First off I haven’t seen my boyfriend in TWO YEARS.
We just got back together.

He got back last weekend and he stayed over at my place for the weekend… during the week he was being really talkative, paranoid and giggly..

He then left to go AN HOUR away to stay with our friends and look for work..

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I have been dating a man with 2 children(ages 3 and 9) for almost 3 years. Over this 3 years I have helped him thru addiction and recovery. He has also been diagnosed bipolar and is being treated with medication. Early in the relationship he was secretly talking to other women. But I after he got on the road to recovery(about a year and a half ago) and started taking meds I thought that was all behind him. I have found out that he has joined match.com and other personals websites as recently as September. I have had enough eventhough I love him still. I travel alot with my job so the kids see me come and go…but what do I tell them now that I am not coming back? I am the most stable person in their lives(this includes their own family) so it really pains me to leave them. Any experience with this or advice?

I have a son with ADD. His visits out of state with my ex-husband ruin his progress at school. Why should I let my son be pulled out of school for an extended weekend on Labor Day just one week after school goes back for the fall? This ex-husband has drug and alcohol problems, untreated bipolar, untreated abuse issues in his past…..

My son has never had to interrupt his school year before since I am primary residential parent. Due to my desire to marry again, I didn’t fight hard enough to have full custody (the state we lived in then had joint justody by default) and now regret it….
Labor Day is not a specified visit date per the divorce decree anyway….
BTW, ADD is usually what kids with bipolar are diagnosed with because of their age. Sorry but ADD has nothing to do with bad parenting……Spanking makes bipolar and autistic kids worse, explorer idiot. Just move if you don’t like kids!

I met this guy online a year ago. I really like him and my intuition tells me he is a good heart. However, he has quite a past. Twenty plus yrs. ago…he left his wife and daughter. He then worked as a stand up comedian for two years. Then, managed a strip club for a few years. Did lots of drugs. etc.

Today, he is working in a hospital while finishing nursing school. He only has a couple months to go. He really seems to regret the past. Especially, leaving his daughter behind. He has also been recently diagnosed as having bipolar disorder….and has spent six weeks in a recovery program, getting some much needed therapy.

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I was just diagnosed of Bipolar Disorder yesterday by a psychiatrist. I don’t know if i should tell my family and friends about it. I don’t want to be an object of pity and they would see me as a different person now if i tell them :S
What do you think?

I have a 16 year old son who has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Although he is under the care of a competent physician and is on medication, occasionally he becomes so frustrated and angry that all he can do is explode. There are two other children in the home. He simply will not calm down and will go off on whomever is in his path. Usually that’s me. He becomes insulting and disrespectful and if pushed will become violent. He usually walks, or runs, out of the home and down the street screaming obcenities back at me. Fortunately, our neighbors understand his struggle and allow him to relieve some of the pressure. My question is: Should this behavior be punished? If it is truly a function of his condition then it seems unfair to hold him accountable for actions he cannot control. If there is a certain amount of control possible, then he is, in part, being a teen jerk. The younger sibling sees all and thinks he is held to a lesser standard than him. He does not accept the behavior is strongly influenced by his condition. His solution is to kick him out of the home. The older sibling simply wants peace. Bipolar behavior is difficult to undersatnd and even more difficult when my wife and I must react to the behavior in some manner. Our concern is that we may be reacting in an unfair and inappropriate manner. It is relieved somewhat with meds, therapy and physical activity. Is there anything that is effective, even some of the time, when he starts to boil?
If you are bipolar or live with a bipolar family member, what are your thoughts? If you are on the sidelines, you most likely do not have a clue.

In what way could they help me, I have been through a lot but try fight it to the best of my own abilities. Any personal experiences would be helpful. Im not on any meds but was wondering whatway alcohol affects people on ocd. Also my main concern with taking meds is that the ultimate goal would be to come off them in which case you have to adjust to life on your own devices anyway so whats the point? I would really appreciate any advice!

