Our Experience Dating with Mental Illness

so what seems like a lifetime ago you and I dated that's how this all all started out it's our origin story we dated yeah okay and we clearly made it past that face right yeah yeah I mean we still kind of date each other but so we we have a little bit of experience coming at this situation from both I guess your experience in terms of what's what's what it's like to date with a mental illness and then I guess for me what it's like to date someone with a mental illness I mean I have experience with dating with a mental illness Beyond just my experience with you as well and there has been some definite highs and some definite lows in my experience of dating with a mental illness let it just be known that when she said highs she pointed at me because not everybody is seeing the video part of this okay so you know I obviously this this episode being about dating with a mental illness or dating someone with a mental illness there's going to be some differences beyond what it would just typically be like dating probably we're looking in in the neighborhood of additional challenges so do you want to start off kind of talking about your own experiences and challenges that you've kind of faced maybe in general dating with a mental illness and then we can also talk about our own experiences yeah so I was in a pretty serious long-term relationship when I first started experiencing difficulties with my mental health and I went through a couple diagnoses while I was in that relationship and so I didn't really need to deal with dating you know as I was first entering my mental health Journey or my mental illness Journey but a couple a few years after you know all the diagnosis started and mental health Journey started we broke up and shortly after that I was then diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder and so all of a sudden you know we had been together since I was like 17 and so now I was like 25 and fresh on the dating scene but with this diagnosis attached to me of schizoaffective disorder which felt incredibly heavy in terms of getting to know new people especially in you know an intimate capacity like dating someone so I think I kind of avoided it for a little bit where I just I didn't feel ready to be vulnerable about that facet of my life and that part of me I guess with prospective partners and also you know I was in a long-term relationship and getting back into like the online dating scene you know dating apps and stuff felt horrible and daunting in and of itself never mind when you're approaching when you have something that you feel like you're almost hiding and don't really want to reveal or don't know when the right time to reveal is like an illness like schizophrenal disorder but eventually I decided that it was something that I wanted to pursue you know I wanted that companionship and that sort of deeper relationship with someone and so you know I put myself out there on the dating apps I tried to meet new people and stuff but it was always a really really difficult question in the back of my mind of okay am I lying to this person by not disclosing that I have a mental illness um I prioritizing them getting to know me as a person before I you know share vulnerable details of my life and my medical history you know like that's not really something that I feel you need to offer up right away but it is a difficult balance of knowing when do you need to disclose that because I think with an intimate partner you do need to disclose that at some point you know you can't just go through a whole relationship get serious with the person build a life together and just never disclose this huge part of your life and so that was really difficult I think to figure out when to disclose right and so it makes sense that there there kind of needs to be this balance between um getting to know some having somebody get get to know you for you but then also sharing this this particular detail of your life that that could invite judgment right well yeah it could invite judgment but also I think at that time in my life you know a fresh new diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder and coming out of a really really difficult period of my life I think I was having a really really hard time separating my mental illness from my identity and so when I'm putting myself out there to get to know someone and for to have that person get to know me too that created some difficulty and some you know incongruency within myself of what it well who I was what it meant to get to know me you know who I who I wanted to be so internally you're having this kind of uh well inner conflict between you feeling like your diagnosis is a part of your identity and are you also concerned that that's how potential um Partners or people that you're interested in dating would would see you as well I think yeah I think that I was in a time of my life where I didn't have a good grip on how my illness interfaced with my identity and it really got kind of messy and so I wasn't sure you know what to present to someone I wasn't sure you know what was important or you know like it got messy when I didn't understand how it impacted my own identity how could I expect someone else to understand that and so it got messy in that regard and you know I think I I came to a place of acceptance and where I knew that it was more important to get to know me as a person beyond my Illness but I think it's also important to acknowledge the realities of living with a mental illness like schizoaffective disorder or another chronic mental illness where you know it it impacts my life and so needing to be honest with myself about that so I can be honest with potential Partners about that was important you know I'm not sure if I did the best job of that with you you know we can get into that a little bit more later but I think also where I got kind of stuck when I was re-entering the dating scene was in this kind of pit of despair where I really hyper fixated on the deficits I had as a result of my mental illness where I felt I would never have the capacity to be the kind of partner I wanted to be the kind of life partner that I wanted to be you know I couldn't I felt that I wouldn't be able to show up in an equal way to what I expected and to what I wanted to give as well and so that mindset was a difficult one to come into dating with as well where I always felt like I wasn't worthy and so did you settle for me or I mean I think I settled a few times along the way if