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Unglued: A Bipolar Love Story
“My God, I had to figure this thing out. I loved my wife, and she was sick. But I needed help, too.”
Jeffrey Zuckerman’s harrowing five-year ride began months before his wife Leah was diagnosed with late-onset bipolar disorder. After thirty years of marriage, Jeff, a semiretired editor and a second-string catcher on a recreational softball team, nearly became unglued himself as the woman he loved endured an agonizing manic episode and severe depression. Struggling to manage his own self-care, Jeff needed to learn how to overcome the stigma, loneliness, and guilt that accompanied his wife’s battle with a mood disorder.
Unglued is a candid, funny, and refreshingly irreverent portrayal of the role a spouse takes in loving a partner with a mental illness. Intimate and ultimately hopeful, Jeff’s story chronicles the power of compassion, faith, and resilience in the survival of a marriage and a caregiver’s own well-being.
Jeffrey Zuckerman’s harrowing five-year ride began months before his wife Leah was diagnosed with late-onset bipolar disorder. After thirty years of marriage, Jeff, a semiretired editor and a second-string catcher on a recreational softball team, nearly became unglued himself as the woman he loved endured an agonizing manic episode and severe depression. Struggling to manage his own self-care, Jeff needed to learn how to overcome the stigma, loneliness, and guilt that accompanied his wife’s battle with a mood disorder.
Unglued is a candid, funny, and refreshingly irreverent portrayal of the role a spouse takes in loving a partner with a mental illness. Intimate and ultimately hopeful, Jeff’s story chronicles the power of compassion, faith, and resilience in the survival of a marriage and a caregiver’s own well-being.
338 pages, Paperback
First published July 17, 2020
16 people are currently reading
182 people want to read
About the author
Jeffrey Zuckerman
33 books17 followersJeffrey Zuckerman is digital editor of Music & Literature. His writing and translations have appeared in Best European Fiction, 3:AM Magazine, the Rumpus, and the Los Angeles Review of Books.
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
March 28, 2021
Memoirs have never been my thing. I've found them hard to read, especially when you need to slog through details of difficult childhoods or formative experiences that are slightly informative at best and neurotically self-centered at their worst. That's changed as I've worked to learn more about mental health after a diagnosis.
Unglued: A Bipolar Love Story by Jeff Zuckerman isn't a book I would have found on my own. Published by a company I can't find out much about on the Internet by an author who is not likely to be offered up by the Amazon algorithm, it's a bizarrely compelling and relentless self-centered narrative of what it's like to be the partner of someone dealing with a late-onset bipolar diagnosis.
Zuckerman's wife – called Leah in the book –started showing manic symptoms in her late 50s. Hitting the wall in your forties and beyond isn't that rare an experience, as coping mechanisms that have served you well through the years begin to breakdown. The distractions of a busy life ease up slightly as the pace eases.
"Leah was oblivious to her monstrous behavior," he writes. "She lacked insight, which I later learned is a measurable component of mental health illness and refers to one's cognition that something is wrong. That is what Leah lacked, all right: self-cognition. Her mind was broken."
Most manic memoirs offer a stream of stories about how someone acts when they are at their worst. Stories about mania are usually more interesting than the stories of the depressive side of manic depression because they involve things like spending tonnes of money on wildly stupid things and outlandish acts of recklessness that seemed reasonable at the time but flash big red warning lights of craziness to detached readers.
Those stories are told from a first-person perspective. You can get insight into what was going on in someone's mind, but you need to accept the narrator isn't a passive observer. The stories tend to focus on difficult but funny situations, incremental volatility leading to hospitalization, and the thought processes that occurred along the way. It's a delicate formula and can make for instructive reading from those suffering from the same disorder – it's oddly reassuring to hear stories that echo your own and help you realize you aren't the only person on the planet with a brain that works a certain way.
In Unglued: A Bipolar Love Story, I'm not a passive reader. I live on the other side of Zuckerman's predicament, a bipolar adult who came by his diagnosis late in life who still worries that every slight change of mood could once again derail my life.
That's probably why I felt the ache of discomfort as I made my way through the book. It's written with voice, and at times, the looseness of the humour chips away at the sympathy I might otherwise have felt as he described his fight to maintain his own sanity while trying to help his wife find hers.
