When Do We Have Empathy for the Mentally Ill?
My ex-grilfriend married herself in one day, after I accompanied her to a hospital for her &quot;severe insomnia&quot; problem, without even telling me.<p>Out of sadness and anger, I cut off all of our contacts. A month later, she emailed me saying her psychiatrist said she had suicidal thoughts, and she wanted to see me. I went to see her immediately out of worries. That&#x27;s the first time for the past 3 years I felt that she was not normal. For example, she was extremely talkative and she jumped between different topics that don&#x27;t even have any connections. I knew that she had a history of depression for 10 years. But I don&#x27;t know if it was a mis-diagnosis or her depression had developed into bipolar. She said her marriage decision was made during her maniac episode. She only loved me. But she decided to stay in the wrong marriage, because she couldn&#x27;t punish her husband for her wrong decision. After making sure she didn&#x27;t have the suicidal thoughts, I left.<p>I started to read about bipolar and learnt that during its maniac episode, a patient trends to make high risky decisions that he&#x2F;she would regret afterwards, including spending lots of money, and having affairs.<p>And then after a month, she wanted to see me again, for a farewell, because she had to leave the country. She told me she had an affair with another guy and got pregnant. Again, she said she only had loved me, but she made wrong decisions during her maniac episodes. She said I could forget about her because she had turned into a different person, not the same girlfriend I ever had. Even I had read wikipedia and even a website about bipolar infidelity, it was really hard for me to accept everything. Again, out of anger, I told her I despised her and would never trust her. This time she blocked my contacts.<p>I don&#x27;t know how I should accept and understand her, forgive her and help her. She mentioned that she wanted to leave me, because she knew I loved her, so she can&#x27;t become my burden. That deeply saddened me.<p>For the past a few months, I have trapped myself in a loop of thinking about everything happened and feeling being used and then all the nice time we had together. I struggled a lot, not knowing if I should pick up the phone.