Short answer: I don’t know for sure. I know full well it didn’t help but, at the same time, I am not going to take all the blame for the end of my marriage. I didn’t form an attachment and a subsequent relationship with someone else, certainly not a best friend.
So, what did happen?
For argument’s sake, we’ll assume that I had formed a stable relationship with Dave prior to the breakdown. Dave was aware that I had previously been given a tentative diagnosis of Bipolar and was also aware that I self-harmed. I was honest with him fairly quickly once we started seeing each other because I felt differently about him than I had about previous relationships. I wanted to be honest with him about it; I didn’t want to hide it. It also gave him the opportunity to run for the hills before I got too deeply involved with him. He didn’t run away. It didn’t seem to trouble him at all. Very quickly, he knew more about my mental state than my family and even, to a certain degree, Alexis (my former best friend) did at the time.
When I was admitted the first time into Nutlins in September 2010, Dave did seem genuinely worried about me. He knew that I had deteriorated quite considerably over the Summer and had been with me every time the Home Treatment Team came to visit. If he knew I hadn’t made it into work, he would phone me several times during the day to make sure I was coping okay. In between the days that I didn’t make it into work, I was working hard and sometimes working really late and even through the night. Dave didn’t like that I worked late. I don’t think he understood that was how the clients worked. He worked 8am to 4pm and was sometimes on call at the weekends. There wasn’t much call for him to work overtime during the week. Things could wait with his work. They couldn’t wait with my work. If a client said jump, we pretty much had to say “how high”? Anybody that’s worked in the Investment Banking or Corporate Law sectors will know exactly what I’m on about regarding that little clause in your contract stating that “flexibility regarding working hours will be required dependent upon the requirements of the Businses”. Sound familiar?
Mum came with us when I first went to Nutlins. Mum has since told me that after they had left me there and were on their way home, Dave promised her that he would look after me. That first admission into the hospital gave me the Venlafaxine and the diagnosis of BPD with a side order of Bipolar. I came out after just over two weeks. I came out on the Thursday and was back to work on the following Monday. I figured that now I had medication and a formal and possibly complete diagnosis, I could just carry on. I didn’t realise at the time the extent of the breakdown and how much time my brain needed to recover and mend itself.
I dived straight back into work but I wasn’t coping at all. I was hiding at work again and then not going to work at all. Dave, at that time, was incredibly supportive. He had bought some books on Borderline Personality Disorder and was reading them. However, he did say that reading them had left him with more questions than answers. I was awaiting a long-term talking therapy treatment but was effectively back in the real world on my own until the treatment came through.
I struggled for that year after my first admission and in the end, I had to go back for a second admission. This time it was for longer and I knew that I couldn’t go back to work straight away after I came out. I needed time to recover and recuperate fully. The extent of the breakdown had hit me during that year. I needed to get my self-confidence back. I needed to get my mojo back. I needed to feel better about myself. I needed to stop crying. I needed to stop eating. I jut needed to concentrate on getting my shit together. Dave was by my side all the way. He was having to see me in so much pain but unable to do anything to help and not truly understanding what it was all about in the first place. The level of frustration must have been almost unbearable for him.
The Venlafaxine dosage was massively increased to the point where it can only be altered by a psychiatrist now. My GP can’t amend the dosage. The biggest side effect of the Venlafaxine was the complete obliteration of my libido. I had absolutely no desire to have sex whatsoever. Don’t get me wrong, I was very much in love with Dave and fancied him. I just could not have been fussed about having sex any less if I’d tried. He’d always said he didn’t want me to “lie back and think of England” so I didn’t. He said he wanted me to be into it as much as he would be. I’ll be honest, I did try the “lie back and think of England” approach to keep him happy but I just couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t care less about sex.
Dave thought it was him and it didn’t matter how much I tried to explain it to him that it wasn’t, he couldn’t accept that it was predominantly the medication. Even when I was finally in long-term therapy and he attended a couple of the sessions with me, the psychiatrist explained to him that it was a side effect but he wouldn’t accept it even then. I did not care about being intimate at all. Quite frankly, Kiefer Sutherland could have turned up on my doorstep in full “Jack Bauer” mode and I’d have still rolled my eyes, said “no thanks” and shut the door. That is how disinterested I was.
Looking back now, that was the point at which Dave started checking out of our marriage but I was so numb from the medication and still so much in love with him that I didn’t see it.
What I really didn’t see was Alexis’s part in the whole thing.
She knew everything about me and had taken every little piece of information and used it against me. I have to hand it to her, that’s quite an impressive bit of scheming. We’re talking Alexis Colby in “Dynasty” (for anybody old enough to remember that TV Show) level of scheming and duplicity. We’re talking double-crossing on the scale of Nina in Season 1 of “24”. Sorry but it’s about the only modern reference I’ve got as I don’t watch soap operas so can’t give you an up to date bitch reference! She knew that Dave and I weren’t being intimate. She knew that Dave was starting to resent me for it. He was starting to make digs about it on a daily basis. My personal favourite being “it will take more than a microwave to thaw my wife out”. Lovely. That’s supposed to be the person who loves me unconditionally and wants to spend the rest of his life with me. I was so used to it; none of them really registered anymore. That one did though, but primarily because Alexis repeated it from time to time.
So, between my numbness, Dave’s animal needs shall we say and Alexis deciding she wanted what I had, I suppose it was inevitable that my marriage would come to an end. Now, Dave and Alexis will swear blind to you and on everything that they hold dear that nothing was going on between them. They were spending more and more time together in the few months prior to Dave and I separating. Again, looking back, there was no need for them to be spending that time together without an ulterior motive. Within a year of Dave and I separating they were engaged and only one year after the divorce being finalised they were married. It’s all a little convenient. Maybe they didn’t sleep with each other until after Dave and I separated. However, feelings were clearly there and Alexis knew exactly what she was doing. Dave wasn’t happy and she could lure him away and give him what he apparently wanted.
The answer to my original question? I would say No. When I took my marriage vows, I meant them and I was in it for the long haul. In sickness and in health, the whole works. Dave clearly couldn’t live up to those vows and chose to move on. Having a mental health illness is an unbelievable stressor on a relationship for both parties. I would always try to listen to Dave and answer his questions as best as I could. Dave was just totally unaccepting of my explanation as to why I didn’t want to be intimate.
I will never allow my having a mental health illness to be an excuse for any sort of bad or wrong behaviour. It goes some way to explaining why I’ve done some of the things that I’ve done but nobody has ever had a gun to my head to do those things. I still know the difference between right and wrong. I never looked outside of the marriage for comfort and support. Dave did.
So whilst having a breakdown put an unbelievable strain on us as a couple, I didn’t sleep with anyone else.
Living The BPD Life 