You Want Me to “Be Supportive,” But Help Me Know What That Means
Honey? I love you.
I’ve noticed that without your meds you’ve been a lot more irritable toward the kids and me and you’re not sleeping well. You say you won’t take your medications because of the side effects. You’ve also said it’s none of my business if you take your meds and that I should be more supportive of you.
What can I do or say to be more supportive when you’re not doing what your doctor says?
Last month you promised me you’d visit with your therapist, and I asked you how I could be supportive. You said it would be helpful if I reminded you about the appointment. When I did mention it, you said you were too busy with your projects and it was condescending of me to track your whereabouts.
Anyway, you said, you were feeling fine and you would see your therapist the following week instead. Now, for the third week in a row, you missed your appointment, and the clinic keeps charging us when you don’t show up. If I mention it, you tell me to mind my own business. The marriage therapist said I should be honest with you and tell you how I’m feeling. Well, I’m feeling angry. And I’m not feeling very supportive of your choices and actions.
Which, I know, isn’t being very supportive.
The last time you were manic you said I wasn’t being supportive enough of your sure-fire plan to make a million dollars selling embossed leather laptop covers at a kiosk at the mall. You wanted me to be supportive when you spent $5,000 on leather and tools and you didn’t make or sell any covers. Later on, you said you were manic at the time, and if I wanted to be supportive I shouldn’t bring it up again. I didn’t, and now a month ago you spent $1,500 on a new MacBook so you could write a novel and you want me to be supportive.
I’m supposed to let go of the past, but now I’m not feeling very supportive. Can you help me out here, please?
By the way, I heard you tell your psychiatrist you sleep six hours a night, but I know you sleep only one hour a night. Which is the opposite of when you’re depressed and you’re in bed 20 hours a day and you tell your doctor you spend an hour on a treadmill four times a week, which isn’t true. You tell me that getting exercise and a good night’s sleep every night is your goal, even if you don’t achieve it, and that I should encourage you instead of criticize you. I agree. So I don’t know what to say or do.
You tell me I don’t know what it’s like to have a mental illness. You don’t want to be treated like a child or like an illness. When I use “I statements” and mention these things, then you say I’m not being supportive.
I don’t know what it’s like for you to be unable to get out of bed when you’re severely depressed. I don’t know what it’s like when you’re hypomanic and you feel like everyone else is wrong about how well you’re doing. That you need my support because you’re feeling like a failure.
I do want to be supportive of you. When I tell my therapist I do the laundry and cook the meals and clean the house and pay the bills and take care of the kids and work two jobs and go to the gym three times a week and I feel unappreciated and guilty for complaining, my therapist says I’m enabling and need to set better boundaries. But if I don’t take care of things, then they don’t get done. You say you didn’t choose to have bipolar disorder and that I should stop feeling sorry for myself and instead I should be more supportive of you.
I love you. I’m so, so sorry you have a mental illness. I hope that I will never lose hope for a better future for you and our family.
I need to be more supportive, I tell myself. But I guess I don’t know what that actually means.
Because you know what? I need you to be a little more supportive of me, too.
Can we talk about what being supportive actually means?
