Well I spent Monday and Tuesday at orientation for my son at UCO (University of Central Oklahoma). He stayed the night in the dorms, and I went home and came back the next morning. The place is huge and in between his classes/meetings I wandered around the campus to trying to get an idea of all what they had to offer. His major is going to be forensic science. But the campus is only about 40 or so miles from home, so it's not too difficult for him to visit us on the weekends when he wants to.

Interestingly we got presented with a power point on students rights and how now that most of the students are 18, mine included, they don't have to share their records/grades/schedule with their parents. They can limit what they will allow college staff to share with us if one of us called requesting something. So yeah his mother is going to love that if restricts that information from her. She already isn't accepting he's a man now. But as a final task, the student panel gave us supplies and had each parent write a letter to their son/daughter. They were going to mail it to the students, something like 6 weeks into the the semester as a pep talk.

Yesterday I went for a checkup with my cardiologist and with an increase in one of my medicines when I saw him in July has corrected the flutter and brought my heart rate down, that he just had me stay on the doses of medicine I'm on now and see him again in 6 months. So that was a relief because if the medicines didn't correct the mistake we'd have consider a surgical ablation.

Finally, we are in a bad spot in our marriage and I honestly not sure we can work through it. It's been this way for a few years now but it just seems to be getting worse. I don't know if getting accused of having an affair with a female coworker is part of some dementia setting in with her bipolar or this is her pushing me away and trying to get it to be my fault we have failed. I've given her every chance to prove her accusations as true. She has access to all of my electronic and communication devices. I even offered to take her to my job and she could snoop in my work computer. We are just two people living in the same house. For the most part we get along and are cordial and helpful to each other. There's just no marriage, no intimacy, no nothing that should be in a marriage. We've had the discussion of a separation on three separate occasions. But with our oldest starting college on the 22nd and our youngest being such a momma's boy, I don't want to punish them for our problems and would like to keep up the farce.

However it is getting to me. I've had panic/anxiety attacks a lot more frequently, most recently the last three nights in a row to the point I had to take a quarter of one of my wife's klonopin. Which I know is safe as she's given it to me before in similar situations. I don't know what to do honestly. And I apologize to not post in here much lately and then dump all this $hit on ya'll. But I don't have anyone much else to talk to other than my wife. You guys and gals are all I really have to bounce things off of.

Sorry to hear about the bad s**t you have going on right now, adamwarlock2099. Feel free to dump here anytime you need to, if you need to. Stay strong, my friend, and I hope that things start to ease for you in the near future.

I've gone through similar issues, with my relationship, except accusations of an affair, because she knows better.  My wife suffers from clinical depression and anxiety and may be bipolar (though never formally diagnosed) and I have had a hard time dealing with all of the baggage that comes with it.  She also has a more fluid moral compass and I am more definite in my definition of right and wrong and being responsible for oneself.  I have been through a lot of stress with her over overdosing on her medication (especially benzodiazepines) and she had to be hospitalized for about 3 days or so, after going into withdrawal, after she used up her prescription and couldn't get a renewal for more than 10 days.  I came home from work to find her in a fetal position, shivering and forced her to go to the ER.  They were concerned about protein breakdown and kept her for a few days.  She eventually had to be taken off that stuff.  She would lie to me about losing her pills and being short and I would try to contact her doctor, who she said wouldn't return her calls.  She also lied about tapping my accounts, without my knowledge.  I would catch her in lies that were driven by her mental health.  I understood it; but, it didn't make it easier to deal with the chaos she would create and I would have to sort out.  We went from a couple to a care giver and patient.  needless to say, I didn't feel very affectionate, over time and found it hard to fake it, as I am a very honest person.  We drifted pretty badly apart.  We have cohabitated, but I have been sleeping in another room, mostly because I can't sleep with her needing noise going in the background and I started sleeping on the couch, for some quiet.

Just very recently, we got pretty nasty with each other; but, the next day I apologized for telling her to go F herself and we talked for a while, honestly.  She is in a bad mental state and in chronic physical pain, from degenerating discs in her back and severe arthritis.  She drinks wine to help numb the pain, because she can't be trusted with painkillers.  The wine makes her depression worse.  We came to an understanding and I can't see leaving her to all of that, as her family isn't in her life, by their choice.  I still find that I care more about her safety and health than my own peace and I just have to channel the stress and frustration, at times.  I am able to talk to my boss, as we have similar backgrounds and attitudes to things , and I am able to unload a bit, when I need to.  

That is my best advice, aside from marital counseling to try to mediate things and communicate better; but, that also requires trust.  Apart from that, personal counseling can help with the psychological burden, whether it is a therapist, clergy, or just a friend.

