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Dating with a serious mental illness can come with stigma and hardship, but it doesn't have to.

A successful relationship with serious mental illness falls on maintaining independence and responsibility.

Long-term success depends on respecting one's coping skills and routines involving mental illness.

Stigma against dating people with serious mental illness (SMI) is abundant. There is no shortage of discrimination against people who are difficult to understand, whether it be in the workplace or the public sphere, and when bringing them into one’s personal life.

Dating someone with SMI can bring fear and hesitation due to the uncertainty of how a person handles their SMI. But what if we had the tools and wisdom to help us navigate lives that may be “tougher” than the average?

Lauren Elise Rogers is a Certified Holistic Sexuality Educator and Embodied Intimacy & Relationship Coach, known for her warm, approachable style and evidence-informed practice. Grounded in a biopsychosocial model of care, she takes an interdisciplinary approach to sexual and relational challenges, frequently collaborating with clients and their healthcare providers to support comprehensive, individualized care. She helps empower individuals and couples to explore complex topics with curiosity, agency, and confidence.

Sarah An Myers: Dating someone with a serious mental illness like bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, major depressive disorder, or schizophrenia can be daunting. What are some things we can do to either dispel stigma or relieve the pressure on both parties?

Lauren Elise Rogers: Whether we are dating someone with a SMI or dating as a person with a serious mental illness, I believe that we are required to take responsibility for our own embodied experience rather than giving away or taking away responsibilities from the other. Kai Cheng Thom refers to the Ecological Model of Attachment as “one that includes complex and deeply rooted kinship networks, relationships with culture and cultural artifacts, as well as connection to the non-human world.” I like to explain this model to my clients as simply “not putting all of our eggs in the partnership basket.” When dating, we should not be looking for a parent; we should be looking for a partner. We are not meant to do relationships alone. We can allow ourselves........

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