Obsessive Compulsive Disorder,  PTSD,  Schizoaffective Disorder,  Schizophrenia

The Impact of my Illnesses on my Significant Other

Katie, a girl with brown curly hair poses with her boyfriend, James, a man with blonde hair and a beard, as the stand on the campus of Northwestern University.

Meet James. He’s a hardware and software engineer from the same area of California that I’m from. We met back in high school and didn’t really like each other. But 8 years after I moved to Illinois, we reconnected through Facebook. Now he lives with me in Illinois and we’ve been dating for 3 1/2 years. His support is vital to me, and he regularly supports me through symptoms and setbacks related to my obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and schizoaffective disorder. Typically on this blog, you hear my perspective. To give you a fuller idea of the impact my illnesses have on those around me, here is a Q&A with James.

Q: You knew my diagnosis before we were in a relationship; did you have any concerns about dating someone with OCD, PTSD, and schizoaffective disorder?

A: Not really, I knew what I was getting into beforehand.

Q: How has dating someone with these diagnoses been different than being my friend?

A: I see it more often. You probably wouldn’t tell someone you weren’t dating all the symptoms / experiences you are having.

Q: When it comes to being in a relationship with someone with mental illnesses like mine, what surprised you the most?

A: How for the most part it’s no different than other relationships.

Q: How have my diagnoses and symptoms impacted you?

A: Mostly scheduling has been affected. The symptoms just force me to be more attentive.

Q: In the same vein, how do you feel my diagnoses impact our relationship or our life together?

A: We just need to plan things out more before doing them. For example, spontaneous trips etc aren’t practical.

Q: What is it like to support me through times when I’m experiencing symptoms?

A: For the most part the symptoms don’t have a huge impact on our relationship. Some responses of course seem unreasonable but I just try not to take it personally.

Q: What helped you learn how to best support me?

A: Time mostly. The more scenarios that came up, the better my responses could be.

Q: How does it feel when I have symptoms that you can’t directly impact like hallucinations or PTSD related flashbacks?

A: It is a lot harder to deal with. The only thing I can do is be there which may not seem like enough.

Q: What’s the hardest part of being in a relationship with someone with these diagnoses?

A: Only difficult to do spontaneous activities, most things are fairly normal.

Q: What are the biggest differences (if any) that you’ve noticed between dating someone with mental illnesses like schizoaffective disorder and dating someone with a different or no diagnoses?

A: I’ve discovered that people without a diagnosis can be much more crazy than people with actual mental health issues.

Q: Has your view of mental illness changed at all since dating me?

A: I was already fairly accepting of it, but it has given me a closer look at the issues.

Q: What advice would you give someone who is in a relationship with someone living with mental illness?

A: Just be supportive and be there.

Q: Based on your experiences with me and my illnesses, what’s something that you think people should know about being in a relationship with someone living with mental illnesses?

A: It isn’t much different than “normal” relationships. Sometimes you just need to be a bit more sensitive.

Q: What would you say to someone who believes the stereotype and media image of people with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder?

A: That they should spend some time with someone who actually has it before they make those judgments.



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