Instagram user question: “How to bring up (your own) mental illness while dating?”
There comes a time in every relationship when I am presented the opportunity to let my romantic interest know that I am mentally ill. This moment is terrifying. It’s a weird moment that generally induces the anxiety shits while I’m at a restaurant that I don’t even want to be at because everything on the menu is causing an anorexia flare-up. My illnesses are hard to hide; they’re not easy to just brush off as “quirky” and have a cute Zooey Deschanel moment. I’m flipping through the menu like I’m trying to find a word in a dictionary and I’ve never used a dictionary before. My leg is tapping and shaking the table. I’m drinking too much wine because I am incapable of relaxing. I’m probably talking too much. My palms are clammy and I’m hoping my date is not a first-date hand-holder.
Thus, the opportunity arises for me to come out of the mentally ill closet. Simultaneously, amongst all of this internal chaos, I’m attempting to gauge my date’s reaction before I even say anything. I’m praying they won’t get scared and leave, but I’m also praying that they won’t be more into me because of it—which is equally as gross.
The waiter comes to the table and asks the dreaded question, “What would you like to order?”
My date orders quickly, like a functional human being.
“And you, miss?”
“Um, I’ll take the house salad with the dressing on the side. Dressing on the side, please. Please make sure that the dressing is on the side. On the side. Please. On the side. Thanks.”
I’m hyper-aware that my date notices that this is definitely not a cute Zooey Deschanel moment.
The waiter leaves. We sit at the table that wobbles from my incessantly tapping foot, and I’m left with two options: I either come out of the mentally ill closet now, or I pass up this opportunity and simply allow my date to ponder about why I took so long to order when all I ended up getting was a salad with the dressing on the side.
The food eventually comes, and I do not use the dressing that was set on the side at all.
“Why don’t you put dressing on your salad?”
Well, I have an eating disorder, so things like dressing send me into a body-dysmorphic thought-spiral that leads into a debilitating anxiety attack, which will leave both of us feeling weird and embarrassed, I want to reply.
“I just don’t care for dressing,” I say.
Usually, I pass up the opportunity (at least on the first date) to come out of the mentally ill closet. It ends up feeling like a confession forced by a bad cop. However, sometimes I’m left feeling guilty for withholding the information. Don’t I owe it to my date to let them know what they’re getting into?
No. Thinking that I’m inherently difficult to date and therefore worth a warning to a potential romantic partner is internalized ableism, and I’ve decided check that shit at the door.
Personally, I’ve gotten used to telling new love interests and friends about my struggles with mental health. Being manicpixiememequeen forces me to disclose certain information about my mental health. Most people know of my meme page, where I chronically overshare my issues with 150,000+ strangers on the Internet, so when I come out of the mentally ill closet, it just confirms what my date already knows.
In addition to being prominently mentally ill on the Internet, dating with agoraphobia and panic disorder has forced me to become more transparent about my mental health in relationships, even in the beginning stages. Dating for an agoraphobe is rough. I rely on online dating most of the time, because I hate leaving my house. I match with someone, really enjoy talking to them, and then when they ask me on a date, panic floods my brain. Is the location of this date outside of my safe radius? Can I get home quickly? How quickly? Google Maps says it is approximately thirty-two minutes away, which already is too far, and if I miss the train, I have to tack on another twenty minutes of waiting for the train while steeping in an inescapable sense of impending doom. What if the date’s in the city? What if something happens to the train while I’m in the tunnel underneath the Bay and we have to follow the emergency directions that I saved to my phone in 2015 (just in case)? Oh God, they asked me to a movie. The run-time is 137 minutes. I’m socially trapped in a movie theater for 137 minutes, and that doesn’t include getting there, or waiting in the concessions line, or even the previews.
After my thought spiral, I normally come out of the mentally ill closet via text and explain that I have panic disorder, which makes leaving my house extremely difficult. Being out for extended periods of time in an already anxiety-provoking situation (i.e. a first date), is close to impossible. Reactions range from empathetic to awkward to rude to completely ignoring what I said and just asking again if I want to go to a bar in the city this weekend.
The people who respect your boundaries are the people who are worth your time. If I tell a date that I have to meet them in a certain place that falls in my “safe space” category, I expect them to accommodate that boundary, especially because I trusted them enough for me to get vulnerable about my mental health. If they do not respect my boundaries in the beginning, it’s a clear sign that they won’t respect them in the future, and that’s not a healthy place to begin any sort of relationship–romantic, platonic, whatever.
Even though I personally tend to tell people about my struggles with mental illness, you are under no obligation to tell anyone anything, especially if it brings you extreme discomfort or you think that it could jeopardize your mental, emotional, or physical safety.
If you do choose to be open about your mental health, I find that the best way is to mention it casually at first (if can even happen over the phone or text) and then continually have small conversations about it—that way it doesn’t feel like you’re giving an intensive lecture and PowerPoint about your entire mental health history in the beginning stages of the relationship. As your relationship and the trust progresses, you can use those small conversations to slowly divulge more information and help promote a consistent dialogue about your health and its relationship to your romance and/or friendship. It also gives both parties plenty of opportunities to create boundaries and ask any questions that come up along the way.
Avoid having your coming out of the mentally ill closet moment come from a place of shame or embarrassment—like you’re lunging yourself out in a panic, making a confession. When you divulge information slowly, it avoids that grand moment—that moment that frequently makes us feel “crazy” or “abnormal” because we had to come out of the mentally ill closet in the first place, unlike neurotypical daters. Genuinely, there’s no right or wrong way to tell someone. It’s about prioritizing your comfort and boundaries. If they’re going to treat you differently upon finding out that you have a mental illness, then they weren’t worth your time in the first place, and therefore, you dodged a bullet. Congratulations on not wasting your time!
This post was prompted by a question submitted to me during a Q & A session on Instagram. If you have something you’d like me to write about/answer, feel free to ask me via the contact button below! (Questions will be answered publicly without the querent’s name attached).