It goes without saying that communication between both partners is an important part of a successful relationship. Why, then, did I end up hiding my mental illness from my boyfriend? The answer to that question is complicated.
If memory serves me, I met Bill (not his real name) on Yahoo personals. He was a tall, smart Internet entrepreneur who got my sense of humor and whose stories held up to a Google search. We had the same taste in music, and he likened writing HTML code to composing music. I’m a nerd, so basically I was in love.
I didn’t plan on hiding my mental illness from Bill when I started dating him. I thought about how the conversation would take place, what I would say, but I never said anything. There never seemed to be a good time to bring up my major depression diagnosis. Not that there is ever a good time to bring up a potentially debilitating disease. I thought there would be a neat segue, like watching TV together when a Prozac ad aired: “Say, Bill? You know, most of my friends were on Prozac in college. Speaking of psychotropic drugs…” But nothing like that ever happened, so I remained mute about my illness.
I didn’t start actively hiding my mental illness from Bill until I started spending multiple nights a week at his house. By then, we’d been dating for a while, and though we spent a lot of time together, the relationship wasn’t what you would call “serious.” I started to believe that I’d tell him if we ever talked about a future together. So I took my medication at his house, but I never took it when he was in the room, waiting to down my antidepressant until he went to the bathroom. In all those months, he must have noticed me and my pills, but he never asked about anything, so I figured he didn’t suspect anything or he didn’t care. I also never mentioned going to therapy, as I was afraid of mentioning it even in passing. I had no reason to think that Bill would break up with me if he found out about my depression. Still, I remained quiet on the subject. Soon it became easy to forget that I was hiding something from Bill. I had no symptoms, and I felt pretty good, so there was no way to tell that I had a mental illness. Bill and I saw movies, had dinners and continued like a “normal” couple.
A problem arose for me when my mood started to decline about six months into the relationship. I’d lost my job, and it made me feel disproportionately sad and hopeless. Bill was sympathetic to my moods, assuming that they were about my employment situation. I withdrew a little, but not so much that he’d noticed; he was working day and night on a new program and barely came up for air. I was secretly relieved that Bill worked so much since it meant that I didn’t have to worry about him seeing me in by depressed state. But when we went out on a Saturday night, we saw a movie that had a poignant ending. It reduced me to sobs that continued into the credits. Bill said nothing about my emotional outburst, he just handed me a napkin and kept talking about the movie’s casting.
I collected myself by the time we got to Bill’s apartment, where I’d planned to spend the night. When he initiated sex, I thought that I wanted to go along with things. However, once we were well into the act, I started to cry. I felt horrible, and I felt like I had to hide my outburst from Bill, which I did by resting my chin on his shoulder so he couldn’t see my face. I thought he would certainly feel my tears or hear my hitched breathing, but they were probably mistaken for the effects of our lovemaking. At that moment — or shortly thereafter — I realized that it wasn’t so much that I didn’t want to tell Bill about my mental illness; I didn’t want to share anything emotional with him. If he didn’t have the emotional wherewithal to even inquire when I cried at the movies, how could I entrust him with the most sensitive aspect of my life?
Bill and I broke up a few months later. Though I still liked and respected him, I needed to be with someone emotionally competent enough to handle my outbursts, my feelings, the complicated dance that is my mental illness. Who I decide to tell about my disease isn’t about subterfuge on my part, or about a person’s role in my life. It’s about identifying the right kind of individuals to understand and support me through my daily life, or through a depressive episode.