Sometimes it's endearing. Other times it adds a level of cheek that hurts the narrative's authenticity. But this is not a bug. It's a feature. Zuckerman acknowledges his annoyance for reaching levels of frustration even he finds surprising. Leah doesn't have a borderline case – she's either full-on manic or in-bed depressed, and he's left to hold what's left of their life together. You can't blame a guy for looking for a few bright spots.
As Leah heads in for her first session of electroshock therapy, he turns his eye to the doctor's appearance.
"We met with the hospital psychiatrist, a Suzanne Somers clone, for an evaluation one week ahead of time and answers to our concerns," he wrote. "I had concerns all right, including what's up with all the gaudy makeup around your eyes?"
One of the things I complain about is that we are trying to normalize mental health conditions by sanitizing terrible diseases. Awareness campaigns centre on the need for self-care as if a warm bath and a call to a friend will cure the problems overwhelming hospitals and psych wards in countries worldwide.
Not so here. Zuckerman's decision to portray his wife as a secondary character brings clarity to the spousal experience at the expense of his wife's suffering. It feels cold and detached at times – the few moments of tenderness are far outweighed by his frustration, anger, and hopelessness.
That's not a criticism – you can see how it would be easy to stray into traditional bipolar memoir territory if he focused too much on what so many others have written so well about.
Still, Leah (and lack of Leah) is a jarring presence in the book. You get tastes of her behaviour from the email and text excerpts he provides. Still, Zuckerman shows solid restraint when explaining what she may have been thinking when she hit send.
"Six hours later Leah texted me the fucking store was fucking closing, but there was a fucking problem with her fucking Target credit card," he writes. "I don't know what the deal was on the Target card. I don't know why Leah was in St. Paul in the first place and not at the Target near our home in Minneapolis."
Instead, her presence hangs over every word in the book by her actions and their effect on Zuckerman. Like Robert Pirsig in Zen And The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, he takes to the wilderness to think about what it all means when things get to be too much (spoiler: mental health crises don't offer up many answers to these sort of questions).
He couch surfs, visits friends that live far, far away as he tries to work out how to keep loving someone who isn't giving you many reasons to stick around.
"Unusual behaviour tends to produce estrangement in others which tends to further the unusual behaviour and thus the estrangement in self-stoking cycles until some sort of climax is reached," Pirsig wrote in his treaty on mental health and meaning.
Zuckerman would disagree. His life seems to have stabilized by the time his editor finally cuts him off, but there's an alarming lack of closure in any tale of mental health. Drugs continue to improve, therapists get slightly better at their jobs each day. But a disease such as bipolar is relentless. It keeps anyone in its grip looking over their shoulder worrying that every good mood is a return to mania and every down day is going to lead to crippling depression.
"In short, Leah is the thriving embodiment of why those of us living with a person living with mental illness continue to hope for a better future in a realistic way," he writes.
Speaking for those of us on the crazy side of the ledger, we hope so too.
(Side note: I write about mental health at https://stevenladurantaye.substack.com and it would be great if you visited and subscribed).
Unglued: A Bipolar Love Story by Jeff Zuckerman isn't a book I would have found on my own. Published by a company I can't find out much about on the Internet by an author who is not likely to be offered up by the Amazon algorithm, it's a bizarrely compelling and relentless self-centered narrative of what it's like to be the partner of someone dealing with a late-onset bipolar diagnosis.
Zuckerman's wife – called Leah in the book –started showing manic symptoms in her late 50s. Hitting the wall in your forties and beyond isn't that rare an experience, as coping mechanisms that have served you well through the years begin to breakdown. The distractions of a busy life ease up slightly as the pace eases.
"Leah was oblivious to her monstrous behavior," he writes. "She lacked insight, which I later learned is a measurable component of mental health illness and refers to one's cognition that something is wrong. That is what Leah lacked, all right: self-cognition. Her mind was broken."
Most manic memoirs offer a stream of stories about how someone acts when they are at their worst. Stories about mania are usually more interesting than the stories of the depressive side of manic depression because they involve things like spending tonnes of money on wildly stupid things and outlandish acts of recklessness that seemed reasonable at the time but flash big red warning lights of craziness to detached readers.