Heres a little about me:

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My 36 yr old best friend and fiance is drinking more often at higher quantities. He is Irish and German and drinking runs in his family so I understand that if he is an alcoholic, it is probably hereditary. He is bipolar for about 15 years (so is his mother) and he has been taking Lithium for a while and is doing great regarding his bipolar disease. He drinks. He drinks at Least every other day. We both have been looking for full time jobs and we may loose my house to foreclosure, so the situation is stressful already. We are handling all this fairly well because we know that we are together no matter what. BUT…. I do not desire to be with an alcoholic. He has a new friend who drinks nightly and my fiance is doing the same when they hang out together. The other man is in his 50′s, a vet, not married, has a bunch of guns, money, and works in construction. My fiance was suppose to be getting work from him and attending jobs with him. For the 3 weeks they have known each other my fiance has brought home about 40 dollars, gets DRUNK when is with this guy. It started as going to his house for work, then coming home drunk, then spending the night because he is too drunk to drive home. He has spent the night as this guy’s house twice. It’s not really his house. He is house sitting a mansion actually, so I can see the attraction from my fiance’s side….free beer and liquor and hanging out in a very nice place.
My fiance lies, he’ll tell me that he going over there to work and comes home with no money. He can’t even pay his car note or his auto insurance. He’ll call me and tell me he is coming home in a couple minutes or a little while and I won’t see him until I wake up in the morning. He asks me for gas money to get to his part time job, but he’ll come home with beer and is asking me for money two days later. I was laid off from my full time job and now I only have a part time job which doesn’t touch my mortgage payment. He knows this. He knows that the mortgage hasn’t been paid since June and he knows that we are not doing good at all financially. He throws a childlike tantrum and gets rude and snippy if he can’t drink. If I tell him that I will go put gas in his car for him, he gets mad and snippy because he won’t be able to purchase beer. He started drinking more than every other day about 5 weeks ago, but we can’t afford it and he has EVERY excuse in the world to “need” a drink. I don’t drink. I use to drink wine which took me about 2 weeks to go through, but I stopped buying it about 6 months ago and because I know it is not an essential and needed product in this house. He doesn’t understand that 20 buck a week for beer is TOO MUCH, we can’t afford it and I am starving (because he eats twice as much as I) literally. He knows all this………………………………………
He knows that I won’t marry an alcoholic (who refuses to get help) no matter how much we love each other. He is also vegan which he and I know isn’t good for someone with bipolar disease, but he has been vegan for decades and it is how he eats, but he thinks that drinking isn’t hurting him at all. He is already getting fatter since he has been drinking more often.

I told him that I want him to live as long as me and that he is speeding up his bipolar disease, that he shouldn’t be drinking while on Lithium even though his disease is in check right now, that we can’t afford it, that he shoudn’t drink and drive, because he does….BUT he still comes up with ridiculous excuses to DRINK. We made an agreement about 2 months ago that he would only have 2 beers a night every other night. This was his idea and we both agreed. He broke the agreement about 3 days later and drank for 3 days in a row after we got into an argument.

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I have been in a relationship with a guy i love who my family hate! He has bipolar so they think he will end up killing me or that i can do better. So we have been seeing each other in secret for about 7 years. We are really close but argue a lot….due to his illness and maybe my constant nagging i.e. tv on standby crumbs on the counter the ususal stuff. We have split up but i do not feel that it is the right descision, i want him to be in my future but i know i have to tell my family, but im scared it wont work out, people dont really understand the illness so its hard to talk to others. My family are not even generally supportive of me now and they don’t know how they will be if they know.

What do you think?

2 of my friends think i might have Cyclothymic Disorder (http://www.psychnet-uk.com/dsm_iv/cyclothymic_disorder.htm) which is a mild form of bipolar… should i tell my mum … i am going to tell my sister but i don’t know how to tell my mum . i have looked at the symptoms or whatever its called and it seems true… also it says about the causes? it says that it could be i my genes… if other people in my family had depression, suicide, drugs, alcohol, bipolar… my mum sister and grandma have depression (well not my mum and my grandma died) and one of my family members committed suicide. I don’t know of any traits of bipolar but i would like to find out.

what should i do?