{"id":961,"date":"2008-02-15T09:45:18","date_gmt":"2008-02-15T09:45:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beyondblue\/2008\/02\/the-best-valentines-day-ever-a.html"},"modified":"2008-02-15T09:45:18","modified_gmt":"2008-02-15T09:45:18","slug":"the-best-valentines-day-ever-a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2008\/02\/the-best-valentines-day-ever-a.html","title":{"rendered":"The Best Valentine\u2019s Day Ever: A Husband Who Gets His Wife"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday was a day in which I better understood why, according to a November 2003 article in \u201cPsychology Today,\u201d<\/a> 90 percent of marriages involving a person who has bipolar disorder end in divorce; that, according to \u201cThe Sidney Morning Herald,\u201d <\/a>people with bipolar disorder have three times the rate of divorce and broken relationships as the general community.
\nMy irritability and moodiness the last two weeks is precisely why J. Raymond DePaulo, Jr. M.D. writes in \u201cUnderstanding Depression,\u201d<\/a> that \u201cdepression . . . has a much greater impact on marital life than rheumatoid arthritis or cardiac illness\u201d and that \u201cone study found that only severe forms of cancer affected a family as adversely as depression or bipolar disorder.
\nHere\u2019s the weak link in my chain of recovery: Katherine has poor vision, and it\u2019s not improving. This means she wants to be held constantly. She\u2019s scared to cross streets, to walk in garages. So I hold all of her 55 pounds. Which has caused some hip misalignment. My left hip hurts. Which means I can\u2019t run\u2014an essential piece to my recovery. I can\u2019t really walk (for exercise) without aggravating the pain. Which means I\u2019m not getting my outside fix.
\nAfter three callous snaps yesterday morning, the normal husband would throw out a few himself, in defense. And the argument would grow into a tree that would occupy so much of the living room that man and wife could no longer fit in there together. Instead, Eric responded with compassion knowing that my moodiness is seldom about him, and almost always about a broken part of my recovery program.
\n\u201cUh oh,\u201d he said, wearing a concerned expression. \u201cWhat\u2019s going on?\u201d
\n\u201cI\u2019m sorry for snapping,\u201d I explained. \u201cI was close to losing it a month ago. And now, not being able to run \u2026 it\u2019s affecting my chemistry.\u201d
\n\u201cCan\u2019t you swim?\u201d he asked.
\n\u201cYeah. But only twice a week, because I have Katherine on the other days. I guess twice a week isn\u2019t enough, because I feel extremely fragile. Yesterday I almost started to cry at Whole Foods when some uppity woman glared at me with that \u201cSuper-Nanny wouldn\u2019t survive at your house\u201d expression when she saw Katherine shove handfuls of blueberries in her mouth back at the fruit display. I\u2019m annoyed at everything and everyone. Even people with whom I haven\u2019t talked to in weeks. I\u2019m annoyed at them.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\u201cDo you want me to come home for lunch so you can swim?\u201d Eric asked me.
\n\u201cAre you sure you have time to do that?\u201d I asked him.
\nAnd here\u2019s where I knew that I made the best decision of my life to marry him:
\n\u201cTherese,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s cheaper for me to take an hour at lunch unpaid than to send you to Johns Hopkins. I know your brain needs exercise. It\u2019s mandatory, not optional. And the last thing you need for your mental health is to be laid up on bed rest with painkillers after a hip replacement.\u201d
\nThat was the best Valentine\u2019s Day present I could have ever asked for: a husband who would come home for his lunch hour so his bipolar wife with the bad hip could swim so that her neurotransmitters would again send messages of well-being back and forth to her neurons and that the amygada and hippocampus regions of her brain could go into the body shop for some nerve regeneration. Which means that she would care less about what some witchy woman at Whole Foods thinks of Katherine\u2019s appetite and manners.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday was a day in which I better understood why, according to a November 2003 article in \u201cPsychology Today,\u201d 90 percent of marriages involving a person who has bipolar disorder end in divorce; that, according to \u201cThe Sidney Morning Herald,\u201d people with bipolar disorder have three times the rate of divorce and broken relationships as…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marriage"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Best Valentine\u2019s Day Ever: A Husband Who Gets His Wife - Beyond Blue<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2008\/02\/the-best-valentines-day-ever-a.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Best Valentine\u2019s Day Ever: A Husband Who Gets His Wife - Beyond Blue\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Yesterday was a day in which I better understood why, according to a November 2003 article in \u201cPsychology Today,\u201d 90 percent of marriages involving a person who has bipolar disorder end in divorce; that, according to \u201cThe Sidney Morning Herald,\u201d people with bipolar disorder have three times the rate of divorce and broken relationships as…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2008\/02\/the-best-valentines-day-ever-a.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beyond Blue\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-02-15T09:45:18+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Beyond Blue\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Best Valentine\u2019s Day Ever: A Husband Who Gets His Wife - Beyond Blue","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2008\/02\/the-best-valentines-day-ever-a.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Best Valentine\u2019s Day Ever: A Husband Who Gets His Wife - Beyond Blue","og_description":"Yesterday was a day in which I better understood why, according to a November 2003 article in \u201cPsychology Today,\u201d 90 percent of marriages involving a person who has bipolar disorder end in divorce; that, according to \u201cThe Sidney Morning Herald,\u201d people with bipolar disorder have three times the rate of divorce and broken relationships as…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2008\/02\/the-best-valentines-day-ever-a.html","og_site_name":"Beyond Blue","article_published_time":"2008-02-15T09:45:18+00:00","author":"Beyond Blue","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2008\/02\/the-best-valentines-day-ever-a.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2008\/02\/the-best-valentines-day-ever-a.html","name":"The Best Valentine\u2019s Day Ever: A Husband Who Gets His Wife - Beyond Blue","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-02-15T09:45:18+00:00","dateModified":"2008-02-15T09:45:18+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/#\/schema\/person\/47318cdf8063cc052eccff0c99db4e75"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2008\/02\/the-best-valentines-day-ever-a.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2008\/02\/the-best-valentines-day-ever-a.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2008\/02\/the-best-valentines-day-ever-a.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Best Valentine\u2019s Day Ever: A Husband Who Gets His Wife"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/","name":"Beyond Blue","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Therese J. 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