Those stories are told from a first-person perspective. You can get insight into what was going on in someone's mind, but you need to accept the narrator isn't a passive observer. The stories tend to focus on difficult but funny situations, incremental volatility leading to hospitalization, and the thought processes that occurred along the way. It's a delicate formula and can make for instructive reading from those suffering from the same disorder – it's oddly reassuring to hear stories that echo your own and help you realize you aren't the only person on the planet with a brain that works a certain way.
In Unglued: A Bipolar Love Story, I'm not a passive reader. I live on the other side of Zuckerman's predicament, a bipolar adult who came by his diagnosis late in life who still worries that every slight change of mood could once again derail my life.
That's probably why I felt the ache of discomfort as I made my way through the book. It's written with voice, and at times, the looseness of the humour chips away at the sympathy I might otherwise have felt as he described his fight to maintain his own sanity while trying to help his wife find hers.
Sometimes it's endearing. Other times it adds a level of cheek that hurts the narrative's authenticity. But this is not a bug. It's a feature. Zuckerman acknowledges his annoyance for reaching levels of frustration even he finds surprising. Leah doesn't have a borderline case – she's either full-on manic or in-bed depressed, and he's left to hold what's left of their life together. You can't blame a guy for looking for a few bright spots.
As Leah heads in for her first session of electroshock therapy, he turns his eye to the doctor's appearance.
"We met with the hospital psychiatrist, a Suzanne Somers clone, for an evaluation one week ahead of time and answers to our concerns," he wrote. "I had concerns all right, including what's up with all the gaudy makeup around your eyes?"
One of the things I complain about is that we are trying to normalize mental health conditions by sanitizing terrible diseases. Awareness campaigns centre on the need for self-care as if a warm bath and a call to a friend will cure the problems overwhelming hospitals and psych wards in countries worldwide.
Not so here. Zuckerman's decision to portray his wife as a secondary character brings clarity to the spousal experience at the expense of his wife's suffering. It feels cold and detached at times – the few moments of tenderness are far outweighed by his frustration, anger, and hopelessness.
That's not a criticism – you can see how it would be easy to stray into traditional bipolar memoir territory if he focused too much on what so many others have written so well about.
Still, Leah (and lack of Leah) is a jarring presence in the book. You get tastes of her behaviour from the email and text excerpts he provides. Still, Zuckerman shows solid restraint when explaining what she may have been thinking when she hit send.
"Six hours later Leah texted me the fucking store was fucking closing, but there was a fucking problem with her fucking Target credit card," he writes. "I don't know what the deal was on the Target card. I don't know why Leah was in St. Paul in the first place and not at the Target near our home in Minneapolis."
Instead, her presence hangs over every word in the book by her actions and their effect on Zuckerman. Like Robert Pirsig in Zen And The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, he takes to the wilderness to think about what it all means when things get to be too much (spoiler: mental health crises don't offer up many answers to these sort of questions).
He couch surfs, visits friends that live far, far away as he tries to work out how to keep loving someone who isn't giving you many reasons to stick around.
"Unusual behaviour tends to produce estrangement in others which tends to further the unusual behaviour and thus the estrangement in self-stoking cycles until some sort of climax is reached," Pirsig wrote in his treaty on mental health and meaning.
Zuckerman would disagree. His life seems to have stabilized by the time his editor finally cuts him off, but there's an alarming lack of closure in any tale of mental health. Drugs continue to improve, therapists get slightly better at their jobs each day. But a disease such as bipolar is relentless. It keeps anyone in its grip looking over their shoulder worrying that every good mood is a return to mania and every down day is going to lead to crippling depression.
"In short, Leah is the thriving embodiment of why those of us living with a person living with mental illness continue to hope for a better future in a realistic way," he writes.
Speaking for those of us on the crazy side of the ledger, we hope so too.
(Side note: I write about mental health at https://stevenladurantaye.substack.com and it would be great if you visited and subscribed).
August 19, 2020
For anyone who lives with mental illness or cares for someone who does. This is at times heartbreaking and at times gut wrenching, but never hopeless. I literally (as in actually) could not put it down and read it cover to cover in one sitting...with a lot of tissues. Hard to read, but very very worth it. I hope those with mental illness read this to see "the other side," of our own struggles.