On the other side of things, such as the university, I recall when I started.  I actually had to go a week early, for NROTC orientation and training.  Not quite Plebe Week at the Academy, but similar concept.  The course-related stuff was small potatoes.  Thing was, I wasn't 18 until half way through my first semester, thanks to a November birthday.  My parents had to actually sign a waiver for my NROTC Scholarship.  My grades weren't shared with them, until I did so; but, they also weren't paying for college.  However, I always shared my grades and they knew I was working hard.  They were both teachers (my mom gave it up after having us) and had instilled good study practices and a curiosity for learning.  They also, out of necessity of two people working, taught us to be self reliant, relatively young; so, I could take care of myself, at that point.  Home was only about and hour away, since I went to the Univ of Illinois, in Champaign-Urbana and we lived near Decatur.  They weren't far, if needed.  I confess I did get pretty badly homesick, at one point, as a freshman and my dad had come over to visit, one Saturday.  We had lunch then visited for a while and then I just felt like I needed to go home for the rest of the weekend and he understood.  We drove home that evening and he brought me back the next evening, for Monday classes.  He had lived in a boarding house, when he went to school there, while my grandparents were 3 hours to the south.  So, he was much further away, in his day.  However, he had an aunt and uncle not too far away, in an emergency.  Care packages were always a good thing and we would talk on the phone, quite a bit (pre-e-mail).  Regular contact is always a good help, for the mental state.

Don't know if any of that helps; but, take care.

Thank you for the sentiments sent my way.  I echo your cautions about using another's medications, especially benzodiazepines, like klonopin.  That was the medication that my wife abused and had to be taken completely off it.  That was  some time ago.  A later practicioner put her on Fetzima, a more recent medication, for her depression and it has worked quite well at stabilizing her depression, compared to before.  There were times I had to literally pick her up off the floor, crying.  Mentally, she is far more stable than she was and has been for several years now.  The problem is her physical body, which is letting her down, which affects her moods.  She is very limited in what she can do, having to spend her time lying on her side to relieve pressure on her back.  However, she found an outlet in making music videos, with software and images she got online and has posted them on Youtube, under the name Prog/Fusion Princess....



She's got a 1000+ subscribers, which amazes her.

Her laptop just died on her; but, I had the funds tucked away and got her a new one; so, hopefully, she'll be able to get back to things.

Still, you deal with things the best you can and lean on help, when it is needed.  It has taught me a lot about myself, as I have found I get very calm and focused, in a crisis.  Some of it is definitely my naval training, as you drill in catastrophes and you learn to make quick decisions.  We've been to the ER several times and I just kind of kick into crisis-management mode, remaining calm to try to calm her down and just deal with what is in front of us and help the docs do what they need to.  I have spent long hours, not able to physically contribute thing beyond just keeping her calm and pointed to the positive.

We haven't had anything like that, for a long time, though.

I just try to follow the example of my late uncle.  My aunt had MS and it slowly debilitated her and he had to do more and more for her, plus his job with the phone company and tend his farm.  He had help from my cousins, but he just quietly bore the burdens and did what was necessary, until her death.  He then found new love and happiness and they had a good time, until his body gave out, with age.  He always had a smile and a joke and never took life more seriously than was necessary.  I try to do the same and offer up barb (my wife) a joke, when she needs it.  When we were first dating, we were fixing some pizzas, at her place and she was putting some stuff in a dishwasher and dropped some cutlery and I just quipped, "Gravity a little strong today?"  It was an old joke; but, she fell on the floor laughing.  We've had a lot of moments like that, and they outweigh the times where I had to be calm for her.

I was sorta kinda unofficially engaged three times in my life, once to a woman who wanted her kids covered by my state employees' health insurance, twice to women who turned out to be bat-shit crazy. Not to make light of adam or cody's marriage woes (I wish them both nothing but the best possible outcome), but their problems make me glad I never went through with any of them.

Cei-U!
I summon the bullets I dodged!

My wife is definitely more emotional and that was a point when we tried counseling. I am more logical and can detach myself more from the emotion of the situation. At the same time, I have a temper and it can go off with the right trigger. Not constantly, but certain things will set it off, like people speaking to me like I am stupid (usually in a work context), injustice, and condescension.

She also has a family history for mental health issues and alcoholism, which affects her tolerance for medications, so they are less effective. In her youth, she went to a concert and took a hit off a joint that she believes was laced with PCP, as she had hallucinations and a severe episode. Just listening to anecdotal evidence, there seems to be a correlation between drug use and mental health disorders, though you can't really say which way it works, whether the drug experimentation altered the brain chemistry to create the mental health issues or whether the mental health issues worked hand in hand with the drug use. She wasn't a major pothead; but, that specific incident greatly affected her.

From my perspective, society hasn't done a very good job by women, from childhood on and I think that is part of why they seem to suffer a disproportionate level of mental health issues (or appear to), though I think men manifest it differently, due to how society treats and conditions us.