Still, I wonder about how things might have gone if I'd told her like six months after we started dating, instead of like a month after. If she'd had enough time to see that I'm basically extremely stable and high-functioning IRL.
I know it's useless to think about this, but I do. Something else to talk about on Thursday.
Thank you for talking with us about this, I know the last time you did you later edited your post because it was a risk you weren't ready to take. Mental health awareness is light years away from what it once was, but society is still so ableist, especially with mental health.
If you had told her 6 months later it wouldn't have mattered. People already covered the deception thing, so I'm not going to rehash that with you other than to say you can't deceive the people you love, it destroys both you during the process and them as it's going on, and when they finally learn the truth. I can talk to you about where she was coming from when she left you at a personal level, though.
I don't know if bipolarity ran in your family or not (I believe they think it is partly genetic?), and please don't feel the need to tell me if it does, but it does in mine and the bipolarity of one of my parents absolutely destroyed my family growing up. I love that parent and am so grateful for everything they gave me--even if my behaviors and actions have often indicated otherwise--but they were also never as committed to treating their disease as you are with yours, AO, (times were different for mental health care then, and I have no right to judge them even if things weren't, I merely state this as a matter of fact) and it ruined us all so terribly. My sibling sees multiple shrinks and support groups and my other parent is basically a recluse waiting to die.
If you've gone through that with someone you love it's such a hard thing to face doing again because love is unconditional. I know I'm at ground zero with my romantic life now and this is just pipe dream talk (more like "winning the lottery" wishful thinking, if I'm being frank), but when I had my life on track for a wife and a possible family of my own, I was always utterly terrified that I'd have a bipolar child myself someday because I'm not sure I could handle loving another bipolar person, no matter how well it was treated, or how great a person they ended up being. There's just too much pain and memories it would dredge up and I knew as a parent I'd have to eat all those awful feelings inside me to love. I know that you had a different formation of the disease than her parent did, but you can't know how triggering just the word bipolar is if you've experienced it bad and inescapably, or at least I really hope you don't know.
I know that you feel like you've been wronged by all this, and I won't dispute that the cards in life you've been dealt aren't the fairest, but I'm going to give you some real talk: even if you think you might have been growing to love this girl, you didn't love her. If you did love her, letting her go so that should could be happy and not constantly triggered or anxious by her past by being romantically involved with you would have been a difficult choice for you to make, but you would have done it in the end, and you wouldn't be so angry that she's on the track to being happy now (hopefully). Like I said, love's unconditional, even if it's unreciprocated by those we love.
People have been beating you up a lot itt and elsewhere at The Bore lately but you're a stand up fella for telling her about your own medical history so early in your relationship when you learned about her childhood. She didn't have the right to know your medical history that early on in your relationship, and it didn't matter enough to her to ask about it up front, but you could sense that she needed to know and you let her know. In the end that decision put you through a lot of pain and memories you regret, but at least you weren't a coward or a liar, and those are character traits you can always build from to be the best person you can be, no matter what else you've got working against you. One of the things I dread the most about dating again is having to do the same thing because unlike you I am a coward and a liar.
Real Talk Express now departing Karakand Station. All aboard.