August 11, 2020
"Unglued" is sad, honest but hilariously funny portrayal of how mental illness affects a family. There is hope for wellness. Thank you Jeff!
August 20, 2020
I finished Unglued: A Bipolar Love Story last night and would highly recommend it for anyone (and definitely men) who are or plan to be in a relationship at some point (is that broad enough??). His account - don't call it a journey! - focuses on his wife's bipolar disorder, but I'd say the emphasis is on the "love story." The real deal is not all porch swings and bubble baths, is it. And caregivers need to remember to hold on to some of that love for themselves too, especially when their efforts can't be reciprocated.
I am sorry that Jeff and his wife have had such a tough time the past few years, but I am grateful that he has decided to share what he has learned. You don't have to be in line for sainthood to help a loved one during a time of need, and if anything you should expect to feel you've never done enough.
Oh, and a lot of it is pretty funny too! Except the sad parts!
I am sorry that Jeff and his wife have had such a tough time the past few years, but I am grateful that he has decided to share what he has learned. You don't have to be in line for sainthood to help a loved one during a time of need, and if anything you should expect to feel you've never done enough.
Oh, and a lot of it is pretty funny too! Except the sad parts!
Read
January 6, 2021Powerful and well written
Makes you appreciate normalcy so much more. Gives you a much deeper understanding of what family members must be going through as loved ones go through mental crises.
Makes you appreciate normalcy so much more. Gives you a much deeper understanding of what family members must be going through as loved ones go through mental crises.
January 30, 2022
Vulnerable raw book which discusses a spouses viewpoint on their partners bipolar mental illness. It could have been so much better if the author had a better editor. Zuckerman talks about teaching writing classes yet the book has many grammatical and spelling mistakes. Also the incorrect page numbering was annoying. I felt like I was reading a first draft.
July 30, 2021
Jeffrey Zuckerman's wife, Leah, began acting strangely in 2015. She began shopping for supplies she didn't need. She had grandiose ideas about starting a consulting business. She took a business trip to Tunisia and also Israel and became lost as well as losing her medications. She was beginning to show signs of mania, but neither she nor Jeff realized what was happening. For the next four years she swung from manic to depressive and back again several times without good response to medications. She saw therapists, counselors, psychologists and psychiatrists who all tried in varying degrees to help. She was also hospitalized several times. Through all of this, Jeff persevered, continuing to love the wife he knew her to be while she frequently castigated him in person and online to all of their friends and relatives. Thirty years of marriage and he loved her, but often could hardly stand to be in the same room.
This book is Zuckerman's story of how he coped or didn't cope with Leah's mental illness. Mental illness is a disease like many other severe and/or chronic conditions, but it refuses too behave in an orderly manner, keeping the loved ones and caretakers on constant pins and needles. This book gives tremendous insight into how it affects the patient and the family. He hopes that telling his and his wife's story might help someone else dealing with this issue. Writing the book also helped him.
This book is Zuckerman's story of how he coped or didn't cope with Leah's mental illness. Mental illness is a disease like many other severe and/or chronic conditions, but it refuses too behave in an orderly manner, keeping the loved ones and caretakers on constant pins and needles. This book gives tremendous insight into how it affects the patient and the family. He hopes that telling his and his wife's story might help someone else dealing with this issue. Writing the book also helped him.
September 16, 2021
What An Incredible Testimony!!
I could not put Mr. Zuckerman’s book down as I always wanted to know how Leah was progressing and his response. I am in a situation where I truly suspect that my spouse is dealing with an undiagnosed mental illness, so I find this book extremely timely for me to read. Many of the experiences Jeff describes in this book, I have experienced myself. I take my hat off to Mr. Zuckerman for never giving up. There were times based on how Mr. Zuckerman describes his experiences that I truly had to laugh out loud while at the same time when I would read the words “My brain is broken,” or “I did not ask to be mentally ill,” I would want to cry. The book is real and transparent. My prayers go out to anyone suffering or who is a family member dealing with someone who is suffering from mental illness. The thing to remember is that mental illness is just that, an illness. Kudos to Jeff Zuckerman for sharing his story and I wish him and Leah Godspeed.
