I recently received an email asking for advice and it was titled, Advice for a butch who loves a bipolar femme?

After reading through it, it made my head spin a bit. I’m going to cut her problem down to a short summary because, basically she’s screwed. This butch loves this femme that is bipolar. OK, not the end of the world, right? Well unfortunately this particular femme is not a very nice person. Aside from being a crazy cat lady that seems to use this nice butch for catty reasons (i.e. this butch is not a cat person and yet has adopted one, helped catch them, helped with vet bills, etc.) But when she doesn’t need the butch for anything, she shuts her out. Blocks her. Won’t take her calls. Alternating complete shut down with what sounds like verbal abuse and text wars in which the femme calls the butch every bad thing under the sun. All of this sounds like a pretty easy call, except as soon as the butch is ready to move on, surprise surprise the femme calls and claims to be in love, on her meds and wanting a life with her.

Ughhh …. this is what I told the butch. Please remember, I am not a doctor or expert in bipolar disorder. Just a chick that lives with it and this is my advice.

HOLY CRAP BATMAN. I just got a chance to read all of it. OMG you poor butch!!! And no, I’m not being sarcastic, I really mean that. Things like this are really hard for me to give advice on because, since I am actually bipolar I don’t want to look down on someone else with the same disease and call them crazy! But I sorta want to with this one. Bipolar disorder does not give someone a free pass to treat people like shit. It just doesn’t. Bipolar disorder is a chemical imbalance. Our brains don’t regulate serotonin (the happy chemical) well. It’s like  this: everyone gets a set amount of serotonin for a certain amount of time. Healthy people release it on a gradual, systematic time frame. But bipolar peeps can release it all at once or too much at once, which can result in mania. Super hyper, hyper sexual, out of control. But then once it runs out, we’re sort of screwed. Depressed and waiting for our brain to make more serotonin. …. That’s a simplified version but I wanted to give you a basic idea.

OK so …. bipolar disorder can out picture drastically different for different people. For me, I withdraw and get super down on myself. But I rarely take it out on Remi. …. but there are times that I do. Those are called mixed episodes and it happens in people that have what they call “rapid cycling” …. it’s sort of like you’re going up and down so fast, that you can actually be experiencing both at once. So it’s like a depressed mania which can look to an outsider as rage. It feels like it too, to us.

I’m just giving you this little background so you can think about it, in reference to what’s going on with her.

Having said all that …. it still does not give her the right to treat you badly. OH wait, there’s another thing. Bipolar often presents with a co-diagnosis. By this I mean a lot of bipolar people have another issue too …. like OCD, borderline personality disorder, eating disorder, etc. Do you think she might have anything else that might help explain her actions??? Because honestly, I don’t think “bipolar” can be blamed for ALL her bad behavior. I mean, she’s treating you like shit and to be honest it sounds like she’s using you for the cats too.

My honest advice to you would be to move on. Even if it’s her illness that’s making her act out like this, it doesn’t mean you have to sentence yourself to a lifetime of heartache. Being with someone with bipolar disorder is very hard and it never gets easier. I mean, there are really good times. But the bad times will always recur. Even on medication, it’s not a cure. It’s just supposed to help with the frequency and intensity of the episodes. So you have to really ask yourself, can you put up with this??

But even more then that, you can’t help someone that won’t even let you near them at times. It sounds to me like she’s not ready to have someone close enough to her to be able to help. She can’t keep pushing you away and then expect you to come running when she wants you too.

Seriously. Unless you think this chick is THE LOVE OF YOUR ENTIRE LIFE. I would say you need to move on. Wish her well in her treatment of her illness and then move on to someone that actually wants you by their side, not just when they want something from you.

And in all of this, I never read anything that sounded like she’s good FOR YOU. Not one thing. You’re always there for her, like a good butch. That’s fucking hot. But a good butch deserves a good femme that’s got your back too.

Did any of this help at all???

xoxox
Sasha

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