Breathe
By Marcela Millán, Senior Communications Manager for Bumble Latin America.
I must confess that one of my guilty pleasures are reality shows; I enjoy sitting back, relaxing and simply disconnecting. A few weeks ago I was watching a show that seeks to prove whether love is blind. In the first episode, the hosts ask the contestants what questions they ask someone during a first date and I was surprised to hear that one of them was have you been to therapy? This month the mental health conversation has been on the media agenda and I have seen a lot of focus on how to address mental health disorders and illnesses. However, I think it's also important to integrate and open up this conversation to the day-to-day...how we take care of our mental health in work settings, home, in our relationships, what self-care practices we engage in, when it's important to go to therapy, etc.
My foray into therapy began several years ago and I have gone through different currents and professionals - finding a good therapist is often trial and error - also touching many issues, from depression, the relationship with my body, work issues, etc.. The growth has been enormous, but not immediate or easy. Working on myself has involved some discomfort and facing -and questioning- emotions and thoughts but, without a doubt, psychological therapy has been, among other tools and resources, a great ally.
At the beginning of this year I returned to Bumble (as a user), it was my third time on the app and, although I had not had what is generally defined as a "success story", I had accumulated good friendships, several fun dates and a few anecdotes. This season I was more relaxed and I am convinced that being in therapy working on my relationships helped me a lot to get to this point, I now had clear priorities and boundaries and a new level of self-awareness. There are many more people who have seen a positive change in their love life as a result of attending therapy: in a recent Bumble survey in Mexico, 38% of the people surveyed indicated that it had helped them to establish and respect their boundaries with a potential partner and 30% indicated that thanks to this practice, they were able to define what they were looking for in a relationship.
I met my current partner earlier this year and this time, like 25% of respondents, I was no longer willing to connect with someone who didn't prioritize their mental health and self-care and for me, as for nearly a quarter of the women surveyed, talking about mental health from the first date was more important than it was 5 years ago. I found that for him too and it was one of the most enriching and eye-opening conversations I've ever had on a first date.
This last figure points to the paradigm shift in the attitude we have as a society towards these issues in both men and women, and how open communication is reducing stigmas about mental health. According to the results, an overwhelming majority - 92% of women and 88% of men - believe it is very important to be able to openly discuss mental health issues with a potential partner. In addition, 86% of all respondents prioritized emotional maturity over physical attractiveness when asked which attribute was more important in a potential partner.
The universe of people offered by a dating app is wonderful, the possibilities are endless. We can access hundreds of profiles that are also looking for a genuine connection and that you would never meet in your circles of friends, colleagues or acquaintances. But to really connect with these like-minded people, the most important thing is to do the inner work of self-care, to know ourselves, to establish how we want to live a relationship, what we can give and what we want to receive because apps work best when we ourselves have clarity and love starts from within.
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of the company. Opinion 51.
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