I could not put Mr. Zuckerman’s book down as I always wanted to know how Leah was progressing and his response. I am in a situation where I truly suspect that my spouse is dealing with an undiagnosed mental illness, so I find this book extremely timely for me to read. Many of the experiences Jeff describes in this book, I have experienced myself. I take my hat off to Mr. Zuckerman for never giving up. There were times based on how Mr. Zuckerman describes his experiences that I truly had to laugh out loud while at the same time when I would read the words “My brain is broken,” or “I did not ask to be mentally ill,” I would want to cry. The book is real and transparent. My prayers go out to anyone suffering or who is a family member dealing with someone who is suffering from mental illness. The thing to remember is that mental illness is just that, an illness. Kudos to Jeff Zuckerman for sharing his story and I wish him and Leah Godspeed.
November 18, 2022
Rounded down from 3.5 stars. The story itself is well-told and reveals bipolar disorder from the caregiver’s perspective, which is a unique perspective not often discussed. However, the author’s writing style somewhat took away from the readability and flow of unglued. Sentences like “the protective wall I was building would have to be strong enough for me to endure the forthcoming storm surge” are just clunky.
I was also taken aback by the author’s nod towards casual racism and homophobia. At one point, he hugs his male friend and has to note, “I’m not gay though!” This sounds like how middle schoolers relate to each other, not fully formed adults. He tries to add an awkward chapter at the end about race but it comes off as stilted and unnatural. I do believe he has good intentions and is clearly good hearted — but seemed really insulated from a broader understanding of society and inequality until his wife became mentally ill.
Those issues aside, this story clearly needs to be told, and the author’s humor and hope shine through clearly. 3.5 stars.
I was also taken aback by the author’s nod towards casual racism and homophobia. At one point, he hugs his male friend and has to note, “I’m not gay though!” This sounds like how middle schoolers relate to each other, not fully formed adults. He tries to add an awkward chapter at the end about race but it comes off as stilted and unnatural. I do believe he has good intentions and is clearly good hearted — but seemed really insulated from a broader understanding of society and inequality until his wife became mentally ill.
Those issues aside, this story clearly needs to be told, and the author’s humor and hope shine through clearly. 3.5 stars.
August 15, 2020
I could not put this book down. It is reminiscent of Sylvia Plath's Bell Jar but told through the perspective of a spouse rather than the person experiencing the mental illness.
The book is unwavering and unapologetic. Zuckerman is able to describe something so many others have experience and felt, but are unable to share. As Plath explained, "when depression strikes it wouldn’t matter if she was “sat on the deck of a ship or at a street café in Paris or Bangkok”, she would always be “sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air.” In Unglued: Jeff acknowledges: “My God, I had to figure this thing out. I loved my wife, and she was sick. But I needed help, too.”
Anyone that has loved someone who is experiencing mental illness, be it bi-polar disease, depression, dementia, will connect with Unglued. In the age of COVID-19, where mental illness is on the rise, this book is a must read. Jeff sets just the right tone to engage and inform the reader.
The book is unwavering and unapologetic. Zuckerman is able to describe something so many others have experience and felt, but are unable to share. As Plath explained, "when depression strikes it wouldn’t matter if she was “sat on the deck of a ship or at a street café in Paris or Bangkok”, she would always be “sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air.” In Unglued: Jeff acknowledges: “My God, I had to figure this thing out. I loved my wife, and she was sick. But I needed help, too.”
Anyone that has loved someone who is experiencing mental illness, be it bi-polar disease, depression, dementia, will connect with Unglued. In the age of COVID-19, where mental illness is on the rise, this book is a must read. Jeff sets just the right tone to engage and inform the reader.
January 28, 2023
I have a young friend whom I suspect has had a break with reality. She’s been in three different psych wards in the space of a week. The devastation to her family is immense. Reading this book has given me a new appreciation of how little can be done for people suffering from mental illness.
Zuckerman recounts his travails with his bipolar wife in deeply sad and hysterical turns at the same time. He gives good supplemental reading recommendations.
I wish for comfort and peace for this family.
Zuckerman recounts his travails with his bipolar wife in deeply sad and hysterical turns at the same time. He gives good supplemental reading recommendations.
