J. Peirano: My family suffers because my partner cares about his bipolar ex

Dear Ms Peirano,

I (37) am a mother of two children (12 and 8) and divorced from my husband. Two years ago, through my work, I met a man who also has two children. We often get along very well and we have become a lively blended family.

My ex-husband and I don’t get along very well and we always clash over the weekend arrangement. We broke up because he didn’t take responsibility for the household and the children. He was still very young and wanted to live out his freedom and himself. I always had to ask him for every move and he only did everything grumbling. But overall, despite friction, it’s mostly stable.

But what really strains our relationship is my new boyfriend’s relationship with his ex-wife. The two have been separated for five years. She has bipolar disorder and it has taken a lot out of the relationship. She was in psychiatry more often and in the end my partner’s mother stepped in and looked after the children.

But my partner just can’t seem to set boundaries properly when it comes to his ex-wife. It’s not that he still has feelings for her or desires her. Rather, he takes care of her and helps her wherever he can, although she is very aggressive with him and hardly speaks to him. The ex-wife didn’t want to get to know me yet, but I know from mutual friends that she spends a lot of time with me and my children and talks about me (sometimes saying very bad things about not). She said that I should be really careful and not lean too far out of the window, otherwise something might happen to me. I feel threatened by it, but my boyfriend plays it down.

Once she was in my friend’s apartment and after that my earrings and a perfume were missing.

My new partner worries a lot about his ex, talks about her a lot, talks to doctors, picks her up at the airport and reads all her emails to him. She writes him several pages several times a week. He is said to be doing this to be aware of what’s going on with her so he can prepare his children (12 and 14). But sometimes I get the feeling that somehow he just can’t get along without her and the excitement she creates. I know it’s a crass thought, but that’s how I feel.

He dances completely to the ex-wife’s tune. If she’s safe in the psychiatric ward, we can go on vacation. When she’s going through a manic phase and running around freely and causing trouble (drinking, sex with different men, including his friends), he’s unfocused and sometimes takes days off work.

I can’t get close to him, and I also think that he’s hiding things from me. By the way, his mother was schizophrenic.

That means that the mood between my boyfriend and I is somehow dependent on how his ex-wife is doing. If she is stable, he can get involved with me. If she is safely accommodated in the psychiatric ward, he can relax a little. But when she is or is becoming manic, his thoughts seem to be all about her and he is absent. But he doesn’t really talk to me about it, he only makes vague promises that everything has to settle down in the new blended family. Isn’t two years enough for that? And nothing changes…

I’m totally fed up with it and feel neglected. In the difficult phases, I can then take care of all four children and the household on my own, in addition to my work.

It’s so bad that I’m considering breaking up with it. But first I wanted to try couples therapy. But my friend can’t really commit to that either.
What do you advise me?

Best regards,
Johanna T
Dear Johanna T,

I can understand that you are not satisfied with the situation and feel burdened! In your first marriage, you already had the experience of being alone with tasks and often not having a reliable, committed partner at your side.

And now you are again in a situation in which you often have to manage the tasks alone in your partnership and have a partner at your side who pulls together with you. It’s draining, and it can also have a negative impact on self-esteem, like, “Am I not worthy of having a partner to play first fiddle to?”

However, while the situation with your current partner is similar to that with your husband, the reasons for this are very different. Her ex-husband didn’t want to get involved for personal reasons, but wanted his freedom. Her new partner, on the other hand, is very restricted because he has made himself dependent on his ex-wife’s mental state.

I’ve written about codependency (the addiction behind addiction) here before. One speaks of co-dependence when someone has a partner or a close relative who has an addiction or a serious mental illness (e.g. schizophrenia, borderline, bipolar disorder). The affected person then circles around the alcohol, around drugs or experiences his or her roller coaster ride with schizophrenia or the mental disorder.
And the co-dependent person circles around the affected person (the partner or a child) and loses access to their own needs and feelings as a result.

Co-dependent people often deny the seriousness of the addiction and deny the problem (“It’s just a phase, he/she used to be much better”). Some relatives lie for the person concerned to cover up the problem (“She has the flu” instead of “She is addicted to alcohol and drank two bottles of wine yesterday”). Codependent people get lost in wanting to help. In addiction clinics, one sometimes finds relatives who smuggle alcohol or drugs into the clinic so that they do not have to suffer.

And codependent people tend to have little access to their own feelings, especially those that might serve as boundaries, like anger or anger. They find explanations, talk the situation out and take over the work of the person concerned.

It is of course understandable and also necessary that someone who has an addicted or mentally ill partner takes on more responsibility and looks after the partner. That is also the case in a balanced partnership if one has the flu and is absent. The partner would then take care of the other and not insist that the partner with the flu takes the children to school, does the weekly shopping and quickly prepares a children’s birthday party.

But codependency often goes a step beyond what is necessary, as codependents often unknowingly seek out a partner who has an addiction or mental illness. And often they stay and fight to save their partner instead of asking, “How am I actually doing in this relationship? Is this what I wanted?”

Often the background is that as children they had an addicted parent whom they could not help and are now trying to save their partner out of a kind of repetition compulsion.

Why am I writing this? After all, you are not co-dependent, but rather wish that the situation with your partner’s ex-wife would be less complicated and less burdensome. But your new boyfriend seems to have his issue with codependency. He could actually let go of his ex-wife after the breakup, but he can’t.

And that puts you, as his partner, in a role that, for lack of a better term, I’d christen co-co-dependent. They revolve around a man who co-dependently revolves around a mentally ill woman.
I also have some patients (mostly women) in therapy who are trying to help their co-dependent mothers to “control” the situation with their alcoholic partner or delinquent son (i.e. the patient’s brother). .

Sometimes the daughters are encouraged to tolerate the brother’s offenses and to take legal action to ensure that he gets mitigating circumstances. Or the daughters should have a good job so that they can help finance the mother’s livelihood, since she has an alcoholic partner at home. Or she may be asked to help out beyond the norm, babysitting younger siblings, or caring for a parent so that the parent can continue their co-dependence on someone else.

The co-co-dependent people often find it difficult to stand up for their rights and to say: “It doesn’t work that way! I’m missing out!” Or “or “It was your decision to find an alcoholic partner. Please don’t drag me into this.”

You won’t find any literature on the subject of co-co-dependence as I invented the term. It’s also not entirely accurate. Because while co-dependent people stubbornly cling to their circles around their partner or child, co-co-dependent people often feel annoyed or overwhelmed by the expectations placed on them. They would like to have more distance, but they don’t know how to do it or are afraid of the consequences. Many co-co-dependents get into a burn-out syndrome.

I can advise you to consciously make sure that you come back to yourself in order to feel yourself. Practical methods would be talking to friends, meditation, journaling, or mindful exercise like yoga, dancing, or Pilates.

Just ask yourself why you keep playing second fiddle in relationships and are so considerate. And it would probably be good in general to respect your autonomy and live in separate apartments, cultivate your own circle of friends and always go your own way when your friend drops out.
That would be a good basis for you to ask yourself if this relationship is even right for you.

Best regards,

Juliet Peirano