My husband is currently in the middle of his second psychotic episode. We have been together for 16 years, but he only had his first episode in his mid thirties, about a year after a brain operation and also just after we had decided to move away to work internationally.
His is clearly psychotic again, and I am not sure how to get him help, as he can present himself as rational enough to avoid hospital but refuses to take medication. My problem is that I can cope with just about any delusion, including pretty weird ones, except the current delusion (he had this last time) that I am somehow trying to hurt him. It makes him suspicious and angry with me, and he won’t come near me or show any affection or love. He talks a lot about leaving me, and says I control him and that he just wants his autonomy. I am not allowed to say anything to him, and he will not explain exactly what it is that I have apparently done, or why he thinks I am trying to kill him. I am supposed to just blindly accept his lack of love and his sudden desire in the last week to throw away sixteen years of love.
I just don’t know what to do. I can’t find anything online that will help, and all stories seem so bleak. I love my husband more than anything in the world, and this week has been a horrendous rollercoaster of grief for me, for the loss of the loving person that he was before. He hasn’t been diagnosed as schizophrenic, but as this is the second psychotic episode, I imagine that he is.
I don’t know what to do. I believe in marriage vows, but he doesn’t want to be with me. It just seems so unjust that he can throw away all our love, our history and our lives together based on a delusional belief that just is blatently not true. But if he isn’t being hospitalised, he will never take the medication.
Any advice? My heart is breaking here. I can’t stop crying.