Key #5 to Thriving with Bipolar Disorder: Love
We all have a need to love and be loved. I call love a person’s unconditional regard for the benefit of another human being. Bipolar individuals feel the same way, too.
One form of love is physical intimacy. In our 21st-century, post-modern Western civilization, sexual orientation and gender identity have come to the fore, testing and expanding our understanding of love. But there is no doubt that as long as two human beings care for each other and love one another, that is all that matters. Bipolar individuals, too, have a seat at the table.
One form of love is emotional bonding. Honor, nobility and chivalry generate romance. Especially for those of us who suffered from bipolar disorder, we had to unlearn what we had learned so that we could feel again, even if it meant getting hurt or being vulnerable. Emotional bonding involves taking risks with someone else. That might sound like playing a game of “emotional chess,” as in move-countermove, but perhaps the best analogy is just that.
Another form of love is intellectual companionship. Being “on the same page” with another usually comes with common educational achievement, overlapping social circles, similar religious persuasions, and like-minded cultural backgrounds. But sometimes “opposites attract,” and that is part of the attraction and the beauty of our current state of things in society. Bipolar individuals can participate in this exchange by seeking a “meeting of minds.”
We are not all the same, and yet in another sense we are not all that different. In the final analysis, bipolar individuals are unique in the challenges they face, but they also share a common humanity in the striving they engage in. True love is “asymptotic”: you’re always getting closer and closer to your partner, but there’s always more and more to know about them.
Key #5 to Thriving with Bipolar Disorder: Love