I wish for comfort and peace for this family.
March 27, 2023
Honest, is the way I would describe this book. This memoir goes through the effects of late in life bipolar mania on a family, marriage, and love. This is a pretty unflinching and raw depiction of someone spiraling, and to read it unfold is sometimes tough. On the other hand, the humor mixed in is sometimes ill-timed but usually lightens the situation. I think that if you’re looking to better understand mania and find a real depiction of mental health this is a really intimate read - I recommend it.
August 29, 2020
When I finished reading “Unglued: A Bipolar Love Story,” tears were streaming down my face. What an extraordinary and heart wrenching account Jeffrey lays out for his readers. His courage and love for his family come through even in the darkest moments of his wife’s late onset bipolar disorder. I am grateful I had the chance to learn about the far reaching effects of a loved one with mental illness, something never really talked about, and I thank Jeffrey for that.
January 19, 2021
Jeff, I finished reading Unglued yesterday afternoon, and I wanted to tell you how much I appreciated the time and effort, the levels of despair and love, and the doubt and courage that went into the writing and completion of this well-crafted memoir. Kudos to you. Not only is your journey with your wife's mental illness compelling and of immediate interest to me, your humor brings a refreshing take on a topic that isn't so funny. You're a good writer.
April 19, 2021
As a woman who has recovered from bipolar leaving mostly anxiety with some bouts of depression, I was interested to hear the perspective of a loved one. This book brought back so many memories, both good and bad. It created wonderful conversations with me and my husband who was/has been my own caregiver during the tough months and years.
Jeffrey Zuckerman tells his story with humor even when the subject matter is humor-less! Brilliant memoir! I'm so grateful to have read it!
Jeffrey Zuckerman tells his story with humor even when the subject matter is humor-less! Brilliant memoir! I'm so grateful to have read it!
August 16, 2020
"unglued:a bipolar love story" is an emotional roller coaster that plunges down into the depths of mental illness and soars to the mountaintops of hope and recovery. Smart, honest and beautifully written with just enough humor to keep you in your seat, "unglued" is a collision of mental illness,marriage faith friendship and the power of love. Michael fazio.
June 22, 2024
3.5 (?) Addicting read, but when do I read books at a normal speed and not in one big blob? Candid and honest book about mental illness, with lots of interesting stories and perspectives about the difficulties of living with them. Mental health issues suck
(another random pick up from the little free library)
(another random pick up from the little free library)
October 2, 2020
What a powerful, painful, dynamic read. A daughter was diagnosed with borderline as a teen. She’s an adult now with a diagnosis of Dyke-Davidoff-Masson Syndrome. Similarities and differences to what Jeff discusses. What a ride for us families. Jeff nails it.
September 28, 2021
I think this book serves an important purpose, sharing a first hand account of how mental illness can suddenly affect an ordinary family. I did end up returning it to the library before I finished though, was just a bit too detailed and rambling!
October 18, 2022
What an honest, moving and harrowing book about a husband’s struggles with his wife’s late onset BiPolar disease. His writing is at times humorous and at times heart wrenching. A validating testament to anyone who loves someone with mental illness.
August 24, 2020
I could not put this book down. Insightful and honest because of author’s willingness to show his vulnerabilities. Sad yet hopeful. Made me scream, cry and laugh out loud!
October 15, 2020
This is a beautiful, tragic, heartfelt comedy. Well worth the read and sharing with your friends
September 22, 2021
Sad story of man living with his wife who has bipolar illness. Much of it rang true with me.
July 19, 2022
4.75. Hard read but finished in 48 hours.
December 8, 2025
I ... loved this book, and that's all I'm going to say, and also it was a Finalist for a Minnesota Book Award for best memoir.
December 11, 2020
The book is terrific and draws a portrait of what it is like to advocate for a loved one in the current mental health environment.
February 18, 2023
An unfiltered story from the perspective of a husband who shares his own struggles as his wife battles a late onset diagnosis of bipolar disorder. I loved how raw and emotional the storyline was because it shared insight we don’t often get due to the stigma surrounding mental illness. The ending though was phenomenal. I appreciate an author who uses their voice and privilege to speak out about injustices.
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews