WTF?!?!?! had a great night with the girl that i fell in love with. we crawled into bed feeling optimistic. i wake up with a woman who stared at me like i had three eyes when i told her i loved her. those aren't words heard infrequently around here. how does a person operate like that?

It must be obvious to you that THIS IS NOT NORMAL BEHAVIOR......for anyone.....anytime.
The woman has a problem. She needs help. Be it mental, physical or chemical there's something radically wrong.
Much of this thread has been finding logical solutions for irrational behavior.
Whatever the problem is, it's not you or your lifestyle, it's her.
You've got to get her into medical care even if you have to break her leg to get her there.
Whatever it takes, it's worth it.....she's a keeper...save her. :rtfm:

how exactly do you get someone help when they don't believe they need it - or at least refuse to admit it to anyone else? we've got the headshrinker appointment on the 13th, but if she isn't being honest with herself, what is the likelihood she is going to tell this guy what is really going on. and without an admittance of a problem, she certainly isn't going to sit still and let us cram pills down her throat (if that is what is needed).

Well. Lookout, hopefully, you can pull the shrink aside and give him the benefit of your observations in private. I came across an estimate once that as many as 1/3 of all patients do not report important symptoms to their therapists or physicians. Even if your wife does inform him of everything that's going on with her, she sounds as though she's already digging in her heels at the thought of any medication he might prescribe.

It might be a good idea to find out why she is so adverse to the thought. Does she fear re-newed addiction? Does she consider it a sign of personal failure? Is it wrapped up with some fear of becoming like her sisters? If there is anyone on her side of the family that you could discuss her sisters' issues with, this information could be invaluable for her doctor to know about.

Its true enough that if she does need medication but refuses it, there's precious little you can do about it. Hopefully, the thought of her husband and son will bring her around.

Good luck, big guy!

confusion increasing... frustration mounting...

i am now fairly certain that i'm not grasping at straws to soften the blow to my ego. i can accept that my wife might stop loving me without being crazy.

i cannot accept that her recent behavior is natural/normal/not evidence of mental distress. 2 of her very good friends had their birthday last night, so all of the girls have been planning (for weeks) on going out to celebrate tonight. i drove my wife to the restaurant that they were going to be launching their festivities from.

i should back up to say that last night we had a great night, this morning i was an alien for saying that i loved her. i got home from work today and everything was golden. she was happy and somewhat relaxed. in fact we ended up having a fairly vigorous romp. 45 minutes later she couldn't stand to have me in the same room. anyway...

we are driving to the restaurant and she is seriously on edge. smiling one minute and the next sullen. at times i could see her visibly getting wound up like a top. i missed the turn for the restaurant, delaying her arrival by about 3 minutes. you would have thought i stabbed her mother at a family event. unglued, seriously pissed to the point that she just glared at me as she got out of the vehicle and never looked back.

my sister is there with all the girls and she is aware of the situation(my only secret from my wife is that my sister knows), so she has promised to try to keep an eye on her mental state during the night.

my expectation is that she won't be home before the bars close, cross-eyed, mean drunk. spoiling for a fight. just a guess.

DAMN DUDE !!!!!

Stay STRONG !!!!

It IS worth Fighting for !!!!

Damn, Dude - she's using! Or she has a chemical imbalance. Or...

Thinking over the entire time you've known her, not just this recent upset:

Does she seem to have a higher than average need for reassurance, being told that she's pretty, does a great job, etc.? We all like and need to hear these things, but does she need these affirmations more than many people you know?

Is she bad at making plans for the future and carrying them out from beginning to end?

Did she always have a tendency to become easily bored?

Is she generally supportive and understanding when YOU hit a rough spot. In the past could you always count on her to be there for you, come what may?

Does she talk much about special friends from childhood?

Does she talk about the lessons she learned in this life, saying things like, "I see where I went wrong that time and I have learned from my mistakes." Does she do this in detail, not just generalities?

Does she have a rich inner life that she shares with you?

Does she have difficulty accepting criticism or admitting when she's in the wrong about something?

Does she experience difficulty when she has to be alone?

If any of these questions resonate strongly with you, PM me, and I'll send you a link which might possibly be useful to you.

Wow... just Wow... I just couldn't help but post since my situation seems to have happened around the same time as yours. My wife is early 40's tho...

