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[Terri Cheney+]

Terri Cheney

The Bipolar Lens

Relationships

The Impact of Mental Illness on Intimacy

Hiding a diagnosis may be tempting, but it deters healthy relationships.

Posted May 3, 2024 | Reviewed by Tyler Woods

THE BASICS

The biggest struggle of my life has been with mental illness. The second biggest struggle has been with intimacy. This is not a coincidence.

Because I’ve had bipolar disorder since childhood, I’ve spent most of my life hiding integral parts of myself from the world, namely, my intense and unpredictable mood swings. I’ve considered them a shameful, almost sinful secret that would certainly result in social and professional ostracism if anyone ever found out the truth. So I’ve done my damnedest to keep them out of sight from others. As a result, I've lived in a state of secrecy for as far back as I can remember.

Secrecy can burn your soul to a crisp.

It took a monumental effort to hide my true self. When I was a child, it meant incessant overachieving, so that no one would ever think to look behind all those A-pluses. Who would have guessed that the top student in the class nearly committed suicide over a homework assignment in first grade? Or that the relentlessly smiling cheerleader, desperate to self-medicate her depressions, was a blackout drinker from the age of 16?

Nobody knew. I was voted most likely to succeed when I should have been voted most likely to achieve an untimely death.

Much as I didn’t want to become a lawyer, it turned out to be a savvy decision in terms of hiding?there’s a formality to the profession that suited me just fine. It meant I didn’t have to get too close to the people I worked with; I could maintain a remote demeanor, which was often praised in performance reviews. People called me poised when, in fact, I was simply too afraid to be seen in all my messy truth.

Relationships have been the biggest test of my ability to hide. Sometimes, it meant literally disappearing from sight?not answering messages for weeks at a time, ignoring persistent knocks at the door, pretending to be sick, or just not giving any excuse at all. Not surprisingly, many people were confounded by my here-and-gone behavior and chose not to engage with me further. But for some reason that still mystifies me, a precious few stuck it out despite their bewilderment.

Then, in 2008, my first book, Manic: A Memoir, hit the New York Times bestseller list…and suddenly I was no longer a cipher to anyone, especially to those who had known me before. People I hadn’t heard from in ages came call

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