We are dealing with undiagnosed and unmedicated bipolar too.
Scooby,
You need to leave this alone. You are not a psychiatrist, as far as I know, and this is simply hearsay.
Your H may or may not be bipolar. He may or may not be seeing purple unicorns and believing he is able to fly to the moon.
Until he decides to do something about it, there is nothing you can do about it.
Originally Posted By: Scooby
My first goal is to hold his hand - I have gotten zero on that and it has been over 2 weeks. h is probably too detached for me to get this.
There are things we all do when we first read DB. One of those things is goal setting.
Where we make our mistake is we set goals for the relationship. Goals for how our S should behave.
Things like "he will kiss me goodnight." "we will hold hands." "he will say I love you"....
Guess what...those goals are unattainable.
Why?
Because they are not goals for US. They are not something we can achieve. They are behaviors of another person.
Would we like for those things to happen? Sure.
Nothing we do is going to make them happen or not happen.
Even in a happy relationship, like the one I am in now, if I want my BF to kiss me, I can't have the goal that he will kiss me and just wait for it to happen. It may or it may not depending on how he feels that moment.
I can do things that MIGHT make him want to, like not being a total brat or not smelling like horse poop, but beyond that, it's up to him.
If I want him to kiss me, I have to have a goal for myself that says "I want to go home and kiss BF." Period. Action, not inaction.
However, when we come to DB, we are most often not in the position to take action towards those sorts of goals.
Goal setting really needs to be about us. Things that we can do to make ourselves healthier and happier, regardless of what our S is doing.
So a proper goal for you at this point is something like "stop focusing on EA/PA."
What would that look like?
In your case, stop checking cell phone records. Stop looking at public records. Stop plotting revenge.
Eventually, it won't be so at the forefront of your thoughts and then you can start to decide what is a better way to spend all of the time that you have wasted on that particular activity.
Something that will make you happy. Gardening, cooking, riding a bike, learning how to skydive, IDK.
That is goal setting.
You also need to decide if you can forgive him for his A as well as other behaviors. If you can't do that then you are simply prolonging the inevitable.
If you decide that you CAN forgive him, or at least that you want to actually TRY to forgive him, then that is a good place to start.
Learn about forgivness and what it means to you, what it looks like to you, and work towards finding that forgivness.
It will make you happier within yourself because you aren't carrying around all that frustration and anger. Which in turn, will make you a more pleasant and happier person to be around.
It is ultra important that you stop worrying about him and start working on yourself.
THAT is the only way that you will have any sort of shot of reconciling this relationship.
"Acceptance doesn't mean resignation. It means understanding that something is what it is and there's got to be a way through it."--Michael J. Fox
