I was just wondering how does everyone else feel loving someone who isn’t mentally ill? Sometimes it’s frustrating she doesn’t understand what i’m going through. Other times and I mean most of the time it’s great.
She tries to understand sometimes I feel like it goes over her head but most of the time she seems to get it and reassures me that everything will be okay.
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When I was younger… I was in a relationship with a girl who had MI… I thought she could understand me better then others…
Just because she had MI didn’t mean she had any capacity to empathize or be patient with me.
She refused help… she didn’t want to see doctors… she had mood swings and anger flairs that made mine look tame… It’s amazing either of us survived.
We were toxic together… she derailed all my attempts to get sober… I derailed all her attempts to get clean… she and I put each other through the ringer
Now I’m with a girl who isn’t MI… she is stable… she might not understand what I’m gong through… but she does try to be on my side. She does try to get knowledge… and she is patient with me.
NO where NEAR as much drama or screaming matches… and worse.
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I tried dating a girl with MI years back. You know how two magnets can push each other apart forcefully? It was like that. I’m very happy with my neurotypical wife.
Pixel.
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both my parents are mentally ill, my father has sza and my mom has depression and anxiety. they both have problems with paranoia but my dad is far worse then my mom. He will pick fights all the time with my mom accusing her of cheating. The love each other but at the same time I know they don’t always get along. My mom has ben unsuccessful on getting my dad back on medication.
Just feels like you are actually glad they don’t get to suffer through things like you do. They just live a regular life and sometimes have bad days like wow imagine what that would be like. Happy for them and learning from them. It’s beautiful for me
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I don’t know what it’s like loving somebody who isn’t, but hopefully it’s a lot easier than most other interactions. It really sucks when people tell me i’m making excuses or i’m really fine and i’m just overthinking. I have a friend who does this often, mental illness seems to be utterly inconceivable to her. I was trying to explain some of the more subtle symptoms, hygiene, impeccable fashion sense, posturing, memory, that sort of thing, and I just couldn’t get it across.
“oh, everybody does that”
“you’re just making excuses”
I also hate that it seems people assume that just because you’re a hella cool dude, that means you’re okay. Something else I get a lot is “You’re really strange, but that’s normal”
I don’t mind being really strange, it’s kindof cool, but I understand that it’s a reflection of having a fringe personality. I still like to have fun and do cool things, but it takes a lot of effort, and mental fortitude. I have to be careful not to be set off by illusions, thoughts, and most recently physical feelings I cannot control. I try to keep it to my chest as much as I can, but there’s always ten million more things on my mind than anyone else’s because at any time i’m trying to make sure that I am perceiving and responding to things correctly, checking my symptoms, state etc…
I feel like people can’t understand that. I feel like they do it subconsciously, so they literally can’t think about it. I still subscribe to my mixing consciousness theory for schiz spectrum disorders. I think it’s right. At least for me it seems to be. Two levels of consciousness both interpreting the same information with different tools, but they can’t communicate
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“You are too pretty to be ill”.
What the ■■■■.
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What’s it like to be cancer free and have your hair still on your head and not take poison to treat it?
What’s it like to not have paralysis and be able to move your arms, hands, and legs?
I can’t seem to remember having arms, hands, and legs rather than artificial ones.
What’s it like to hear what people say? The way you move your hands make me feel like you are talking to me.
What’s it like to see things? I’d like to know what that looks like.
What’s it like to have voices in your head. What do they say? Do you talk to God or something in another dimension? (I’ve been asked this)
What’s it like to have peace in your country and not worry about the next shelling ending you or your loved ones’ losing their lives?
It shouldn’t make anyone feel better but the list goes on and on.
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I feel like I get that a lot in a less direct way. I dress really strangely, but people look at it as having an eccentric sense of style, which oddly enough is literally in the description for schizotypal
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It’s hard because he loves me and yet doesn’t even try to understand what my experiences are. I think he sees my experiences as not real and that they should therefore be ignored. When he had panic attacks, I was supportive. I went with him to the doctor’s, etc. He went on medication for anxiety but never got therapy, and it’s a non-issue for him now. I resent that the medication levels him out, while sometimes I’m flipping out… I think he just wants me to deal with my sz and not give it so much attention and just get on with daily life. It’s hard.
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I wouldn’t be too sure either of my husbands were/are "normal"
after all, they were/are with me.
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@Csummers I have wondered the same thing about my partner, could I really consider her normal if she’s with me? She is a bit odd sure but not mentally ill.
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My husband is a normal person. He is nice but not very patient. When he coulden’t understand me, I expalined to him. For example, I had a slow mind when I was on Invega. I spoke very slowly and my husband got annoied. I had to tell him why I was so slow. Then he got used to it.
This is true. My husband is an introvert/techie kind of guy. He doesn’t like being around people all that much… He’s not typical, which is attractive to me, but he is normal in the sense that he experiences the world similarly to the majority of people out there. I ask him sometimes," you’ve really never heard voices or seen things?" Because I can’t imagine. He hasn’t ever. And he’s never felt suicidal. Amazing to me!
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My fiancé technically has Bipolar disorder but he’s kind of “grown out of it” and he’s totally normal now. And I love it. He’s so good for me. He’s everything I’m not and I’ve become so much more stable since we started dating. I literally owe my sanity to him
@anon82948922 snatched the words out of my mouth. I dated a bipolar woman when I was 18 and it was a colossal train wreck. My wife is a neurotypical and is absolutely wonderful. Loving her is so easy. Everybody who meets my wife loves her, and she is simply fantastic with me. She knows my meds by heart in case something should happen to me, and always makes it a point to go with me to my non-pdoc doctor visits. She gives me my space with the pdoc and isn’t pushy about it. She has outright said some things she doesn’t need to know, and lets me have my space with the pdoc. She is very protective of me and my info, but in the beginning we had a misunderstanding. She told a few people of my illness whom I didn’t want knowing, but it was limited to her family. She had never been a part of a relationship with a mental health patient, but she quickly understood my position and now she guards the fact I have schizophrenia like classified information. We fall in love with each other all over every day.
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For the record, my wife is not ‘normal’. She’s ‘extraordinary’. However, in terms of head makeup, she’s considered a ‘neurotypical’ or a person who is not mentally ill. I don’t do normal. Normal is boring.
Pixel.
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I love it so much. I love her so much. At first i couldn’t believe she knew the seriousness of my MI and it made cry just thinking that she would never have date me if she knew how bad off i was, but its been a while now and she has shown nothing but love and pasients and persistance. And when ever i feel doubt she makes it more than clear she wants to take care of me. The best feeling isn’t getting loved for who you are, but despite it