This is starting to feel abusive

Long post.

My (30M) husband and partner (30M) has some form of BP. I love him so much and he can be such a wonderful light in my life in good moments and so supportive, but I am at a loss for what to do and at this point I am scared.

He is not in treatment and afaik has refused treatment all his life. Throughout our relationship he has admitted to having BP but chalks everything up to “I am just a dramatic person”. I don’t know the details around what kind of BP or anything like that.

We lived together before for almost a year before we broke up. It got very ugly. I went into therapy and then got back together with him thinking things would be different this time since I was better at communication. I had also successfully quit drinking alcohol which was very positive.

Fast forward, and I am now drinking alcohol again which I didn’t want, and I’ll blame this one on him since he is a very heavy drinker (1 bottle of wine per night is minimum), and I started again in response to one of his “mood episodes”.

Honestly the examples are so many I don’t know where to begin. I feel like it happens on a weekly basis. My life feels like constant chaos and state of emergency. I have stress rashes all over my body.

I’ve never been spoken to in the way he has spoken to me. And he is then shocked if I tell him it hurts my feelings. He essentially accuses me of not loving him and has a tendency to weaponize things I have said in confidence and moments of emotional vulnerability. When I have stopped talking to him in vulnerable moments, he takes that as further evidence that I am building walls or planning to leave him. He makes these wild and fairly delusional connections that paint me like some villain in a conspiracy to ruin his life.

Oftentimes, he will also bring up that “oh but I’m just bipolar, I’m just delusional, my feelings aren’t valid” despite my never having said anything of the sort. It’s almost like he’s talking to his parents and other people in his life that have invalidated him, but where I’m just a lightning rod in the room.

Then he calms down and tells me he loves me more than anything and I’m the last thing he wants to hurt.

I have ADHD myself and my trauma response when I get yelled at or when I’m in emotionally volatile situations is to shut down completely. As in, I am unable to form sentences. This tends to escalate things since he says he interprets my silence as him being right in all of his accusations and the fact I don’t stand up for myself means that I must agree with what he just said.

The way he erupts and goes into what I call a “reactive” state sends me into survival mode and impacts my ability to function for several days at a time afterwards. Then he asks me why I’m so negative and in a bad mood all the time, saying it hurts him to see me be so hard on myself. Which I am, I have my own problems, but at least I’ve tried therapy and was in a really good place before moving back in with him.

He seems completely unaware that his emotional volatility impacts me, and it’s as though he doesn’t even remember half the shit he says to me during an “episode”.

I am also unemployed after a layoff and struggling hard in a tough job market. But I notice my focus has now had to shift from trying to secure employment and doing whatever is necessary for our marriage and for myself individually, to managing my domestic life. I have serious credit card debt I’ve had to put on a debt management plan. I have serious student loan debt, and I rely on financial help from my family who isn’t wealthy.

By contrast, he is financially reckless. He got a collection letter from the IRS that he just waves away when I tried to show it to him. So now I’m just waiting on the inevitable crisis that’ll inevitably become my problem when they start garnishing his wages.

I have tried for months to help him stick to a budget to no avail. His own family is wealthy, but he gives them an impression that we are doing just fine. He could literally be just fine with some planning, and he agreed to financially support us while I worked on securing new employment.

This is impacting me so much since I have to use my limited resources to make up for his lack of planning, since it creates a crisis every time money “magically” runs out. Our combined rent is about 1/3 of his income, so honestly he would be fine if he practiced a little financial discipline especially since I contribute a lot in terms of groceries and household expenses. Yet he claims he can’t afford the rent and uses that as an argument that he is the one providing for us.

My breaking point was when he recently went on a trip out of state that he couldn’t afford. I bought him a return flight because I felt I had to. He had panic attacks daily that only seemed to ease when I transferred money to him (that I took from my debt payments). However, he didn’t like the flight itinerary since it had a layover and flew in to the wrong airport, and went and bought his own $300 flight home anyway. Mind you, his (and our) rent is usually in arrears.

I have been putting up emotional walls to protect myself for a while now, which is making things worse. He fears me leaving him more than he seems to notice or care that I may have no choice in the matter if this doesn’t improve, since I fear this could destroy my life.

I contacted a DV hotline since I don’t know what to do and I need to know if I’m in an abusive marriage.

Thanks for listening. What do I do?