You Can't Argue With Crazy

I previously wrote this about why health matters in relationships.

Among the various  health issues my wife deals with is mental illness. I'm aware that mental illness can range from controlled and relatively mild to completely debilitating. It can also range from "everything is fine right now" to "I'm going to try to kill myself". One of the problems is, there isn't always a way to know when things have shifted until the person is dead or you have to act to prevent them from killing themselves.

Recently my wife and I had a disagreement, and in my frustration, when the children weren't there to hear, I yelled about how I think one of the kids is getting unfairly neglected.

Whenever I yell, everything is diverted. We're no longer going to address what the disagreement is, it is going to be about how terrible I am for yelling. My wife and one of our kids are both extremely good at diverting, although they usually use different tactics. My wife's blanket defense is usually invisible health problems. Yes, she has real health problems. That I can't see how they are limiting her at the moment makes it harder for me to best handle situations. She can cite these problems whether or not they are actually interfering at the moment.

Between her health problems and focusing on my tone or volume of voice, she's always able to avoid changing her behavior. It is always about how I need to change my behavior. So, I end up being worse off having communicated my disagreement or desire, and it is better for me not to have said anything at all. I've been a slow learner when it comes to this.

Her being angry with me doesn't change my life much. Since I'm only getting mercy sex once every three weeks or so, and she doesn't really do anything else for me, there's not much she can take away from me. She usually thaws to me because it is difficult to stay cold towards someone you constantly ask to do things for you. My primary concern, when she's angry with me, is that she's going to have another psychotic episode and neglect or otherwise harm the kids or kill herself in front of them.

One of the problems with being married to a person with such illnesses is that sometimes I can't be sure when a situation is:

1) me being genuinely wrong
2) an issue of her being a "typical woman" in that the husband is wrong even when he's right
3) she's nuts

"Have your family therapist tell the two of you," you might say. The problem with that is, if my wife is wrong and the therapist say so, it's just going to upset my wife and she's still not going to change anything for the better.

So I apologize even when and where I think I'm right, not making any excuses or giving any explanation or saying anything she can possibly construe to be a request she do anything differently or anything was in any way her fault or she was in any way wrong to take the positions and actions she did. I do this because I need to make my home as stable and pleasant for the children as I can, until they are grown. I should never expect she is going to do anything differently to help maintain that environment; I should only focus on things I can do differently.

Guys, is this how you want your life to be?