We have been married almost 7 years and have 3 kids under 4. Since our youngest was born his depression has amped up a great deal. He was officially diagnosed with bipolar and was prescribed medication.

When he takes his medication he’s fine. He’s the great, funny, light hearted man I married but I find myself having to manage it for him. Sometimes he will refuse to take it saying he doesn’t need it or when he’s about to run out he won’t pick up a new prescription without prompting (on purpose because he loves seeing me make a big deal about it) and lots of misery for me because he is extremely mean and so so critical of me when he’s not medicated.

Yesterday I had a massive migraine. I get one this bad maybe once a year. When he got home I went to lie down because I was vomiting from the pain. What did he do? Came and lay down next to me. I asked him to go watch the kids but he didn’t get up so all the kids came in and were jumping on the bed. My son ended up jumping straight on my head by accident. It wasn’t his fault. The pain was so bad though that I had tears in my eyes so I got up, took the kids out to the living room and left my husband in there. About 30 minutes later he came out and asked if I cared if he went to his friends house to hang out. I was so stunned and in literal agony so I just didn’t respond to him. He then came over to me and started tickling the crease of my neck really hard. Incessantly asking if I wanted him to bring me stuff home after he’s done with his friends (testing the waters to see how I am about him leaving). The first five times I just said please stop ticking me, my head really really hurts. The 6th time he did it he made some crude comment about how could I not like him “tickling my crease with his big finger”. I had had enough at that point and said get off me and stop talking like a pervert in front of our kids! He immediately got up and acted so offended. I told him to take his meds and he refused (he does this when he’s mad at me) and he went to bed for the night at 5pm, leaving me to do bath, teeth, story and bedtime all alone with 3 toddlers all while having the worst migraine I have ever had.

When I came to bed he left our room and went to sleep on the couch. I was in too much pain to care so I just went to bed.

This morning I got up with the kids at 6am as usual and he was still asleep on the couch. He woke up in an awful mood (which I expected because he didn’t take his meds). He stayed on the couch until 1pm “sleeping” and then moved to our daughters bedroom and is now sleeping in there. He just got up for a second to go to the bathroom so I asked him if he was ok and he said “no”, I told him to take his meds and he said no and muttered something about how it was just another day in his shitty life and went back to my daughters bed. It’s now 5pm and he’s still in there. How do I handle this? I’m so sick of walking on egg shells in my own home, constantly worried about his moods. I’m also sick of having to monitor meds only for him to purposely not take them when he’s mad at me. How would you handle this? These episodes are happening every 10 days and I’m so sick of it. I have no family support what so ever because we moved away from our home state 3 years ago.