Unpredictable or intense mood changes define the heart of bipolar disorder. It can cause you to unwittingly withdraw from the people you love, or overly engage them.
Breakups can be brutal—and can easily trigger bipolar symptoms. The end of a relationship often ushers in dark feelings like abandonment, guilt, and rejection.
They may become tearful or feel hopeless and pessimistic. Having low self-esteem may reduce a person's sex drive, or they may feel less affectionate. It can be difficult for a person's partner to know what to say or do to help. They may feel rejected, mistaking symptoms as a lack of interest in the relationship.
Lower self-esteem may lead them to avoid interacting with others and push a partner away. This can make the partner socially isolated as the partner with bipolar disorder is unwilling to spend time with their friends or family.
Bad Breakups or Marriage Breakdowns
A number of people with bipolar disorder — especially those with a history of severe manic episodes — experience a breakdown in their marriages. If you're going through a divorce, working with your therapist through what is often a drawn-out and extremely stressful process can help.
Patients with rapid changes between the two states are known to have manic depressive states or episodes. Without the appropriate treatment, bipolar behavior can destroy relationships, deteriorate the individual's health, and/or endanger their job.
The first thing that may challenge a person with bipolar disorder to create relationships is self-stigma (or internalized stigma), leading to self-created isolation. Self-stigma is where a person internalizes the negative messages he or she receives about those with a mental condition.
Moderate to high quality evidence finds a large effect of more insecure attachment styles in people with bipolar disorder compared to controls. This effect was similar to that seen in people with depression or schizophrenia. It was also similar across all three disorders for anxious attachment style.
Looking back at what happened during a mood episode can stir powerful emotions. It's common to feel embarrassed, humiliated, ashamed, even worthless. There's often regret, sharpened by fear that you've alienated people in your life.
Bipolar and Infidelity: What's the Truth? Here's the truth about bipolar and infidelity: being bipolar doesn't mean you will be unfaithful to your partner, but it does make infidelity more likely, according to statistics.
There are a number of possible reasons why someone with bipolar would push others away. This tends to happen during depressive episodes, but it can happen when they're manic or symptom-free, as well. It can be painful when you're shut out, but it's not your fault.
On the other hand, emotional intimacy can be challenging while dating someone with bipolar disorder, because their subjective experience of the relationship and the world around them can often shift without treatment. This can be surprising because you may not be able to follow the shift in their emotional states.
“When you're in a hypomanic or manic state, you're also more likely to feel you're in love,” says Haase. “You may then act on that feeling when making major long-term life decisions, not understanding your state had something to do with what you were feeling.”
No matter how solid our confidence, if we're partnered with a person who acts inappropriately with others, then our natural reaction is to feel devalued, angry and upset,” she said. When bipolars become jealous, jealousy becomes magnified by the symptoms of our illnesses.
It's common for someone with bipolar disorder to hurt and offend their partner. When someone is first diagnosed, there are often relationship issues that need to be addressed. Couples counseling can help you: Understand that there's an illness involved in the hurtful behavior.
Don't take comments or behavior personally. During periods of high energy, a person often says and does things that he or she would not usually say or do. This can include focusing on negative aspects of others. If needed, stay away from the person and avoid arguments.
Takeaway. Bipolar disorder can cause a lack of empathy, but symptoms may also make it more challenging to focus on the feelings of others. While there is no medication to improve empathy, treating bipolar disorder can help.
As with many emotions, however, people with bipolar disorder appear to be more vulnerable to extreme reactions. “Everyone can become frustrated or angry, but loss of control can be part and parcel of bipolar disorder rage,” says Jeffrey Borenstein, MD, president and CEO of the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation.
People who experience delusions of grandeur, as well as those around them, do not always recognize it as being anything more than pompousness, arrogance, or boastfulness. If delusions occur during manic episodes, this is a clue that bipolar disorder is involved.
Bipolar disorder and marriage can be toxic to a relationship. That's when a relationship fails or is failing. It can trigger negative reactions that could lead to self-harm, self-loathing or worse. Relationship issues need to be watched and positively regulated from our youth onward.
A 2011 literature review indicated that as many as two-thirds of people living with bipolar disorder experience signs of grandiosity. Grandiosity may lead someone to use specific manipulation tactics in some instances.
It should be said that having a Bipolar Disorder does not mean that a person will have a jealous delusion nor does having a jealous delusion mean that a person has a Bipolar Disorder. The fixed delusional jealous thinking is marked by the constant suspicion that the loved one is guilty of infidelity.
These feelings may reduce a person's sex drive and ability to be affectionate and connect. Some sufferers say the depressive episodes may make it feel nearly impossible to get out of bed, eat, or answer the phone.