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Be careful who you fall in love with. While it is easy to fall in love with a person who is objectively perfection, it is also possible to fall in love with som

Be careful who you fall in love with. While it is easy to fall in love with a person who is objectively perfection, it is also possible to fall in love with someone who is deeply flawed. The strength of the bond is no less. Sometimes the old method of having one's parents choose a mate appears to be the better thing. Some cultures will investigate a potential mate's family background several generations looking for physical or psychological problems, thus averting potential disaster or the bearing of flawed offspring. On the other hand statistics show that when love strikes, such marriages last longer and result in more children than arranged marriages. Can you choose who you fall in love with? Likely no, but you can know when it's happening and terminate the process if you see serious warning signs. In this story the warning signs were explicitly posted at the entrance gate.

lilsunnybee 14y ago
Aren't you lucky you don't have a severe mental illness? Obviously anyone that does should be avoided like the plague, regardless of how many good qualities and virtues they have about them. If you're that broken, you just don't deserve romance and love. But obviously life is still worth living, so don't kill yourself silly!
- Benferhat 14y ago
  > If you're that broken, you just don't deserve romance and love. Woah, woah, woah. Surely you don't mean that anyone deserves my or your or anyone else's romance and love. These things don't mean anything unless they're freely given.
dkarl 14y ago
I bailed on a similar situation where I could feel myself falling for someone with schizo-affective disorder with a side of bipolar disorder. I certainly understand where you're coming from. I think the question is whether you can know someone apart from their mental illness. The woman in my case was extremely functional despite ongoing symptoms, but she also behaved destructively. She was skilled and enthusiastic at creating drama between people and heedless of the consequences of her personal behavior. She was good at creating beautiful things, situations, and emotions, but compulsive about destroying them. This is a bit confusing to talk about, because the terms colloquially applied to such behavior (the insensitivity of which the current context makes clear) are "crazy" or "psycho." Every time she did something destructive, I had to ask myself: is she doing this because she's mentally ill, or because she's "psycho?" Meaning, in less offensive language, is this purely mental illness, or is she also a cruel, capricious, irresponsible person? I couldn't even be sure it was valid to ask the question, but my intuition said the latter. She was just as destructive to herself as she was towards everyone else, but then again, so are many people who simply have "issues" without major mental illness. On the other hand, she had ongoing symptoms including auditory hallucinations (her version of "well" was when she knew they weren't real), and she often made strange connections between things, strange jumps in conversation, which she couldn't explain coherently. I always felt guilty about holding her responsible for her behavior. After I cut off contact with her, I felt very guilty about it at first, because I had such intense feelings for her. I thought, "If I run away from her, who will ever stay?" When I caught myself thinking that way, though, I knew I had made the right decision. The reason I tell my story is that it's possible Kas has satisfied himself on which aspects of Sally's behavior and personality are "her" and which aspects are due to her mental illness. He says she's "Guileless, straightforward, self-aware, good-hearted, open-minded, always truthful, always kind," which does not describe someone acting under the influence of schizophrenia. When he says he would throw himself in front of a bus if she asked him to, he's clearly not talking about the schizophrenic Sally, unless he has a death wish. If he has separated her from her mental illness, perhaps it's no different from loving someone who has any other disability. This is all bound up in the question of free will, of course. People generally believe in free will, and they treat mental illness as a limitation on free will. If you believe that personal history is just as binding as mental illness, then any discrimination on the basis of a person's behavior is equally just or unjust whether they are mentally ill or not.

lilsunnybee 14y ago

Aren't you lucky you don't have a severe mental illness? Obviously anyone that does should be avoided like the plague, regardless of how many good qualities and virtues they have about them. If you're that broken, you just don't deserve romance and love. But obviously life is still worth living, so don't kill yourself silly!

Benferhat 14y ago
> If you're that broken, you just don't deserve romance and love. Woah, woah, woah. Surely you don't mean that anyone deserves my or your or anyone else's romance and love. These things don't mean anything unless they're freely given.

dkarl 14y ago

I bailed on a similar situation where I could feel myself falling for someone with schizo-affective disorder with a side of bipolar disorder. I certainly understand where you're coming from. I think the question is whether you can know someone apart from their mental illness. The woman in my case was extremely functional despite ongoing symptoms, but she also behaved destructively. She was skilled and enthusiastic at creating drama between people and heedless of the consequences of her personal behavior. She was good at creating beautiful things, situations, and emotions, but compulsive about destroying them. This is a bit confusing to talk about, because the terms colloquially applied to such behavior (the insensitivity of which the current context makes clear) are "crazy" or "psycho." Every time she did something destructive, I had to ask myself: is she doing this because she's mentally ill, or because she's "psycho?" Meaning, in less offensive language, is this purely mental illness, or is she also a cruel, capricious, irresponsible person? I couldn't even be sure it was valid to ask the question, but my intuition said the latter. She was just as destructive to herself as she was towards everyone else, but then again, so are many people who simply have "issues" without major mental illness. On the other hand, she had ongoing symptoms including auditory hallucinations (her version of "well" was when she knew they weren't real), and she often made strange connections between things, strange jumps in conversation, which she couldn't explain coherently. I always felt guilty about holding her responsible for her behavior. After I cut off contact with her, I felt very guilty about it at first, because I had such intense feelings for her. I thought, "If I run away from her, who will ever stay?" When I caught myself thinking that way, though, I knew I had made the right decision. The reason I tell my story is that it's possible Kas has satisfied himself on which aspects of Sally's behavior and personality are "her" and which aspects are due to her mental illness. He says she's "Guileless, straightforward, self-aware, good-hearted, open-minded, always truthful, always kind," which does not describe someone acting under the influence of schizophrenia. When he says he would throw himself in front of a bus if she asked him to, he's clearly not talking about the schizophrenic Sally, unless he has a death wish. If he has separated her from her mental illness, perhaps it's no different from loving someone who has any other disability. This is all bound up in the question of free will, of course. People generally believe in free will, and they treat mental illness as a limitation on free will. If you believe that personal history is just as binding as mental illness, then any discrimination on the basis of a person's behavior is equally just or unjust whether they are mentally ill or not.