The Pains of Honesty

At one time or another, you’ve probably heard the phrase, “The Truth Hurts”. As small as such a phrase is, the meaning behind it is blindingly powerful and although I believe that honesty is a keystone in any relationship as well as presenting integrity from an individual perspective, it is paramount when managing a bipolar relationship. If we start to sugarcoat and provide even half-truths to attempt to cover up potentially damaging issues, we may as well be self-sabotaging our own successes and integrity.

When playing the role of a supporter during times of duress for my wife, the first thing I want to do is make sure that she knows everything is going to be fine and we’ll find her stability as soon as possible. When we really started to transition our lives to support our bipolar relationship, I found myself offering as much comfort as possible and placing all focus on her and essentially letting my own feelings melt away in the process as I did not want my own feelings to interfere with what she was going through. I ended up teaching myself that, if I was going to be her “rock” of stability and rationality, I needed to bottle up my own issues and not place any additional burden onto her.

When this mentality became the norm in my own life routine, the last thing I wanted to identify it as was, “lying” to myself or to my wife, but even when asked how I felt about the relationship, I simply answered that I was perfectly fine and that she had nothing to concern herself with. Sure, not truly a lie, but it wasn’t exactly a beacon of honesty either because, sure…I had feelings that would get hurt once in awhile as well and when things really got bad, it was extremely difficult for me to watch knowing that there wasn’t much I could really do to force stability.

Every blue moon or so, I’d let myself be human enough again to want to express my own feelings and let my wife know how I was doing. Unfortunately, one of her ways of dealing with her disorder is to avoid it and when we talk about it, the disorder itself tends to be a trigger and any discussion would end up resulting in her feeling that I was beating her up or blaming her for my hidden sadness. I let this run rampant and eventually worked even harder to bottle up those feelings more and simply refused to show her any emotion that was related to my own exhaustion or frustration.

Although I knew that this wasn’t healthy for the relationship, at the time, I felt that this was my only means of “helping” as long as she was not handed any more stress than she already had to deal with. Anytime I started to show signs of weakness, she would feel a little more insecure and I would feel as though I was failing as her supporter. As oour relationship matured, I had realized that my lack of desire to open up more only offered a path of confusion and allowed my wife to develop higher expectations of me than I had anticipated, but advertised that I had wanted this.

When I slowly started to open the vault, if you will, my wife learned more about us as a whole and only then did she realize that I wasn’t simply a machine that could handle every outburst or episode without my own battle scars to tend to. I posted earlier about enabling our loved ones and that’s exactly what I had done when I was bottling up my own feelings. My display of power, which was hiding my inner feelings, only showed my wife that I was willing to put up with just about anything without protest.

As the episodes and anxiety driven triggers progressed, so did the intensity of frustrations from both of us when dealing with the issues. There were times where I was outright accused of cheating or then physically attacked over irrational thoughts whereas in the past, I would simply stand there and take it until she got it out of her system. Typically, these physical outbursts would have resulted in the relationship ending immediately, but…I understood that these outbursts were not “real”, so I put up with them. When stability came around, as much emotional pain I was in, I let it go as to not add more stress to my wife, again.

It wasn’t until recently that another physical outburst occurred and I came to the realization that, these only happen because I let them and I don’t put my foot down. Regardless of the state of her episode or triggering events, I had enabled her to keep the idea that I could be a literal punching bag and there would be no consequences. Finally, when it did happen again, I finally stopped her mid swing and looked her dead in the eye saying, “If this happens again, I walk.”

This seemed to put her into a state of shock that seemingly pulled her right out of her episode as she immediately realized what was happening and pulled away, almost as if she had disappointed both of us. We had a very long talk about how I felt when things get rough and although it visibly affected her a bit, she acknowledged that she needed to know the truth of what I was going through as well. It did pain me though as my dignity was hit by telling her that it is extremely difficult sometimes for me and that I’m not indestructible.

Honesty is key in not only being able to build a strong foundation in our relationships, but also to set the correct expectations by all of those involved. It may seem easier to fluff the truth a bit as to help in minimizing other stresses, but it opens a very large door to invite us to stop being true to ourselves in the long run.

With a passion to reach out and to help others, Rich opens up a direct view into the trials and tribulations that come with managing a bipolar relationship and how to use real-world techniques to aid in stability and support.

Rich Wallace

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