The more I know, the more I know I don't know, but it really doesn't seem like people with mental illness are intentionally being fake when they behave one way in public and entirely different in private. Both "personalities" are totally real to them-it's why they lie so convincingly, they believe what they are saying is true.
Yes, part of bipolar, and really all mental illness, is the tendency to be easily deluded by one's own feelings. Telling a memory from an idea can be very difficult and when they seem obviously to be making it up as they go along, it is entirely possible that they believe they are remembering the facts.
You teach a young child that Mommy and Daddy and the man on the news are all real people, but Big Bird and Burt and Ernie are make-believe. Eventually they learn that George Washington and Abe Lincoln and Jesus are real people, too, but Santa Claus and Tom Sawyer and Harry Potter are storybook characters. Eventually, we all have a pretty good grasp of the difference-until a mental illness comes and takes that all away.
At one time Troy was convinced that he was born in Germany, though he couldn't explain what his parents would have been doing there. He's never been to Germany. His uncles went there in the war and brought back stories that he remembers and for a time, he remembered them as part of his life
instead of stories that he'd only heard. He didn't lie-he told the truth as he saw it, but it was not the historical truth.
So, when your husband sings, he may very well be that character who believes and feels what he is singing. When he is with other people, he becomes the person he needs to be with those people. Unfortunately, when he is alone with you, he may relax and let loose his demons. That doesn't mean one of those characters is more real than another-they are all very real. It does mean that he literally doesn't have himself all together. I guess it's just something I've had to get used to, so I have.
Don't take it personally, it's not about you-it never was and it never will be no matter what anyone
tells you so don't take responsibility that isn't yours to take.
I wish I could understand what I've done in learning to accept and cope. I seem to have some excellent coping skills-I know someone who has the tagline: "Blessed are the flexible, for they shall never be bent out of shape." I guess that's me.
I think this gets complicated in that even a person in full mania has control of their behavior, but they do not have control over their thought process or their belief system. So, yes, they can decide to run away from home and make all of the necessary arrangements—but they don’t have the thought process in place to decide if that is really a good course of action or not. They might be able to understand that what they are doing will upset you or that there is a down-side to what they have planned, but they may be missing the ability to weigh the pros and cons.
If you have a false belief, you will behave in a way that appears irrational to everyone around you, but is totally logical to you. Bipolar creates a whole false belief system. If you really believe you are “God’s gift to the opposite sex” then you will act out in ways that would be appropriate if that were true. The guy who actually uses the comb in his back pocket every chance he gets might be accused of thinking he’s “Brad Pitt” while the guy with bipolar may very well believe Brad Pitt thinks he’s him.
If you really believe that your spouse is out to hurt you, you will be defensive and lash out. It’s not an uncommon delusion in a person with bipolar when they learn that you want to change how they think—that’s pretty personal stuff. If you really love me, you won’t try to change who I am—which is tightly intertwined with how I think. See?
During the first few days after our oldest son was born, I had some really horrible dreams that seemed totally real. Troy is lucky he survived when I woke up believing he was a vampire. I snapped out of it when I was fully awake, but if I didn’t…it could have been a tough scene. (We only knew each other a week before the wedding, so parts of his identity were a mystery--maybe I wasn't as wrong as I thought.)
Maybe I have this all wrong, but it makes it make sense to me and it seems to work with my husband and also with my ex-brother-in-law (the runner). It even makes one girl I work with (bipolar 2) easier to understand. That’s my opinion.