By Darcy Nathan

As if dating wasn’t difficult enough, dating with mental health issues can feel utterly exhausting at times. I've suffered from anxiety ever since I can remember, which means I’ve had to learn coping mechanisms to negotiate my symptoms. It’s taken some time, but through various means of intervention, I finally feel like I’m somewhat in tune with my brain. 

While I still sometimes struggle to negotiate my everyday life, on occasion, adding another person to that equation can feel all too much. Since entering my twenties, I've begun a whole new battle with my mental health - with the world of dating. 

We, anxiety sufferers, are used to being told our thoughts are irrational. When I attended CBT* for my panic attacks, I spent eight weeks being told, by my therapist, that my physical reaction to external stimuli was irrational. Whilst often being true, this has made it almost impossible for me to process when my emotional reaction is warranted. Add to this the world of dating men, a world where I’d liken my experience of grappling with decent communication to drawing blood from a stone, and you have a perfect recipe for disaster.

My dating experiences in my twenties have really brought this to the forefront. I recently had a relationship that caused me to entirely question everything. The all too common miscommunication between my brain’s reaction and my reality not only made me question my own perception but also made me negate the intentions of my date: Did he even like me in the first place? Did I misread the situation entirely? Even the people closest to me started to doubt me: “Didn't he just want to be friends?” 

I don’t blame them; after all, it wasn't the first time they’d seen me react completely illogically. I couldn’t even communicate how I really felt with the person I was seeing, because I was embarrassed and couldn’t legitimize my own feelings. Not having the normal grief of a ‘breakup’ was heartbreaking in itself but I also had to deal with the chaos caused by my own brain.

These feelings of uncertainty also leave us more vulnerable to gaslighting. “I didn’t mean it like that”; “You’re being insecure” - it’s impossible to decipher if your feelings are justifiable when someone is calling on you to question your own sanity - the sanity which you, yourself, often question too.

Over time I have come to realise that my judgment and thoughts in that situation were reasonable. I might have more trouble interpreting behaviour than others, but this doesn’t make me a fantasist. While it was awful to feel as if I’d gone ‘mad’ at the time, I’m grateful I learned the lasting lesson that my emotions are valid - always. 

It’s not just my anxiety I have to contend with when dating. As I’ve grown older, I’ve experienced more frequent periods of low mood; this means I have a tendency toward co-dependency. I recognise this is a hugely unhealthy trait, and it's not fair to place the burden of your own stability on your partner; it's definitely the one which causes me the most devastating issues in relationships. Equally, it's very difficult to avoid becoming overly attached when you’re depressed and associate a particular person with your happiness (they literally trigger your dopamine response!). This makes my breakups a hundred times more painful and, often to my own detriment, causes me to fear forming romantic attachments at all.

There’s no shortage of women sharing their dating mishaps online, but all too often these are anecdotal; there needs to be a broader, more meaningful conversation about dating with mental health issues. I am desperate for society to begin having raw discussions about playing the dating field with our mental injuries. While the de-stigmatisation of mental illnesses has made it easier to divulge the complexities of our personalities to one another, ultimately, I’ve learned that it’s effective communication that we all need to work at to save each other suffering. I’m learning to stick to this mantra, and hopefully it will save the future me from a whole lot of heartbreak. 

*CBT - cognitive behavioural therapy

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