Betrayed by Bipolar

On Monday, February 24, 2020, I found out that my bipolar girlfriend of over eight years slept with a guy I thought was my buddy, back in August or September of 2016. When she told me about it, she tried to make it seem like it wasn’t a big deal. “I have a confession to make,” she said, “when we broke up in 2016, me and Dumas (not his real name) fooled around a little.”

I felt that I immediately went into shock. “What?”

“I hit rock bottom. I spiraled out of control and my bipolar kicked in. I had the stereotypical symptoms, depression, and promiscuity, I guess. I’m sorry. I know that I’m only telling you this for my own selfish reason. He’s been holding it over my head for the past three and a half years. He keeps threatening to tell you if I stop talking to him. He calls me a whore or a slut when he gets angry with me and I try blocking him and then he threatens to tell you what happened. Today, he commented on your Facebook post. And, I just can’t take it anymore.” She continued, “I’m sorry but I didn’t cheat on you, we weren’t together at the time.”

“Yeah, because YOU broke up with ME!” I said angrily. She broke up with me because she believed that I was cheating on her with a female friend of mine. “I can’t believe that you could do that to me. I trusted you.” I trusted her 100%. She would go have drinks with him, while I was at work. But I never felt threatened by him. Dumas was a loser. Well, at least until my girlfriend made him feel like a winner. Anyway, he had poor hygiene and dressed like a slob. He didn’t have a job and lived with his parents.

“Didn’t you hear what I said?” she yelled as if there was any justification for what she did. “He was harassing me! After we broke up I hit rock bottom. I was suicidal and drunk. I tried calling you but you blocked me and I was so angry at you. I wanted to hurt you.”

“Well, congratulations. You succeeded,” I said through tears that were streaming down my face, pouring down to my nose and lips.

“So, I called him over,” she continued as if she didn’t hear what I just said, “it was just a booty call. I’m so sorry. I know I told you for selfish reasons and I will accept the consequences. Feel free to ask me anything you want. Now is the time.”

“Was he the only one?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“I already answered you. Is there anything else you want to know?” she asked.

“Not right now,” I answered.

“Well, this is your chance.”

The next morning I drove to Dumas’ parents’ house and confronted him about the Facebook post from the day before. I told him to leave my girlfriend alone. I told him not to post anything about her or anything that could be taken as harassment towards her on any social media. I told him to ignore us if he ever saw us again. I told him that neither of us care about him and that he could just disappear.

As I started walking towards my car, I heard him say, “Do you know what happened?”

I turned around. I saw this stupid grin on his face. I said, “Yeah. I do know what happened.”

Dumas dropped his head and his shoulders as if giving up. I don’t know if he was hoping that I didn’t know, so I would break up with my girlfriend, but I know that it felt as if he thought that he no longer had any chance of being with my girlfriend again.

“It was three years ago. Now, get over it and forget it,” I told him and left.

I tried hanging myself three days later. Luckily, I didn’t tie the belt onto the closet rod correctly and it came undone under my weight within seconds.

Months before finding out about my girlfriend’s betrayal. I had bought her tickets to see her favorite musician, Dave Matthews, in concert. The concert was on Saturday, February 29, 2021. Five days after finding out. We drove out to Phoenix for the concert. I was still very much out of it. Everything felt surreal. It still does, to be honest. That night, after the concert, my girlfriend fell asleep quickly. I didn’t. I didn’t sleep at all that night. I kept thinking about her being with that idiot. I went over the past three and a half years, recognizing red flags that only appeared in hindsight. I was up for about 36 hours before I finally got drunk enough to sleep.

On the drive home the day after the concert, I said to my girlfriend, “I love you so much and I don’t want to lose you. This happened three and a half years ago and we weren’t together. You were off your medication. I am willing to try to make it work despite this. Are you willing to try making it work?”

My girlfriend nodded. Tears filling her eyes.

“Okay. But before we can even start working on this relationship, I need to know that nothing else will come up in the future that might cause this kind of damage to our relationship. Is there anything else I need to know?”

My girlfriend started crying. “Remember when you asked me if Dumas was the only one? I lied.”

“What? Who else?”

“Penjay.”

“Penjay? What the fuck? He’s married!” I lost it. I pulled the car over to the shoulder of the freeway and started pounding my fists on the steering wheel.

“I’m sorry.”

