Bipolar 2 From Inside and Out

Posts tagged ‘sexuality’

My Brazen Hussy Phase

This is me in my Brazen Hussy phase, back in my college days. The piano player is a friend that I sometimes went places with. (We tried dating once, but it was a total bust.) We decided to recreate a saloon girl-type photo at the piano in the student union building. There was a lot of hooting and cheering as we got in position. I didn’t have a saloon-girl outfit, so I dressed Western instead. The vest was one my mother made for me out of various calico fabric scraps. I don’t remember just when or where I got the leather hat, but it went with me throughout college and beyond.

My Brazen Hussy phase was the first time that hypomania hit, except for the many times that it appeared as anxiety before I went to college, and after.

As many people do the first time they experience hypomania, especially the sexual kind, I rather enjoyed it. I flirted and dated, which I never did in high school. I joined a sorority and went to frat parties. I enjoyed my first kiss and then many more. I had a mad crush on a musician and eventually got to know him too. He was exciting and passionate and awakened something in me that never even seemed to exist before. When he broke up with me, I went into a deep downward spiral. I won’t say that was why I took a year off college, but I was confused about my future, and that surely didn’t help.

Back in my hometown for the next year, I got my hypomanic mojo back. I engaged in what I knew was a risky relationship with a coworker. I kept up with him for years and told him about my former life as a Brazen Hussy and about my depression. We went out during the former and he stuck with me through the latter. But he always said he wanted Brazen Hussy Jan rather than timid, depressed Jan.

I was back in Brazen Hussy mode when I met the man who would become my husband. We were with a couple of women who already knew him and greeted him with a kiss. “Don’t I get one too?” I asked boldly and got one. He kissed me again around the campfire and followed me around all weekend. I basked in the attention. It was exactly what I needed at the time.

Shortly thereafter, I moved back to my hometown. But we conducted a long-distance relationship until finally he moved out to be with me and, eventually, we married.

I won’t say I never went back into Brazen Hussy mode again. Hypomania still affected me. I still got mad crushes and flirted outrageously. Finally, however, I was diagnosed with bipolar and properly medicated. I won’t say the Brazen Hussy mode went away entirely, but episodes were fewer and further between and easier to understand.

I didn’t originally mean this post to be so confessional, but hypomania and hypersexuality are a very real part of bipolar disorder that I didn’t miss out on in my younger years. And that I sometimes miss in my later years. I know that not having those surges of intense feeling is better for me. Nowadays, however, when my bipolar disorder kicks up, it’s generally bipolar depression. I’m a lot more settled now and don’t have much room in life for hypomania. When I experience it now, it usually manifests as anxiety again or mild euphoria and overspending.

But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss my Brazen Hussy phase from time to time.

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Bipolar Sex: Drought and Abundance

two people laying on a bed covered with a floral comforter

Photo by rawpixel.com on Pexels.com

Here’s something bipolar people talk about amongst themselves but not so much with the world outside: sex.

The two poles of bipolar, depression and mania, govern a person’s appetite for sex. A lot of other factors determine whether the sex will be any good, or good for the participants.

Of course the above is true for neurotypical people as well. Moods and emotions – things in the brain – have as much or more to do with sex than stuff in the body. Thinking about sex and wanting sex, for example, start in the brain and without them, nothing else is likely to happen anywhere else.

The depression side of bipolar sex is easy enough to map out. After all, some of the hallmarks of depression are numbness, inability to enjoy things that once gave pleasure, and a tendency to isolate. It’s hard to get your motor revving with all that going on.

Still, the depressed person may want to have sex, or at least want to want to. That’s the way it’s been with me. When I’m in a thoroughly depressed state, sex doesn’t even cross my mind. When I’m not quite as depressed, I think I might like to have sex but don’t have the energy for it. And when I’m relatively stable, there’s the meds.

It’s well known that medications for bipolar disorder can kill the sex drive and in men the ability to get or maintain an erection. Some drugs supposedly have less effect on sexuality, but I’ve never found the magic combination. Or the supposed sex-friendly drug has had side effects I can’t tolerate.

So if bipolar depression is largely a big zero for bipolar sex, how about mania?

Overactive sex drive combined with a lack of impulse control can lead to sexual excess. The tendency to minimize risk-taking behaviors means that some of that sex can be detrimental to one’s health, relationships, and self-esteem. Riding that wave is exhilarating, but then, inevitably, comes the crash and the need to pick up the pieces.

Full disclosure here: Since I have bipolar 2 and my hypomania tends to turn sideways and come out as anxiety, I don’t experience that manic sex high. On the whole, I think I am grateful for this. Sex has never been such an important part of my life that I would risk everything for it.

Once, though, I did experience what you might call a hypomanic sex drive. It smoldered for a long time, requited but unconsummated, until the right set of circumstances presented themselves. It was a restlessness, an obsessive thought, a longing for connection, rather than an ungovernable rush of need. It gave me, perhaps, a glimpse of what it might be like to be manic and sexually stimulated. But I’ll never really know.

I do know that I am glad I had the experience, whatever it was. I’m glad it was safe sex.  I’m glad it didn’t destroy relationships. But just to feel that desire again, even if only for a brief time, even with the anxiety it provoked – and there was lots – it was a kind of affirmation that my body and brain are still connected in some vital way.

Most of the time I limp along with only thoughts of sex too fleeting to act upon. And maybe this is not the best way to live, but I have made my peace with it. And once in a great while, every now and then, I still am reminded that I can have a sexual existence.

Even though I have bipolar.

Of course, as always, your mileage may vary.

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