Learn to Walk the Tightrope in a Bi-Polar Relationship

An interesting insight occurred to me today and so I was inspired to write my first article in a while and even though I’m pretty much exhausted and it’s 9:46 pm, I’m going to get this out.

The insight really comes down to this; a central part of what exactly makes a bi-polar relationship challenging is the requirement to take a very active role in your partner’s management of stress.

It is a fact that individuals diagnosed with bi-polar disorder struggle to deal with extreme levels of stress for prolonged periods. Stress overload can happen to anyone but bi-polar individuals are far more prone to accelerated emotional and psychological deterioration because of stress.

I have always believed and over time have seen it as a fact that awareness and management of stress and its enablers (lack of sleep, exercise, connection) is not only necessary but the foundational requirement in building a healthy and happy bi-polar marriage.

So if your partner struggles to effectively manage stress on their own, and it is absolutely crucial to the health and happiness of the relationship, it falls on the non-bi-polar partner to play as active a role in managing that stress as necessary.

So the tightrope is this…managing the stress of another person is really challenging. Managing my own stress is plenty challenging at times and I know most people feel this way.

The thing about stress management within ourselves is that it’s about recognizing and reacting to signals. Our bodies and minds send us signals in all kinds of ways to give us the message saying, “hey dude(t), you stressed.” The signals come in many forms, some overwhelming and some of the more subtle or confusing variety. Understanding what exactly your body is telling you about your current state and reacting appropriately is challenging by itself.

Understanding to any extent, what kind of stress signals are flowing through your partners body at any given time is a tall task and shouldn’t be underestimated.

How exactly can you estimate another person’s stress?

You can look for your partner’s anxiety behaviors; things like overall restlessness, over indulgence or withdrawal. Noticing these kind of behaviors sometimes require paying close attention to catch and try to mitigate before a likely spiral. It is easy to miss behaviors throughout our everyday, fast paced lives. Another common challenge with behavior is that in many cases, the anxiety behavior involves pushing criticism or otherwise negativity towards you as the partner. If they happen to land a blow (metaphorically) it becomes pretty difficult to regroup and remember that objectively, they are acting out of stress overload.

You can ask your partner probing questions about how they are feeling and through talking, actively try and guide them to stress reducing outcomes. This approach can also be challenging for a number of reasons. Your partner might not feel comfortable being completely honest with you. Sometimes out of pride or shame people will not honestly and openly seek help, even from their partners. Additionally, sitting down and talking can easily slide into criticism or blaming which again, if not handled objectively and with compassion, can be very difficult to do.

You can pay serious attention to the most stress inducing lifestyle elements in your partner’s life like sleep, exercise, job, family, or money and play a large role where necessary in managing the decision making within these elements. The issue with this approach is that it’s difficult to manage the elements of your own life effectively, let alone someone else’s. In addition, most people strongly value their personal autonomy. Being guided towards better decisions can easily be met with offense and resistance. This can lead to diminished trust between you and your partner, added stress for both and likely some bad outcomes. Figuring out how to effectively influence your partner requires a mastery in understanding how they communicate. Love languages, gauging reaction, noticing avoidance, it’s all key.

There are other elements to keep in mind like social reflection (using the input of others to help give you insight) but its getting late and sleep is calling.

So what’s the solution? Sorry to wrap it up this way but…there is no spoon.

A healthy and stable Bi-polar relationship is very difficult to build and maintain. These are the facts. Not accepting these facts will lead to a broken relationship and probably worse.

Don’t sugar coat it, don’t coil in fear and don’t pretend the mountain in front of you doesn’t exist. Stare it in the face, take a deep breath and start by putting one foot in front of the other. If you love that person, it is more than worth it and over time as the mutual trust between you and your partner increases, it gets much easier.