“I trusted you! You fucked the only two guys that I was okay with you hanging out with! You assured me that I had nothing to worry about with them. And you fucked them both! I can’t take anymore right now. I don’t want to hear anything from you the rest of the trip. Please go to sleep or put on your earbuds and let me just concentrate on the road.”

We got home. I decided to drink some beers and grill. Grilling and drinking are coping skills for me. Of course, when I got drunk I yelled at my girlfriend about her betraying me.

I tried hanging myself again the next afternoon. This time I stopped because I heard someone walking upstairs and I was afraid my girlfriend would see me trying to kill myself.

I keep thinking about my girlfriend with those guys. Even though I’ve known for a year and a half. And even though it happened five years ago. I still go over everything that happened before she broke up with me in 2016 and everything that has happened after we got back, up to when she told me about it.

I feel like I’m partly to blame because I let her quit taking her Lithium and let her hang out with those idiots. It was early in 2016 when my girlfriend told me that she was going to stop taking her medication. I asked her if she thought that was a good idea.

“I’ve done it before. I know what I’m doing. I’ll be fine,” was her response.

It didn’t take very long after quitting her medication to see that she wasn’t fine. She pushed away all of her female friends.

I had started performing at a weekly open mic. That’s where I met Dumas and Penjay. I would go every Wednesday at 9 pm. I would always stop at my girlfriend’s house to spend an hour with her before going to the open mic. One night she said, “I wish you wouldn’t go to those open mics and that you would just stay here.”

“Baby, why don’t you come to the open mic with me?” I asked her.

“No, that’s your thing. Don’t listen to me. Have fun.”

The following week when I was at her house before the open mic, my girlfriend cried because she didn’t have any friends anymore. “I wish I had friends to hang out with.”

I again invited her to come to the open mic with me, “Baby, come to the open mic. Try to make new friends there.” This time she took me up on my invite.

A few weeks later, I stopped at my girlfriend’s house right after work. She was sitting on her front porch smoking a cigarette and texting on her phone. I saw her smile and laugh. “What’s so funny, baby?” I asked.

She answered, “Oh, it’s just Penjay acting stupid.”

“Penjay? Why are you texting Penjay?”

“You told me to make friends at the open mics,” she said.

“Yeah, but I meant with females, not with the guys,” I told her.

“There aren’t any females at the open mics. Besides, it’s just Penjay. You know him.”

“That’s not true, baby. There are females there. The bartender is female.” Early on in our relationship, my girlfriend asked me to delete all females from my phone. She deleted all males from hers. So, I said, “Okay, so, we can text and talk to people of the opposite sex now?”

She responded, “You do what you want. I can’t tell you what to do.”

“Yes, you can. You did tell me what to do. You wanted me not to talk to females and now you’re talking to guys.”

“It’s just Penjay. He’s your friend.”

“Okay, baby, then I’m going to start talking to females again.”

It was me talking to females that caused my girlfriend to believe that I was cheating on her. I told her I wasn’t. I never even hung out with a female alone face to face. I only talked with them through text, IM, and phone calls. My girlfriend on the other hand started going to have beers and coffee with Penjay and Dumas.

When she broke up with me, my girlfriend put me on blast through social media. All of our Facebook friends knew that we had broken up. I assume that this is why Penjay decided to shoot his shot and go to my girlfriend’s house to “console” her over our break-up. He showed up at her house with a fucking Starbucks and ended up fucking her.

I have to admit that I’m still not sure that our relationship will survive this. I really do love my girlfriend a lot. I thought she was the perfect girlfriend before I found out. She’s beautiful. She’s supportive. She’s loving. I love her body. She enjoys pleasing me for the most part. I try to accept that this happened because she is bipolar and stopped taking her medication, but that shouldn’t give her a free pass either. She’s on medication now, but they make her sleep a lot and lower her sex drive.

She doesn’t initiate sex very much anymore. It hurts me that she doesn’t. I know it might not be fair, but I feel that if she was able to initiate sex with those two idiots to hurt me, then she should be able to initiate sex with me to make me feel loved. It also hurts me when she rejects my advancements. I think, “Why couldn’t she have said ‘no’ that easily to those idiots?”

I read that, on average, it takes a betrayed partner 18 months to 2 years for them to get over an affair. I’m now at the 18-month mark and I still cry to myself every day. I hope that something in my thought process changes within the next 6 months to make me accept my girlfriend’s betrayal and move past it because right now, I feel like the only way that I can get over it is to find my female versions of Dumas and Penjay so that I can hurt her the way she hurt me.