The Impact of Bipolar Disorder on Sex

Bipolar disorder, which is also known as manic depressive illness, is characterized by a person’s tendency to experience moments of depression which can quickly change into periods of happiness. These serious shifts in energy and moods can affect one’s entire life and the people around them. Sex is one of the things that bipolar disorder can affect.

One thing that bipolar disorder affects a person is their self-esteem, and this can be due to the disorder’s effect on a person’s sex life. Bipolar disorder commonly causes severe disorder within one’s sex life, and this doesn’t just involve a tendency for one to not want to have sex. Bipolar disorder can cause a person to want sex too much, therefore making them hypersexual and/or addicted to sex. Usually, those who are suffering from bipolar disorder have to take depression medication and other types of medication that have side effects that have the potential to kill one’s libido, cause erectile dysfunction and start many other sexual dysfunctions.

Bipolar Disorder and Hyper-Sexuality

When a person suffers from hypersexuality, it means that they are too infatuated and/or involved in sexual tendencies and activities. For people who have a manic depressive illness, it’s not uncommon for them to suffer from some sort of sex addiction. Sometimes, it can be mild and not require any sort of special attention, or it can be severe and affect the person’s entire sex life.

When a person experiences a severe form of sexual addiction, it’s difficult for them to control their sexual impulses. This can cause them to fail at maintaining regular relationships or marriages, and it can cause a person to participate in risky sex. If a person participates in risky sex, the risk of obtaining a sexual disease comes into play. This automatically increases a person’s risk of death, because some sexual diseases can kill a person.

Just because a person suffers from bipolar disorder doesn’t mean that they’ll experience hypersexuality, but it’s not uncommon for them to experience it, and if they do experience it, it has potential to be a very large problem. This can be stopped with proper medications. When a person inflicted with bipolar disorder is properly medicated, then one will have less of a risk of letting hyper-sexuality control their life.

Bipolar Disorder and Loss of Sexual Interest

Bipolar disorder causes random instances of unexplainable depression, and depression and depression medications can completely diminish one’s sex drive. These instances when a bipolar person wishes not to have sex can last for months or years at a time. This can impact one’s sex life, and one’s relationship may be affected as well.

Bipolar disorder can impact a person by making them feel ugly, fat, old, and sexually undesirable. It can also make them neglect their own personal grooming because they believe there is no point because they aren’t having sex anymore. They can also have the urge to be left alone, feel exhausted, or not experience any pleasure because of sex.

What Can Someone With Bipolar Disorder Do About Their Sex Life?

All a bipolar person can do, which is hard for someone suffering from a mental illness, is to find balance in their life. This can be accomplished with the appropriate medications for one’s particular circumstances, and communication with one’s partner about how the illness is affecting their sex life is also important to do. One can also speak with their doctor about how to regain their sex drive or lower their sex drive, and this can be done by adjusting medication intake and which medications one ingests.

Since some medications cause erectile dysfunction, lack of testosterone, and lack of libido, voicing concerns to a doctor may be the only way one can fix their sex life when they suffer from bipolar disorder.

One’s partner will become more accepting when they know that it’s not their fault that the one suffering from bipolar disorder is the reason that their sex life has fallen, and not them. This is why communication is key. A bipolar person’s self-esteem drops and following it, their partner’s self-esteem drops. This can cause confusion, sadness, and create a dysfunctional relationship.

My Personal Thoughts

If you suffer from bipolar disorder and you’re having sexual problems, speak to your doctor and your partner, and find a solution that meets your needs and balances your life, even though you have an illness that is hard to balance.