When your spouse has a Mental Illness

Having a good marriage is hard work, but then again, anything worthwhile is hard work.  If you think about it, just being happy is hard work!   When you throw in a difficult life challenge such as mental illness, having a happy marriage is going to take even more effort.  Here are a few things I've learned about being in a marriage with a partner who has a mental illness:

1) Communication is crucial.   Both partners have to be willing to talk about touchy subjects.  For someone with a mood disorder, being evaluated gets old.  I'm not just talking about by doctors.  I'm talking about having your spouse (and/or parents, children, friends, etc) constantly watching your sleep pattern, evaluating your statements, analyzing your thoughts, and trying to decipher your mood.  But for someone whose spouse has a mood disorder, you can recognize patterns and changes in mood in your spouse (sometimes even before he/she notices it in themselves), and acting quickly to adjust meds is important to keeping things under control.  So it can be tricky to communicate, but both parties have to be kind and tolerant, and willing to talk about anything and everything. 

2) Understand the illness. This one can be tricky because you can have all the textbook knowledge in the world about a mental illness, but still be totally unprepared for what it looks like in your spouse, and how it will affect your marriage.  If things are rocky at first, know that in time, you will have a better understanding of patterns of behavior, treatment options, and you will have more realistic expectations.  Also, medication options increase and improve constantly, so don't doom your marriage with dire predictions of how things will always be.  Having said all that, it is still really important for you both to have a clear understanding of the diagnosis, the symptoms, and the treatment options for the mental illness you are dealing with.

3) Learn how to set boundaries and reasonable expectations.  If you know that a symptom of your spouse's depression is that they feel unmotivated and don't want to get out of bed, where do you draw the line between being understanding and supportive, and enabling that behavior?  This is such a huge challenge for the spouse of a person with a mental illness.  How much bad (difficult or challenging) behavior should we excuse?  How patient do we need to be?  At what point are we actually excusing behavior that can be controlled?   This is where that good communication comes into play again.  When your spouse is mentally healthy, it's important to talk about how much control they have over their actions, and to express how their actions make you feel.  Yes, you heard me right.  It is very important for you to talk about how you feel.  A lot of spouses feel that they have to be a martyr and just suffer through all the injustices that come with mental illness, without ever expressing their hurt, frustration, or sorrow.  That is very unhealthy for your relationship.  I know you do not want to make your spouse feel guilty about something that they cannot control, and you do not want to make your spouse feel bad when they are already miserable and might be feeling guilty for the impact their illness has on you.  But if you bottle up your frustration, your pain, and your anger over things that happen during an episode of mental illness, you will not be able to have a happy and healthy marriage.  You have to express your feelings and talk about difficult issues in order to process them and accept them and move on.  Be sensitive when you talk to your spouse about these topics.  Be careful not to blame or shame.  The important thing is to express how you feel. 

4) Appreciate the good times.  Store up the happy memories.  Take pictures and videos of good times together.  Keep a gratitude journal.  Make a scrapbook of happy events, family vacations, holidays, and other positive events in your marriage.  When your marriage gets challenging, you need to remember that you have had great times together, and have hope that you will get back to that point again.  Remembering happier days and reliving the good times in your mind can help you through the challenging times. 

5) Do not hold a grudge or keep score.  Mental illness is not fair.  Nothing about it is fair.  But you need to realize that you promised to love each other in sickness and in health, in good times and in bad, so just do it!  Be quick to forgive.  Holding a grudge will make you both miserable and will drive a wedge between you.  Marriage will never be 50/50.  If you want to succeed, you have to be willing to give more, to try harder, to forgive first, to be the better person, to be more patient, to be more kind and to put more into the marriage than you think is "fair."  It doesn't matter if one spouse's illness makes the marriage more challenging.  You are no longer individuals with individual problems.  You are a team, and one person's challenges become the other person's challenges.  Every marriage has challenges.  When you get married, you can't predict all the challenges that you will have to face, but you agreed to stick together and face those challenges as a team.  Your spouse did not choose to have a mental illness.  And it doesn't matter if you knew about the mental illness before the marriage or not.  You promised to love each other forever.  Keep your promise cheerfully. 

6) Foster trust.  When someone has a mental illness, the problem lies in their thoughts and in their mind.  The spouse without the mental illness has to be able to think clearly and make good decisions for the couple when one partner is not able to reason well.  There has to be a good deal of trust built up between the couple for a spouse who is mentally ill to be able to trust their spouse's judgement over their own. When it comes to knowing when you need to see your doctor or adjust your meds, or cancel a trip, or stay home from work, sometimes the mentally ill partner cannot trust their own judgement and has to rely on their spouse.  It is difficult to trust someone else's judgement when it seems to contradict reality.  But if you have a strong bond of love and trust, the partner with the mental illness can realize that their mind is not functioning well, and they have to trust that their spouse has their best interest in mind.     It is especially important for these couples to be very honest with each other when both are feeling healthy.  Make a strong effort to foster love and trust when there are no problems plaguing your marriage, so that when difficulties arise, that foundation of trust is already established and strong. 

7) Patience is key.  Unfortunately, there is no timetable attached to episodes of mental illness or instability.  There is no "end date" and you really never know how long an episode will last.  You both just have to be patient with the other and to endure.  Sometimes it can take a really long time to find a medication that works well for you.  A psychiatrist will advise you to try a medication and come back in two weeks to discuss how you are feeling.  They don't seem to realize that in times of crisis, two weeks seems like a year.  When you are just trying to get through the next hour, two weeks seems like a lifetime away.  Patience is key.  For a person with a mental illness, sometimes having to deal with your spouse's problems on top of your own struggles can seem overwhelming.  But you both promised to love each other no matter what, so you have to be patient.  Sometimes your spouse's reactions to your mental illness may seem unfair or out of control.  Again, you have to realize that one person's problem is now both partners' problems, and have patience.

I think one of the hardest things about having a spouse with a mental illness is that there is still such a stigma to mental illness, that it's not something you can talk about freely with others.  Some people are very open about their mental illness, but most are not.  And as a spouse, it is not really your secret to tell.  Some people are still extremely judgmental or insensitive about mental illness.  Trying to pretend that everything is OK when you feel like your life is in tatters is especially challenging.  Having someone you can trust and talk to is really important.  Sometimes it is freeing just to be able to admit that you're not doing OK, or that your marriage is not easy and fun at the moment.  Talk to your spouse about your need to confide in someone, and get their permission before talking to others.  If you can find someone who is in a similar situation, that is particularly helpful.  There are support groups out there for family members if you search on-line.  

Nothing is fair or ideal or easy about having a mental illness.   Mental illness can definitely make a marriage more challenging, but as you make it through difficulties successfully together, your bond becomes stronger.  Your level of commitment increases.  You begin to trust that if you made it through that rough time, you can make it through anything!   Accept that things are what they are.  Choose to be happy.  You are strong!  You can handle this.  You can do hard things.  You got this!  Anyone have any other thoughts or suggestions?  Feel free to comment below.

To be Happy...

I love this quote from the book, The Happiness Project, "One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy.  One of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself."

Apply this to marriage, and you've got a good formula for a happy home.  Your mood can be contagious, so choose to be happy!  Also, if your mood needs a boost, do something nice for your spouse, and it will improve the mood all the way around.