I'm being perfectly honest you know I I was with people or I was dating people briefly who were not a good fit for me and I think were they not a good fit with respect to like disclosures that you had made is that why they weren't a good purchase I didn't tell anyone that I dated other than one person I met in a support group so he just knew he didn't tell anyone that you I didn't tell anyone I dated about my diagnosis until you there was one person who I was about to tell about my diagnosis to on a date and in that same date he beat me to the punch by breaking up with me okay so you know rocky rocky dating experience so I mean I guess then primarily your experience in terms of actually disclosing to somebody is just with me it's just with you right yeah but a lot of internal strife before that right which I think a lot of other people could identify with yeah okay so we're kind of slowly rolling into what our experience dating was like and I I would say that it was a pretty normal dating experience I I don't know um but you did disclose to me I think it was the third date so the third date third or fourth day third or fourth date I think it was about three weeks in yeah and you took me for a cookie and a coffee buttered you up yeah yeah and then told me that you had me down on a bench said there was something I wanted to talk to you about yeah yeah you told me that you had to schizoaffective disorder and that uh you manage it with medication I may have downplayed it a little bit but I was terrified you know like I had no idea how you were going to respond to that information I had never I had never disclosed before you know I had been in the long-term relationship when my mental health came about and I didn't disclose at all to the like short dating relationships I had not really you know what I mean I you were the first time I had to disclose my mental illness to someone and so I was terrified but you did a great job you know and likewise I think you did a really great job of receiving it too I didn't feel judged I felt like you were really open I think after that date you like went to the library and took out books on schizoaffective disorder to learn more and you wanted to hear from me about my experience and so that all felt really good I think it's probably important though to share with people who are listening a bit about why I felt I could disclose to you three weeks in because I had been with other people for longer than three weeks and was nowhere near disclosing and so I think it's important to share that you know there were things that made me feel safe disclosing with you made me feel comfortable doing so and it I was something that I wanted to share with you and so I think that if you're in a relationship and you're not sure if you just should disclose I think it's important to wait until you feel safe doing so and that's okay so I guess a couple of kind of sidebar conversation questions the first kind of involves addressing people's apprehension about disclosing in general about fear of judgment about fear of how things could unfold and we've had conversations about this actually in past videos and at least my opinion on it and this is maybe easier to say because I'm not the one who is in this position but my opinion on it is that you know you if you're gonna just if if you you shouldn't feel like you can't disclose to somebody because I mean you can't control how that person is going to react they could react well and it could go well and you could continue dating that person or they could have judgment about it and I just feel like you're you're better off in either situation like if it goes well you continue dating if it doesn't go well then you at least know and it isn't the sort of thing where you're going to continue to invest in that relationship and you know it and it not be a good fit later on when it does come up so I think it's a bit of a litmus test to see if they can handle you know the realities of you living with a mental illness and if they're you know it's a value of mine to be open and accepting of people's differences people's neurodivergence people's medical differences you know whatever whatever category you want to put it into and so if someone reacts negatively or with judgment when I share that with them it kind of tells me that they're not really the person that I kind of person that I want to be with and so yeah it can actually be used as a tool as well but you know that's that is easier said than done because if you're dating someone you have at least somewhat of an emotional investment in the relationship you have you're building with them and so you want it to work out and so if they do respond negatively and with judgment yes it is a message to you to probably leave that relationship and to find someone who is more accepting and supportive but still hurts still doesn't feel good to feel judged like that and whatnot and so it is definitely opening yourself up to that type of rejection okay so that was kind of the first sidebar is the either or aspect but what are your thoughts on basically the necessity of disclosing you know I think the type of relationship that we were both looking for um I say this but we were both on Tinder so what what kind of relationship were we looking for but anyways I I think you have an idea maybe of the type of relationship that you could maybe even get from somebody when you're dating and so do you think that it is necessary to disclose in every situation or do you think that there's just situations where somebody is just dating and they don't really want to have like any kind of like long-term or intense relationship with somebody and so it doesn't matter that they disclose do you have to disclose every time do you think I don't think so you're talking about like a friends with benefit sort of arrangement going on or like what are you talking about I guess it could be that or just yeah people like dating because they wanna yeah maybe friends with benefit situations I mean I think I think dating in general regardless of Mental Health communication is a really important factor and so I think if you are doing a good job of communicating that it's just casual and you you don't want to you know invest in a long-term relationship or whatnot then that's probably a situation where you probably don't need to disclose because you're not building a life with this person you're not really life Partners where it impacts them really at all and so maybe not I think really the ultimate decision of when to disclose