Challenging Stigma and Cultivating Relationships

After a lifetime of silence, relationship guru Susan is ready to challenge stigma and stop pretending

By Stephanie Stephens

For four long decades, Susan kept her bipolar diagnosis on the down-low. She refers to a 1950s hit by The Platters to describe her modus operandi. “I’m like the ‘great pretender,’” Susan confesses. “There’s always been such stigma. I’ve been ashamed, and I’ve told very few people. I’ve always thought, ‘What the heck can they do for me anyway, except look at me differently?’”

When people look to Susan, it’s often for relationship advice. A sex educator and cognitive therapist by profession, she’s also known as a “flirting coach” thanks to her books (starting with How to Attract Anyone, Anytime, Anyplace in 1993) and media appearances on Oprah, Good Morning America and the like.

There’s a certain irony involved: Susan points out that bipolar disorder can cause people to hunker down inside their own heads, while flirting is “external.”

“With bipolar, you think about yourself and your problems a lot, and it’s very self-involved. Flirting gets you out of yourself when you make others feel good. It’s not just about you.”

Professionally, Susan is an able communicator. On the topic of her illness, however, silence seemed golden.

“Events that should cause a reaction in ‘normal’ people, like anger, can be thrown in my face if I say I’m bipolar, so I don’t,” she says.

On the other hand, there sometimes was a cost to keeping quiet. When a man she’d been involved with found out about her diagnosis years later, he questioned why she hadn’t been honest with him. At the time, she’d tried to act as if everything was great even though she’d gotten very unsettled and “manicky” after her first book came out, she says.

As she recalls it, he told her: “I didn’t know what was going on and thought it was me. The truth might have made all the difference for us.”

Novel solution

Susan has three grown children (and seven grandchildren) from a 15-year marriage that ended several years after she was hospitalized for mania and diagnosed with bipolar in 1975. Now part of the “mature adult” demographic, as she puts it, she’s ready to let it all hang out— and she’s using the medium of fiction not only to express her feelings, but also to come into the open.
Earlier this year she self-published a novel, The Summer Train: A Woman’s Journey from Desperation to Celebration. When the novel opens in the 1960s, the heroine is a traditional housewife. Thanks in part to the women’s liberation movement, she finds the strength to cope with bipolar illness, marital infidelity and emotional abuse.

Susan says having bipolar and keeping it quiet are the main elements she shares with her character.

When she first began working on the novel in 1978, it was a time when “people with mental illness were shunned, shamed and stigmatized,” she says.

“Maybe if I’d been born a decade later, when there was awareness and education around bipolar disorder, I could have opened up more. Back then no one talked about ‘it.’ People had said I was ‘high strung’ but they really didn’t know what was wrong with me. Before my diagnosis, neither did I.”

Susan credits correct medications, psychotherapy, and a support group she still attends with helping her survive and thrive despite continuing mood issues. She got very good at masking or hiding symptoms— even from a psychiatrist with whom she was romantically involved.

“I fooled him when I was anxiety-ridden and frantic, but I hid my medications well,” she says. “I’d blow off mania steam by doing sit-ups in the next room or going out for a run. I could also just withdraw and come back later.”

Maybe if I’d been born a decade later, when there was awareness and education around bipolar disorder, I could have opened up more.

Her partner didn’t notice her under the- radar depression either, Susan remembers, perhaps because of his own.

“Even with my sick, empty feelings, I don’t bother anybody when I’m depressed,” she says.

Media coverage of celebrities with bipolar in recent years emboldened Susan’s change of heart.

“I thought, ‘Well, maybe I really can talk about this now because it’s been long enough. Maybe I can help some people,’” she says.

Social skills

Flirting can involve some masking and pretending, especially at first. If shyness or self-doubt prevent you from dipping a toe in the dating pool, she says, it’s time to reconsider.

“You don’t need the ultimate social skills and confidence to reach out and flirt—and you can always pretend like I did,” she explains.


Susan developed her flirting expertise by studying body language experts, reading romantic novels, and analyzing people in social situations. She originally taught a flirting course for adult continuing education while she was a family living/sex education coordinator for the New York City Board of Education.

“People worry about, ‘What should I say or do?’ and, ‘Will he or she like me?’ Instead, think ‘outward’ and ask the other person questions, then listen attentively to the answers,” Susan says.

If you’re nervous in social situations, she suggests picking out the least compatible or threatening person there so you can practice flirting skills in a low-pressure setting. Think of it as rehearsing. And the more you practice, the better you’ll flirt the next time.

Susan also emphasizes the need to keep such encounters playful and fun.

“Then when you meet someone with potential, don’t take it personally if you get rejected,” she says. “You never know— maybe you look like their mother or ex-husband that they can’t stand, so don’t write that script.”

When it comes to dating and disclosure, she’s in favor of waiting until “you think there’s really something there.” When the time comes, she recommends framing the conversation like this:

“Bipolar is a disorder and I’m on medications. It’s very treatable, but not curable. I’d love to get to know you better, because I believe my disorder is well managed. Yes, there used to be stigma around bipolar disorder, but I really hope you won’t feel that way and that we can give this a try.”

As Susan writes in her novel, maybe you’ll find “the best gift of all was having finally told the truth”—even if it takes a lifetime.

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Susan’s Strategies

To cope instead of mope, Susan tries to:

LOSE THE VICTIM MENTALITY. “You can be one, but don’t act like one,” she advises.

SWIM. For her, “it works like medication.” She dreads mornings, but forces herself to rise and head for the pool.

PLAY BRIDGE. It helps her hone her concentration.

FIND A SYMPATHETIC EAR. She talks to her sister-in-law about everything.

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Printed as “My Story: Flirting With The Truth”, Fall 2014