My wife and I married when we were 30 and 37, respectively, about three years ago. She possesses so many admirable qualities -- high intelligence, intellectual curiosity, creativity, and has put herself through law school and cultivated a moderately successful legal practice. At the time we married, she had already been diagnosed with bipolar disorder type II, a fact she did not conceal from me.
She diligently takes her anticonvulsant and antidepressant medications and, unlike many bipolar sufferers, has never wavered in her commitment to following rigorously the advice of her psychiatrist. However, in the last year or so, our marriage has deteriorated steadily and markedly. She has suffered bouts of depression, which her doctor has tried to address by changing the cocktail of meds prescribed to her. She was never very domestic to begin with, but now she almost never cooks, cleans, or buys groceries. I do those things myself (we both work full-time). She is extremely untidy, but I've hired a maid to clean the house once a week in an effort to mitigate the depressing effect this uncleanliness has on my own peace of mind.
In the last nine months, she's been spending increasing time with a bipolar support group. At first, I observed that she almost returned from their weekly meetings having drunk a couple of glasses of wine. Now, as our marital problems have deepened, the weekly meetings have been supplemented by Saturday parties and other outings, and when she comes home from these, I can tell she's been drinking. She used to drink more when she was younger, but in the first two years of our marriage, she mostly kept to a healthy regimen of an occasional glass of wine with dinner; there were occasions when she drank too much, but these were few and far between. What I'm getting at is that, inexplicably, these bipolar meetings are having a deleterious effect on her mental health. One would assume that bipolar sufferers are at least rational enough to understand that alcohol and bipolar (not to mention bipolar meds) are a bad combination. Instead, they act as her enablers.
I'm now 40 (this is my first marriage), and I've expressed repeatedly to her my desire to have children. Not only has she always maintained that she wanted to have children, but she has even mentioned the number -- three. She's even told me that were it not for having children, she might not have gotten married at all. Yet every time I bring up the issue of starting a family, she has expressed reasons why we should wait. These reasons range from the absurd -- "I don't want to grow up" and "the house lacks enough rooms" (in fact, it has three large bedrooms) -- to the more credible (she fears losing the security blanket of her meds during pregnancy).
I'm finding it harder to go on like this. I love my wife and know that the mental anguish of bipolar disorder can be worse than any physical pain, but I wanted more out of life than her pet rabbit and teddy bears. Maybe that's selfish; maybe I should take it like a man, but I never thought that wanting to have children was selfish.
I'm really at wit's end. We've already broached the topic of divorce, something neither one of us would ever have thought possible. Sometimes divorce seems inevitable, and yet I wonder whether there's anything -- and if so, what -- I've left untried.
What am I doing wrong? What should I try? Please advise.