Jon P. Bloch - The Bipolar Relationship: How to understand, help, and love your partner

Bipolar disorder doesn't just affect the person who has it. As the person who loves and cares for your bipolar partner, it also affects you. This book has been written with you in mind, to offer you knowledge and skills to assist you in your long-term relationship and to provide you with increased self-understanding and self-compassion. While there is no magic wand to make the entire problem go away, there are very specific actions you can take to make life easier for yourself and for your loved ones. For this reason we have come together to help you to more effectively manage the complexities of this task.

Emotions are contagious, especially in our most significant loving relationships. Therefore, even though you're not the one who has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, you may find yourself experiencing a whirl of shifting emotional states that leave you full of self-doubt and tension. While you may feel energized and experience great pleasure witnessing your partner's moments of unbridled energy and optimism, you may also be made understandably uneasy by the depression, anxiety, or puzzling behavior that may appear at other moments. It is not easy to live with someone whose emotions seem unpredictable, varying at moments from intense excitement accompanied with unrealistic optimism to severe immobilizing depression.

A major task in any loving relationship involves engaging in compromise for the better of the relationship while at the same time maintaining a sense of one's own identity. This may seem especially difficult when loving someone with bipolar disorder. Loving and caring for a partner with this illness can be extremely rewarding, but it may also push you to your limits of compassion and self-compassion.

A relationship with someone who has bipolar disorder forces you all to recognize what is normal or healthy and constructive or destructive. If it is in your nature to embrace optimism, you may have difficulty discerning when your partner is unrealistically optimistic. If you are uncomfortable with depressive thoughts you may even feel uneasy when your partner experiences depression. You'll learn how to deal with some of these challenges we address them throughout the book.

It is especially important to remember that you are two adults in a relationship, and that not every difficulty you face as a couple is the fault of bipolar disorder. All relationships have problems, and the acceptance of bipolar disorder is an important step toward the realization that we all are human beings living within the parameters of the awareness and skills we currently possess. This greater sense of maturity also involves the knowledge that we can strive to do better and the recognition and acceptance that every relationship requires commitment, compassion, and work.

First and foremost, as the partner of someone who lives with bipolar disorder it is essential to take good care of you by paying close attention to your own needs and desires. Self-compassion leads to a healthy partnership.

Your sustained mental and physical well-being will enable you to feel more compassionate and more supportive of your loved one. Should you at any time feel worn down by the strain of your relationship, you may want to seek professional guidance. The Bipolar Relationship provides ways of achieving a more fulfilling connection between partners by offering helpful suggestions to you, the caregiver, while you also protect yourself.