and if you should disclose lies with the person who has the mental illness because it's not something that you owe to anyone I would strongly encourage you to disclose if you're getting into a serious relationship with someone where it does have the the potential to impact their life as well but you don't owe it to anyone it is your decision when and how to disclose okay I think that that makes sense in terms of when to disclose and your obligation to disclose and that kind of thing so jumping back into what our experience was like so I did a little bit of research before this this episode and one of the things that came up um in terms of advice for people who are dating people with mental illness was to not let the not let the illness Define the relationship um I guess that goes for both sides but uh you know what what that made me think about was kind of our our early experience um with dealing with difficult situations while we're still like in the dating phase and actually maybe even to jump back in terms of not letting the illness Define the relationship like I think it is a little bit funny that we have two YouTube channels on onto illness so probably didn't do the best job there I think though that it is possible to still separate that like I don't think that it defines our relationship okay let's get into a little bit of a like uh dialogue about this then because I mean I was thinking about it and I mean I think you and I actually have maybe slightly differing perspectives on relationships in general I think I feel a lot more like you could be with anybody you just have to you know work at the relationship there's no like one perfect person for you I think I caught you off guard that feels good because everybody I think it caught you off guard the other day when I told you that I thought there were better people for both of us out there these are things that my husband says to me regularly but I think that that's kind of the case like there's probably like better people for both of us just naturally you know there's there's billions of people out there like let's just be honest about like what the situation is like we found each other in Edmonton you know I think we have a great relationship and we we work at it and um yeah I think that's kind of the more important aspect of of relationships is that you have to put the work into it agreed I still like you and who you are yeah you want to be with you and I want to put that work in yeah for sure okay that it does take that I'm not saying that you can be with anyone oh you actually did say that yes the wrong language I meant there's better people for us okay anyway anyways sorry sidetracked there but uh I I do think that in some ways your illness did Define our relationship and so what I mean by that is kind of the way that we dealt with um conflicts like things that are popping out in my mind are like you having difficulty taking medication and me taking it personally and me feeling like I needed to like make sure that you took your medication that kind of like kind of owning that responsibility there was that that aspect to it and then there was like hospitalizations and so one okay one um but I I think that there is this element of of kind of like trauma bonding that happened with our relationship and and and is maybe likely or possible to happen in relationships like this involving mental illness and so I guess what I mean by that is that it was a challenging situation that we Face together that we overcame and I think we felt we felt a closer Bond because of to be fair I think we trauma bonded on things on your end as well not just my mental illness so you know yeah I agree that it definitely impacted our relationship and there was things to do with my mental illness that came up that we had to deal with yeah for sure I still don't really believe that it defines our relationship you know I think that we have a connection that goes far beyond just my mental illness and you know the trauma bonding you're right okay defines is probably not the right word but influences impacts and I and I think it continues to do so agreed yeah so I think it's an interesting thing that goes right from the beginning of a relationship dating to throughout the relationship so I shared about how I felt you know in the dating experience as someone who has a chronic Mental Illness but how did it feel for you when we were first started dating when I first disclosed you know what was your experience of now dating someone who had a mental illness so I think that when you're dating someone you do kind of go through this period of do I like this person do I want to keep seeing them and I think I think that you know when somebody discloses that they have a mental illness I I do think that it probably does influence that that period of time where you could swing one way or the other if I'm if I'm being like totally honest and I think that like for me with respect to to our dating um period of dating I do remember kind of being in this this place of like we were just starting to get to know each other and you had you had disclosed me and I wasn't really sure about okay like you know I guess Further full disclosure like you know we you were the first person that I dated after my separation and divorce it just is weird that I didn't date anybody else I know well you can date anyone and make it work with anyone right yeah exactly right ah I constantly lament your luck with dating I did get lucky you know you're very lucky you met me I do feel like it anyway go on but yeah there was a period of time where I was I was still not sure like is this going to be something that that I pursue more seriously and and long term and and wondering how does this factor into that like um especially I think when you're in the early stages of dating where you don't know what it's going to be like right like if you I think if you had a full picture of what what the experience of dating someone with mental illness was going to be like then maybe you'd be better informed to like make those kinds of decisions I don't know if you knew everything that was going to happen with my mental illness in the in the journey of our relationship what would you have done when I disclosed I don't know because I still don't know do you know what I mean are you talking about like the entire like scope of our lives together because then yeah then it's like okay well you could look at that and be like well we had a bit of a rough start and we're gonna have rough patches and it's going