solving relationship problems without fighting.

The last two months, she has flown off the handle over bizarre topics and at times has ranted at me for nearly two hours and I couldn't even get a word in. I'd ask her if it was my turn to speak and she'd just railroad over me. I never once had a girl yell at me in a one sided rant over saying "I love you" too many times then stomp off, blowing dinner I was trying to cook for her while I was getting yelled at.

This behavior is bizarre and uncharacteristic which is why I came to the bipolar forum to try to differentiate bipolar behavior from just plain bad behavior. She may only be 21 and 21 year olds sometimes do stupid things or act strange but this is straight up weird - especially considering I've spent almost every day with her since July 2015 - so I have a very good frame of reference for what is "normal".

"Going to a park to cool off? Sure. Deciding to spend a night at a friends house? Little overboard but sure. Turning to something harder than crack? I dont think so."

Something else driving that hard-core behavior, and I don't think that it has to do with bipolar.

realityhere wrote:"Going to a park to cool off? Sure. Deciding to spend a night at a friends house? Little overboard but sure. Turning to something harder than crack? I dont think so."

Something else driving that hard-core behavior, and I don't think that it has to do with bipolar.

Its so uncharacteristic and given that I've spent nearly every day for 450 days with her I know. She hasnt been sneaking meth behind my back. Even her best friend was horrified. This is not a normal response. Plus wandering downtown after transit hours with no car alone as a 21 year old.... this isn't normal for her. She's never wandered the streets downtown alone and gotten mixed up in those kind of drugs ever in her life.

This is not her.