Having a diagnosis of schizophrenia while dating can be a difficult experience. Although I’m as healthy as anyone at this point and the condition doesn’t affect me very much anymore, the label is still really powerful and people struggle with their own internal stigma toward the labels when hearing them. I’ve had a number of instances where I’ve told people the diagnosis and their perceptions of me have immediately changed. This experience has made dating difficult and has made me guarded around information surrounding my mental health.
Recently I started dating someone who was really nice and we had good chemistry. We got brunch on our first date and she seemed nervous and seemed to use some practiced responses when my statements required more nuanced responses. We got along really well and she was a really kind and caring person. I liked her a lot but I was wondering if this relationship would work.
After the first date we were texting and things seemed to be working. I was trying to figure out whether the responses were anxiousness or first date jitters. Unfortunately, I caught a bad cold and couldn’t go on a second date with her yet, but I was still trying to learn more about her. We talked on the phone several times and the instances of providing practiced responses were numerous and I was picking up on this increasingly more. I was coming to realize we weren’t on the same level intellectually. I was wondering whether the relationship could work.
This reached a point where she came out and mentioned to me she had a diagnosis of tuberous sclerosis which is a rare genetic disease that causes non-cancerous tumours to grow in the brain and on other vital organs. She mentioned that for her this affects her cognition and her ability to solve and process complicated problems and topics. After hearing this, I wasn’t sure how to react. I was usually the one divulging my diagnosis whereas I was now currently hearing hers.
Anxiousness, distress, and sorrow as well as withness, compassion, and empathy immediately filled my heart. Parts of me felt devastated to hear her diagnosis as I wasn’t sure if a relationship would work between us. It made me feel awful to think that her medical condition could contribute to us not being in a relationship. It also made me think about this experience having happened to her before and how much she didn’t deserve this with her being such a tremendous person. It reminded me of all the times I have had similar experiences. I felt companionship knowing I was talking with someone who was going through a really difficult dating situation the same way I had been too. It made me feel ashamed in ways and guilty that I was starting to get thoughts and emotions that this wasn’t going to work.
I really liked her but I had worries around her condition. The diagnosis was not necessarily the part of the condition that worried me, but hearing the condition made me aware that my perceptions were true and that she wasn’t able to process the thoughts and ideas I was conveying to her. This made me realize that what I had thought were jitters or anxious responses were effects of the condition and these things were not going to lift. I wasn’t discriminating against her for having a condition as I was not making any judgments about who she was as a person based upon hearing the words tuberous sclerosis. The inability to connect with me intellectually and to understand more complex things I was saying was a part of the condition but it was something that wasn’t going to work for me in a relationship regardless of whether she did or didn’t have this condition. If she had tuberous sclerosis and we could still connect intellectually, I was going to keep dating her. She in fact, was definitely a really tremendous person, but I realized in order for me to be happy within a relationship I would need someone who I could connect with on a higher level. I decided that I didn’t think a relationship between us was going to work.
It felt terrible making this decision initially and it made me feel like I was being discriminatory even though I wasn’t. After speaking with a friend more she mentioned you have to do what’s right for you in this situation. I thought of love and relationships and I tend to think about it as a place where I want to have someone who I really connect with and really care about. The intellectual connection wasn’t there and it wasn’t going to be there.
This gave me more insight into my past dating experiences. When divulging my diagnosis during past dates I used to think I was being discriminated against for having schizophrenia whereas there was more happening within these situations. Further back in my recovery when I was dating and I wasn’t functioning as well mentally and emotionally and my social skills were still inhibited by my condition, my dates were deciding to not date me because of my functionality and my social ineptitude. At the time, these were things that were inhibited because of schizophrenia which caused me to categorize them as symptoms of the condition. When I categorized these issues as symptoms of schizophrenia and women didn’t want to date me for having these inabilities, I deemed it as discriminatory and as stigma whereas it really had more to do with how I was as a person.
I still tend to think there was an element of stigma that contributed to their decisions as well but it wasn’t entirely based upon hearing the labels of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. The way I existed in the world was in fact a result of the trauma I had been through and had to do with the condition I had, however, my dates weren’t perceiving that as schizophrenia. They were perceiving that as who I was at the time which in part was true, but was not the way I saw things. My self-perception of who I was internally was disconnected from how I was externally and from how I presented to other people. This was the confusing part for me.
At the time I wasn’t able to see that I needed to make far more progress mentally, emotionally, and socially to be on par with the people I was dating. This was difficult to see partly because the illness made it incredibly difficult for me to have awareness as to how everyone else functioned around me in comparison to how I was functioning. This partly happened because people said and did nice things regardless of what I said and did and they rarely outwardly criticized how I was as a person even when I wasn’t doing as well as they were.
There is also a social mirroring that occurs within social contexts where people tend to mimic and mirror the behaviors of those around them as a means of fitting in and also as a means of not hurting anyone’s feelings even if that is not how they would regularly interact if they were with people who they were more agreeable with. For me this made it seem like the things I was saying and doing were working whereas this was really an instance of people being polite to me and making things work even when they were not in accordance with where I was at.
When I think of these contexts, it makes me realize that there were many people who might have had some discriminatory feelings towards the label of schizophrenia whereas they were also reacting to the way I existed within the world at the time. It wasn’t the label of schizophrenia standing in the way solely on its own that was affecting the way my dates were thinking about me. I was regressed as a person in a lot of ways due to the effects of my trauma still being within my psyche and I wasn’t able to see this in prior years although in current years it’s very apparent to me when I look back. It’s given me hopefulness, that as I continue to improve and evolve as a person and release myself from the confines of trauma that I will be well enough as a person so when they hear the label of schizophrenia they will still see me for who I am and it won’t make a difference.
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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