Love Rollercoaster

This probably isn’t how most people picture bipolar disorder. Yet despite this, more people than ever think they know what bipolar is — a mixed blessing for those who suffer from it. This is partially thanks to the ubiquity of advertisements for medications like Abilify and Zyprexa, and partially due to diagnoses, which have doubled over the last decade. A 1997 National Mental Health Association survey found that more than two-thirds of Americans had limited or no knowledge of the disease; almost a decade later, eight out of ten Americans think they know what bipolar disorder is. Everyone from disgraced New York Times reporter Jayson Blair to Debra LaFave, the high-school teacher convicted of seducing her fourteen-year-old student, has employed the bipolar defense. And if they don’t trumpet it as the explanation for their misdeeds, media experts are happy to do so on their behalf. Without ever having met her, Fox News contributor Dr. Keith Ablow all but diagnosed Britney Spears on air this month. “I would put on the list of possibilities a mood disorder like bipolar,” he said, further cementing it as the official catch-all for crazy people.

“There is never a story or scene with healthy, happy bipolars because even though that type comprises the bulk of the population, it

doesn’t sell and isn’t exciting,” says a bipolar woman who maintains a blog about bipolar disorder called Weird Cake. “Top this off with sensational misinformation from people like Oprah, and you build a population that fears us and looks for us in dark corners.”

As a result, half of all American adults say they wouldn’t date a bipolar person. Back when I dated Sara, I wasn’t one of them. I’d read in Psychology Today that ninety percent of marriages involving a bipolar person end in divorce, but I figured that statistic applied to couples who were ill-informed about the illness, people who weren’t prepared to meet it head-on. I also ascribed the figure to reporting bias: there were plenty of people out there who were bipolar and lived drama-free lives, and thus never made it into the statistics. Yet even with everything I knew about the disorder, I still constantly discovered new challenges, as basic as figuring out who my partner really was, as mundane as whether I should say something when she started cleaning the toilet bowl for the third time in a row.

Even in the most even-keeled people, dating can be a crisis between ideality and reality. We’re constantly told that the key to successful dating is to be yourself. However, “when you have a psychiatric illness, it’s a part of you,” says a bipolar Brit who keeps a pseudonymous blog: Social Anxiety and Bipolar Diary of Annie. “You cannot tell where your personality ends and the illness begins.”

Locating this gulf between personality and illness often falls to the significant other. “I find it difficult to realize when my daydreams cross a line into unhealthy hypomania,” says Annie. “This is where I rely on my friends to put me right and stop me from getting carried away.” The role of caregiver can strain any relationship. While Sara took her meds and saw her psychiatrist faithfully, she also neglected her physical health, leaving me with the choice between watching her eat nothing but popsicles all day long, or nagging her about it.

And as anyone would, she resented it when I played nutritionist. I eventually decided the only way to preserve the relationship was to let her do what she wanted. As her physical health seemed to deteriorate, I resisted temptations to call her doctor. But according to David Oliver, I should have. Oliver, who is not a psychiatrist, runs one of the internet’s most popular sites on bipolar disorder, Bipolar Central. He launched his bipolar consulting business because he was dissatisfied with the professional care his bipolar mother received.

“There’s a huge flaw in the system,” says Oliver. “They give you fifteen minutes at the doctor, they forget to tell you there are ten to twelve different meds, or to warn you about the side effects you’re experiencing.”

That lack of professional supervision means people in relationships with bipolar individuals must step outside the normal boundaries, according to Oliver — communicating with your boyfriend’s doctor behind his back, for instance. Such actions have saved lives; they’ve also violated trust, and in the end, I found myself unable to tell where the line separating those two requirements was. “It has been my experience that some people [with a bipolar partner] use the disorder as their immunity card,” says Danielle. “Nothing in the relationship is their fault because they’re dating or married to a bipolar person.” My relationship with Sara was filled with gray areas — the popsicle issue, for instance — in which I could never figure out the right thing to do.

Which is why some bipolar people prefer to date others with the same disorder. Thirty-seven-year-old librarian James Leftwich struggled for years with relationships because of his schizoaffective disorder — essentially

bipolar coupled with schizophrenia’s delusions or hallucinations. Tired of being misunderstood by a population generally unfamiliar with his condition, he created NoLongerLonely.com, one of the few dating websites for the mentally ill. In four years, he says, the site has helped produce countless relationships and at least six marriages. But even for someone with a similar illness, another person’s mental health is not an easy thing to be responsible for, and Leftwich says even he isn’t sure he would use his own website right now. “Personally, I’m in a frame of mind where I’m not sure I want someone with a mental illness,” he says.

On the other hand, an issue like bipolar disorder may encourage a healthy sense of compassion. When twenty-eight-year-old software engineer Jil told her husband about her illness on their very first date, she was happy that he seemed a little bewildered and had lots of questions — it meant he cared. “I also wanted to be a better person because of him, and when I feel no other reason to swallow those pills that stabilize my mood, I do it for his sake, not just my own,” says Jil.

Sara’s wasn’t an overdose, or a suicide attempt — at least, not an overt one. I’d known Sara was severely anemic, that her pills had made her stomach bleed. For months I’d asked her what her doctors were doing about it, and she’d given me cheerful answers about iron infusions and blood transplants. I no longer believed her, but I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do. I researched her medications and learned all sorts of frightening things. One of them wasn’t even indicated for her disorder; it was an epilepsy medication that the drug companies encouraged psychiatrists to use off-label.

But it was difficult for me to voice my reservations about her care. Sara liked hospitals. She loved Scrubs. She admired doctors, detested any criticism of the medical system, and talked about her psychiatrist as if he were a best friend. When she spent a night at a sleep-study clinic (she thought she was narcoleptic), she talked about it as if it were a slumber party. She kept getting into fender benders from falling asleep on the freeway, yet still insisted on driving to volunteer at the hospital that had saved her after her suicide attempt. It was more than simple gratitude, she admitted; the hospital’s rituals made her feel safe and comfortable. She talked about it the way other people talk about visiting their grandparents.

When I told Sara what I’d learned about her medications, she told me she would rather die than get off of them, and pointed out that she knew the cost of them better than I did. She couldn’t remember words, for instance — she who had wanted to be a writer. But those pills had given her a reason to live. Did I know better than her doctors did? No, I supposed I didn’t. I knew that for us to have a healthy relationship, though, I needed to trust her. The trouble was, I no longer did. At that moment, I decided I couldn’t stay with Sara any longer.

That day, when I got to the hospital, I found her looking happier than I’d ever seen her. I was baffled. Five minutes earlier the doctor had informed us that her life was in danger if she didn’t find some way to fix her anemia. But she seemed at peace now. That was the worst part about it — in her hospital gown, sitting up on her austere gurney bed, she looked as if she were finally at home.

I have my own theory about relationships with the bipolar: the successful ones are those in which the relationship simply isn’t in competition with the disease. Sara seemed to regard the illness as a more intimate part of her than I could ever understand — not just a profoundly affecting experience, the way other serious diseases are, but almost the entire essence of her existence. In the end, I simply wanted there to be more.  n°

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A recent graduate of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, Justin Clark has written for L.A. Weekly, Psychology Today, Black Book, Architecture, Fuse, and The Fader, among other publications. He is currently researching a history of the American child prodigy, and writing a mystery novel set in Los Angeles.