Columns

If you are a heterosexual man with mental illness and want to go out on a date, it is likely that you will be dating a woman with mental illness. In general, most women in mainstream society would not want to have a relationship with a disabled mentally ill man. (I do not know enough about the dating customs of LGBT people to give an opinion.) If you are female with a mental illness and are attractive, you have a better chance of dating a nondisabled man compared to the other way around. (This doesn't always hold true.)  

Before I met my wife, a long time before, I sometimes placed or responded to singles ads. This was before computers proliferated our planet, and things were done with PO boxes, pens and paper. Anyway, I was talking on the phone to a prospective date, and the moment it was revealed that I was disabled and essentially couldn't work, it was instantaneous disqualification. A lot of single women will not consider dating a man with a perceived defect. 

Relationships involving persons with mental illness have more problems than those of nondisabled people. When both partners in a relationship are mentally ill, they have more understanding of each other's predicament. When only one partner is mentally ill, the nondisabled one may not fully understand or even accept the mentally ill partner's problems.  

However, when both partners are mentally ill, like a hot potato that gets tossed back and forth, the two persons' problems may magnify each other's. It requires a lot of resilience and tolerance for persons with mental illness to have relationships, or to be in a relationship with someone with mental illness.  

Many persons with mental illness are socially underdeveloped. We haven't had enough of a chance to interact with people who are not mentally ill, and we haven't had the chance to learn the rules of socializing. This is a result of the segregation that occurs in which persons with mental illness are restricted from many arenas of life, at least in the U.S. This takes place through collective societal and economic pressures and not usually through legal restrictions.  

Yet, relationships with persons with mental illness do happen, and in some instances they work about as well as those of people in the mainstream. I have been married to my wife for eighteen years. We have our ups and downs, we have our issues, but so far we have stuck together.  

Couple's counseling has helped us. It helps me to recognize the issues that trigger upset emotions and deal with them. For example, if doing something brings up too much resentment, I refuse to do the thing rather than doing the thing and then becoming more resentful.  

For example, I have put up boundaries concerning shopping. I can only participate in shopping so much, and then I have to draw the line. My wife goes shopping with her female friend while at the same time that friend's boyfriend watches television with me. Excessive money isn't spent, since my wife ends up returning most of the items that get purchased. 

My wife and I are fortunate that we haven't produced any children. It is a nice fantasy to raise kids, but in fact it would be too difficult, too stressful, and too much responsibility. Other than that, I do not have the financial ability to provide for a child. If not competent enough to use birth control, maybe someone with mental illness should not embark on a relationship. But still, things happen.  

If a woman with mental illness who is normally medicated becomes pregnant, she may need to go off most of her medications for part or all of the pregnancy, and this in turn may necessitate going inpatient.  

If both parents of an offspring have mental illness, there is a very high probability that this offspring will develop an illness. In the past, psychologists attributed this to dysfunctional parenting, but it is now thought to be caused by heredity. Most psychiatric illness has a genetic component.  

Overall, persons with mental illness deserve happiness, and sometimes this includes having someone to care for.