Mental health, sex drive and mood

I have always wanted to talk about my mental health and it’s relation to sex but I have had some misgivings. I am pretty much anonymous on my blog and on twitter but three people from real life know who I am. This makes it hard to talk about something so personal. In addition, you never know if you are going to stay anonymous forever. One day I may decide to shake off anonymity and I don’t want to feel like I would be embarrassing myself.

On the other hand, here I am about to talk about my sex life. After all, what’s the point in mental health blogging if I’m not open and honest about how my mental illness affects me?

When my partner and I were first together, like most couples, we had a great sex life. It was probably too good. I was high on life and felt all connected to nature. Obviously in hindsight, I was hypomanic. Yes, I was in a great new relationship but I felt overly optimistic and excitable. Everything felt so intense and beautiful. When you are in such a good mood, sex feels so much better.

What followed in our relationship were periods of lots of great sex interspersed with periods of no sex at all. My partner would find this difficult and thought it meant that I didn’t love him. Sometimes I worried about that too. I thought that if I didn’t want sex anymore, maybe I didn’t find him attractive. This made me question our whole relationship. The reality though was that my mental illness was getting in the way.

It was when I was depressed that I lost all my sex drive. I felt too tired, too weary of life. Everything was dark and miserable. I felt like my energy was being drained away from me. I couldn’t be bothered to dress, to wash, to face the world. Faced with these feelings, why would I have been interested in sex? I was desolate and you need to have some kind of life in you to have pleasurable sex. It wasn’t just that I wasn’t interested in having sex with my partner. I wasn’t interested in men at all. I didn’t even look at other men. My sex drive was non-existent.

I didn’t have sex when I was depressed and I had sex all the time when I felt high. However there was a tipping point I reached when I became so manic that my sex life was interrupted. When I got too manic, my behaviour became bizarre. If I tried to initiate sex with my partner he would not oblige. He told me later that he felt scared by my behaviour. I was laughing too wildly, eyes bulging, stare unflinching. Sometimes it was hard for him because he missed the intimacy gained through sex but he didn’t want to take advantage of me.

I am at a point now that I have started to gain an intense interest in sex again. This has come along with an improved mood. The increase in sexual activity has really brought my partner and I closer together. It is lovely to feel that deep connection again. However I am scared of what this means for my illness. I want to believe that this is just normal and that it means that I am not depressed anymore. However, I fear that it could be a manic episode coming on. I feel like my thoughts are going quite fast and I seem to be laughing too easily, perhaps inappropriately sometimes.

Sex is something many people in relationships have fairly regularly and consistently. It is hard for both my partner and I to have such an erratic sexual routine. Mental illness (and medications used to treat mental illness) can really take its toll on sex drive and therefore can take its toll on relationships. I think that it’s important to talk to your partner and try and explain that it’s not to do with them, it’s to do with the illness. If they love you they should hopefully be understanding.

Mental illness and my lost life in academia

I was never someone who had career ambitions really. In fact, when I was at school, I didn’t really even really consider what kind of job I would have in the future. However, there was one thing I knew: I wanted to learn everything I could about how the world worked. I was motivated by the dream of understanding the world. And I have to admit, I was also partially motivated by the feelings I got by being good at academic subjects. I wanted to do well in exams and feel like I had achieved something.  

As I worked through my degree, the drive to do well in the subjects I was interested in was overwhelming. I am a shy person and most people didn’t really believe in me. I can come across as not very serious and a bit distracted at times so I certainly don’t appear like someone who would be good at something academic. I wanted to prove people wrong and show them that first impressions are misleading. I started my PhD with a feeling of excitement. I had found something I could be recognised for. My self-esteem became tied up with this recognition.

When I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and generalised anxiety disorder, my world changed. Suddenly I was incapable of working on my PhD. My brain was overwhelmed with energy and I was highly agitated. I was experiencing a bipolar mixed state and my anxiety levels were sky high. I couldn’t concentrate, I couldn’t read and I couldn’t write either. That was 3 years ago. I have never recovered.

My ambition to finish my PhD now looks increasingly unlikely. This realisation has been devastating to me. My self-esteem has been tied up with what I can achieve academically and suddenly this has been taken away from me. My whole sense of self has become eroded. Now I am totally adrift and don’t know what to do with myself. 

Each day has been filled with nothingness. I couldn’t even begin to tell you how I have spent the last few years. There have been many dog walks and also a lot of sitting. There have been trips to the shops for shoe laces and other such exciting objects. There has been a lot of tea and coffee drinking. When you don’t have any routine in your days you fill them with strange beverage drinking customs. I have developed a schedule of drinking times and have a multitude of options for different occasions. This is how I survive through the days.

My academic life had become a huge part of who I am. Mental illness has taken that away from me. I was wrong to let academic achievement define who I was but it was so easy to when I had such a vague sense of self to begin with. Everyone wants to be recognised for something. My mistake was getting too carried away with what people thought of me and letting it rule my life.