Pete Davidson opens up about dating while living with mental illness

By William Hughes | May 25, 2018 | 8:36pm

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Saturday Night Live star Pete Davidson opened up about living with borderline personality disorder last year, talking about his illness in a conversation with WTF’s Marc Maron. (Previous to that, Davidson had made public statements about absences from the NBC sketch show that he chalked up to struggling with what he thought were side effects of daily marijuana use, but which he now says were symptoms of the disorder.) He’s also, supposedly, dating pop star Ariana Grande at the moment, two facts that would have absolutely no connection to each other, had the internet not decided to be its usual self and give Davidson unnecessary amounts of shit for dating while living with a mental illness.

Hence a series of Instagram posts Davidson tossed onto the internet not too long ago, in an effort to remind people that things like “treatment” and “therapy” exist, and that condemning someone to loneliness just because they have a diagnosis will probably do a lot more harm than good. Davidson avoids commenting on the details of any romantic relationships he may or may not be having, but pushes back hard against the idea that it’s somehow impossible for someone with BPD to have a healthy, non-toxic relationship. (Davidson made the posts via Instagram Stories, which vanish after 24 hours, but you can see screen captures of his writing at The Cut.)