to play a role but we're gonna have uh an incredibly meaningful and fulfilling life together well okay you're right I think I was focusing too much on the negative aspects of what my illness was brought to our relationship because the reality is it has it has brought forward issues and challenges to swim out together and you know I don't I know that I wasn't forthcoming about what that might look like when I disclosed to you partly because I didn't know I didn't know what it was going to look like navigating it with you and so yeah I don't know if there's any way to like to fully know what it what it means when someone discloses to you you know you mentioned it being kind of like a well uh questioning whether you still wanted to move forward in any sort of commitment with me because of you know the prospective challenges that me living with a mental illness gets effective could bring so what was your thought process there like how did you weigh that and how did you come to the decision to keep going in the relationship with me or keep building the relationship well I had taken books out from the library and when you research something like that I mean there wasn't living well with schizophrenia has a YouTube channel that could give you like a you know broad experience point of view it was just a lot more of the kind of like medical like here are the worst case scenarios of what it's like to live with schizophrenia and I think when you when you digest that kind of information like and you're weighing it against like well okay I I don't know what this person's experience is like I don't know what like what things will be like that that makes it hard it's scary if you're just reading about worst case scenarios yeah and trying to make up in your mind how that's going to impact the relationship and your life yeah so why did you keep going with me well I really liked you oh yeah yeah and uh I I guess I I figured perhaps naively that I I would just be able to like deal with whatever happened you know like okay there's these worst case scenarios but that's not what's happening right now and um I'll be able to like deal with that if and when it ever happens I think that you know it's interesting that you brought that up I think that there has to be an element of naivety because a chronic serious mental illness like schizophren disorder or whatever it is for for you it's going to pose challenges that are going to be really really difficult that you're going to have to face as a couple if you commit to working on the building the relationship together and so you have to kind of go into it thinking yeah we can face that together and we can overcome it and maybe that's not naivete but blind optimism blind optimism is how I live my life I think just to bring it back also to what you mentioned about the research that you did around what is schizophrenia what is schizoaffective disorder and coming up with these kind of you know worst case scenario very medical heavy jargony resources I think that that's something that's really important to not do maybe in the beginning of a relationship when one partner or both Partners has a mental illness I think it's really more important to ask the person who's living with a mental illness what their experience of the illness is and working to really understand it from their perspective because it does affect everyone differently you know everyone's experience with their mental illness is going to be different and all that really matters is how it affects the person you're dating right in the context of how it's going to impact your relationship or how it could potentially impact your relationship and that's ultimately going to strengthen your relationship too is listening and learning about their experience of what it means for them and their life so I know that there's a lot that we could talk about relationships but really we're we're kind of just focusing on The Dating aspect here and I think probably the biggest topic that we've we've talked about here is around disclosure around the idea of kind of when to disclose what to disclose whether you should disclose you know what what it feels like to do that and then also how to receive that information and perhaps what not to do with that information but yeah this one was really focused more on The Dating experience and so I think that's something that most people find the most challenging about that is disclosure so hopefully me sharing my own experience navigating disclosure and you know tips and tricks that I've learned I think you know something that maybe I didn't highlight enough was how important self-acceptance was in terms of feeling more at ease and comfortable disclosing to other people and I think that that is something that really needs to be worked on first and foremost not only for facilitating disclosure but also just for helping you feel more comfortable and at ease with yourself and like you have a good grip on how your mental illness doesn't Define you in the actual relationship that you're working on building as well right it does seem like it'd be difficult to approach stating well if you didn't have that kind of if you weren't doing that kind of work with yourself first yeah you know the old adage you have to be happy with yourself before you can be happy with someone else I think really ranks true with this as well where you need to have a level of self-acceptance before you can expect someone to accept you for who you are beyond your mental illness as well well said oh thanks okay okay so thank you so much for listening to this episode we also just want to take a minute to remind you about our online peer support Community you can find out more at onlinepuresupport.com it's a really wonderful space where we offer peer support through various text channels on the Discord app but also offer weekly peer support groups live facilitated peer support groups so if that interests you at all make sure to check out online peersupport.com to learn more and to sign up alright thank you so much for joining us for this episode and we'll see you in the next one bye

Channel: Living Well with Mental Illness

Views: 6,848

Keywords: mental health, mental illness, dating, relationships, mental health and relationships, dating with a mental illness, my experience, living with mental illness, schizophrenia, schizoaffective, schizoaffective disorder, depression, anxiety, bipolar, partner

Id: nMjQAUEJHpc

Length: 30min 22sec (1822 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 17 2023