Expert: Jennifer - 7/20/2010

Question
Our daugher is living separate from us but we are supporting her. She has been trying for 5 years to earn an associates degree and dropped out one semester before finishing. She is on medication. She just can't seem to finish anything.She is also letting her unemployed abusive boyfriend live with her. In other words, we are supporting both of them.  My husband and I are seeing a counselor to try to help us deal with this. She suggests a tough love approach and cutting her off so she has to live with the consequences. How does tough love work with bi-polar illness? I mean, does it help or hurt?  She'll be out on the street and won't be able to buy her meds. That is my main worry. I can see where tough love would help just a lazy irresponsible kid but how do we deal with the mental illness part of this? Are we just 'enabling' her? More like enabling her boyfriend. Don't know how to separate the two. Any advice?

Answer
I'd only consider the tough love approach if your daughter was abusing drugs or alcohol. Tough love isn't really intended to motivate lazy and irresponsible individuals, and is an option of last resort. Having bipolar disorder can cause difficulties in completing tasks and staying on track to achieve goals regardless of whether or not the person is taking medication; meds only reduce the symptoms experienced, they're not an instant or total fix, and there's no way to cure bipolar.

However, you shouldn't have to support her unemployed abusive boyfriend either.  Before trying the tough love route, you should sit down with her and give her a choice:

a.) She can continue to receive your financial support but you will not be supporting him, so if she wants your help then he needs to find somewhere else to live and support himself.  

or

b.) she can continue to live with him, but you won't be paying her living expenses any more.  You don't have to give her cash to make sure that she has her meds - you can pay for them in person yourself to make sure that she doesn't decide to spend the money otherwise when you expected it to be used for her meds specifically.

There are a lot of ways that you can assist your daughter without giving her cash; gift cards that can't be redeemed for their cash value, paying for items yourself and then taking them to her.  And if she decides to continue living with the boyfriend and you want to make sure that she stays on her meds - I'd only pay for that and nothing else.

Have you asked her about why she decided to drop out when she had only a semester left before she would have finished her associates degree?  It is quite possible that her boyfriend has created a home environment a lot like a prison - he could be acting out so that she can't study or do homework, or making things so difficult that she is reluctant to leave the house for class because she doesn't know what he will be like when she gets home.  One of the main reasons that someone being abused has a difficult time leaving and staying away from their abuser is because that person has dismantled their emotional support system so that they will be entirely dependent on them and easily manipulated to see everyone else as problems rather than seeing the abuser as the problem they are. It will be hard, but you can't walk away entirely from your daughter - financial support and emotional support aren't the same thing though.  You can give one without the other, and she is going to need people that love her and who will be supportive, even protective, if she is ever going to be able to leave this guy. You don't want to push her towards a set action because unless she's the one who decides she should do things like get a restraining order, etc - he could use that as 'proof' that he's the only one who has her best interests at heart and everyone else is just trying to break them up.  Your counselor may mean well, but tough love is a drastic step - unless she knows something that you haven't shared with me, I don't see it as being a good idea.  Your daughter should see a counselor on her own, and not the same one that you and your husband go to.  Arrange for a time where you can talk with her on her own so that the boyfriend can't do anything that may manipulate her to his benefit and discuss the choice that she needs to make and see where that takes things.  You may be surprised in a positive manner by her response.

Let me know if there's anything else I can help you with.