2 weeks before final exams, my wife exploded... about how maybe "we" should not be "we" anymore. why? That I'm not sure...

My wife also agreed to counseling, but I suspect she's just "going thru the motions" of it, due to some things she's said... maybe like a "cover your ass" thing. We have 2 kids, and she's specifically said to me that when she's leaves, the kids will stay with me, because they'll be better off that way. I don't currently have that deepest fear of losing my kids (yet, she could flip out and go back just as easily as these other flips)

She seems perfectly sane much of the time we're together, but when I go to work, she loses it. She calls me at work and starts talking about leaving me, or she'll be supremely pissed about something petty (like I didn't write down a phone message for her, when I TOLD her about the message instead)

I work in a callcenter overnight, so when we talk while I'm at work, I have to tell her "I gotta call" and hang up, and call her back when I'm done. Tonight this happened, and before I finished the call I was on, she leaves a message on my cell
"While your busy on another call, I'm going to call your mother and tell her I think she's crazy and a whore"
and she did! luckily my brother was there, and she ended up talking to him instead, but WTF??

this is friggin surreal.

@ marichiko
 

Can I get that link? I'm feeling the resonance...

lookout,
I think you need to figure out a way to get her to have some bloodwork done, not so much for the substance abuse angle but more for other hormonal/brain chem issues.

A good starting place to investigate what may be wrong is www.medlineplus.gov. The site has some links to flow charts where you can type in symptoms and the chart directs you to possible causes for your symptoms.

This sounds a lot more serious than an affair/midlife crisis/ or drug use. I'd stop entertaining those theories and rule out the onset of what could be mental illness. Has Wolf weighed in on this thread?

My only experience with sudden unexplainable personality shift came many years ago when I was dating a sweetheart of a girl who suddenly turned into this suspicious paranoid bitch. It precipitated our breakup. About a year later I was reading an article on birth control pills and it described as a possible side effect all the personality changes she had undergone. I realized then that these same changes coincided with her going on the pill. At the time I didn't put two and two together and she didn't see any change in her behaviour or demeanor.

You may have to get someone from her camp into your camp, but as we, and you've, said before: She is worth it.

This may sound extreme and I am not being a smartass here but you could have her committed. I'd look into it first, but sometimes a person who insists that they are fine, when they are not fine, needs someone to step in for them in the decision making arena.

e.g. you'd take her car keys from her if she was obviously wasted even if she swore she wasn't, right?

She may thank you later, she may not ever forgive you. Maybe you need to take that gamble.

Done! Don't mean to be overly mysterious, but since this is all pure conjecture on my part, I figure people may prefer to read it in private. WARNING! I am NOT a real doctor! LOL! Yes, let us hope Wolf weighs in with further suggestions, also. She DOES work in the field which I do not.

Alas, Foot to the third power, it is very hard to have someone committed against their will these days. You must prove that they are a danger to either themselves or others - a physical danger. Doesn't sound like Mrs. L would qualify.

She has to be dangerous, not just wacky.

Please check laws in your own jurisdiction. Some let a doc or cop get the eval done just on the basis of their professional judgment.

The birth control pill idea has merit.

Mari - that BPD info you sent me looks pretty similar to what i am seeing here. i'm no pro so i don't know what that means though. i'll mention it to the doc, but our appointment isn't for two weeks yet and all kinds of bad crap can happen between now and then.

she got home at 2 last night, my sister driving her. apparently, she was going above and beyond trying to get attention from any random guy last night. when she got home she was bitching that she has lost her ability to judge age. i asked why and she says that she thought everybody at the bar was her age, but they were all 22-27. i then pointed out the obvious - most 34 year olds aren't hanging out in cheesy danceclubs until 2 in the morning. she was a little pissed.

she apparently had a blast and says that she needs to go dancing with the girls at least twice a month. uh, no thanks. i want to be married to an adult, not a someone trying to be 21.

Even if I were a Doc, I couldn't diagnose someone at a distance, Lookout. My suggestion is that you google the term and follow the links I gave you. There's lots of info out there on the topic. A great book is "I Hate you Don't Leave me!" You know her best, and if your research convinces you that this might be the difficulty, there ARE things that you can do to deal with her more effectively. Good luck!