Car­o­line C Rav­el­lo

To­day I'd planned on shar­ing the up­shot of yo­ga in my ther­a­py. But for three con­sec­u­tive week­ends one or more of my house­guests has ques­tioned my life with­out a part­ner in these wood­ed parts where I choose to live.While I wel­comed the un­in­vit­ed in­ter­ven­tions with good hu­mour, I found the con­ver­sa­tions fo­cused on a per­ceived lack of phys­i­cal in­ti­ma­cy. My pref­er­ence is to ap­proach the is­sue from the an­gle of what's ap­pro­pri­ate for my men­tal well­be­ing.While I'm open to par­tic­i­pat­ing in re­la­tion­ships, at this stage I'm dis­crim­i­nat­ing, across the board, against any­one cre­at­ing di­ver­sions from my heal­ing. I've sep­a­rat­ed my­self from the in­fi­deli­ty of my pro­fessed "an­gel" and ex­com­mu­ni­cat­ed one rel­a­tive whom I al­ways favoured and who mis­guid­ed­ly felt am­ply con­fi­dent to be in­ac­cu­rate­ly and open­ly odi­ous (Face­book odi­um, too) to­wards me.

I re­main emo­tion­al­ly ac­ces­si­ble–though it would ap­pear from the ex­cla­ma­tions about how far I've re­lo­cat­ed that I'm phys­i­cal­ly in­dis­posed–but I've re­tired the ebul­lient en­er­gies which I've been known to al­lo­cate to ro­man­tic en­coun­ters.I'm cer­tain, how­ev­er, that my part­ner will come at the right time, so I car­ry no anx­i­eties about that mat­ter. When he comes he'll know that men­tal health is one of our chal­lenges and will have ac­cept­ed that with love and care we can grow to­geth­er fac­ing any dif­fi­cul­ty."Hav­ing a men­tal ill­ness," says www.men­tal­healthamer­i­ca, "shouldn't keep you from en­joy­ing ful­fill­ing re­la­tion­ships of all kinds, from close friend­ships to ro­man­tic re­la­tion­ships and even mar­riage. Men­tal ill­ness is fair­ly com­mon. In re­al­i­ty, there are many peo­ple with men­tal-health con­di­tions in lov­ing and nur­tur­ing re­la­tion­ships who share their lives with their part­ners, of­ten rais­ing fam­i­lies with them."Ro­man­tic re­la­tion­ships can be en­rich­ing, de­light­ful and mean­ing­ful," the site con­tin­ues, "but ne­go­ti­at­ing the ups and downs of such re­la­tion­ships can al­so be a ma­jor chal­lenge, es­pe­cial­ly for those with a men­tal ill­ness."

Hav­ing a men­tal ill­ness, though, should not be a sig­nal for a prob­lem­at­ic en­gage­ment. All re­la­tion­ships have prob­lems.It's con­stant com­mu­ni­ca­tion and com­pro­mise that make them work.Frankly, men­tal ill­ness shouldn't even fea­ture, and if it does, it should be with­in a re­la­tion­ship dis­claimer that says all hu­man be­ings are flawed in one way or an­oth­er.For me, hav­ing open­ly dis­cussed my strug­gles may have dis­count­ed my dat­ing cur­ren­cy. Can­did­ly, though, any man worth his salt and will­ing to ap­proach the love in me should be ex­cit­ed about the fact that I've elim­i­nat­ed "the dis­cov­ery pe­ri­od" of things that so many peo­ple dis­cern in the oth­er way too late.The ev­i­dence is mount­ing which sup­ports the amaz­ing im­pact of love, mar­riage, and sex on men­tal and phys­i­cal well­be­ing. Sci­en­tists dif­fer­en­ti­ate the three stages of love as "lust, at­trac­tion, and at­tach­ment, with each stage pro­duc­ing dif­fer­ent and vary­ing lev­els of hor­mones and chem­i­cals in the brain.""In the ear­ly stages of love," says date­hookup.com, "which are gen­er­al­ly dis­tin­guished by sex­u­al at­trac­tion and lust, sex­u­al be­hav­iour is typ­i­cal­ly ini­ti­at­ed by in­creas­es in oe­stro­gen for fe­males and testos­terone in males. The brain pro­duces chem­i­cals or neu­ro­trans­mit­ters in this phase, which are called adren­a­line, dopamine, and sero­tonin."

As I have writ­ten be­fore, sero­tonin and dopamine are "chem­i­cal mes­sen­gers" thought to mod­u­late de­pres­sion, anger, sleep, and sex­u­al­i­ty and are im­por­tant for the reg­u­la­tion of learn­ing and mood, as well as linked to anx­i­ety, mi­graine, mem­o­ry, and ap­petite."Oxy­tocin," says date­hookup, "is a pow­er­ful hor­mone, which is al­so re­leased by men and women dur­ing or­gasm and deep­ens the feel­ings of at­tach­ment be­tween them fol­low­ing sex. Be­cause of its ef­fects on af­fec­tion, it's re­ferred to as 'the cud­dle hor­mone.'"Some time ago I had din­ner with a cou­ple at a To­ba­go ho­tel where we were guests. One of them is a sea­soned me­dia per­son­al­i­ty whom I've known for a long time, and the oth­er was his spouse, whom I nev­er knew ex­ist­ed.Our dis­cus­sion be­gan with my re­sponse to why I had "dis­ap­peared" from the lo­cal me­dia and com­mu­ni­ca­tions sphere. As usu­al, my open­ness prompt­ed some deep shar­ing, most­ly about their man­age­ment of his wife's is­sues.

I learned she works from home with an in­ti­mate client base, has no in­ter­est in so­cial­is­ing so nev­er at­tends any event with him, and is nev­er in­se­cure, even as her few friends con­tin­ue to sug­gest that he would be un­faith­ful be­ing out there by him­self. He in turn is a sup­port­ive hus­band who has pro­vid­ed the phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al en­vi­ron­ment she needs.He said he is nev­er sur­prised, crit­i­cal, or an­noyed if he meets her read­ing the same book he left her read­ing that morn­ing and in the same place he left her, too. In fact, he has en­sured they have a bed­room ful­ly equipped with all ameni­ties–in­clud­ing heavy drapes, mi­ni re­frig­er­a­tor, and air-con­di­tion­ing–in case she doesn't feel like com­ing out.They in­fused hope for the in­ti­ma­cy and lov­ing sup­port that I know await me, and sharp­ened my re­solve to not set­tle for less.For me, right now, I loathe the in­creas­ing­ly du­plic­i­tous na­ture of peo­ple, which does not com­ple­ment my heart's bear­ing. My men­tal re­al-es­tate ac­qui­si­tion de­mands more head­space than most men to­day want to give.So I wait, pa­tient­ly.