This issue comes up quite a bit here at PC. My own feeling us that members are usually too open too soon about personal things like health issues and finances.

Right now, this guy seems "kind" and all that. You are thinking that you are "damaged goods" and that fairplay compels you to divulge that up front. The truth is that we're all damaged goods, whether we have a formal psych diagnosis or not.

If you don't know this guy well enough to see that he has some serious issues of his own (and he does because we all do,) then you don't know him well enough to trust him with very personal information about yourself.

Even if you tell him now that you have this psych diagnosis, he's not in a position, yet, to know what bearing that will have on the relationship. Not all bipolar people are the same. Until he knows you as an individual, he can't have any realistic idea of what a relationship with you will be like. You're not really giving him much useful information by saying, "I have this diagnosis." It would be far more informative to say, I've had trouble in relationships because I tend to have the following emotional reactions to interpersonal situations.

I strongly believe the term "mental illness" is thrown around way too lightly these days. Have you been diagnosed by an actual physician? Have you needed to be hospitalized? (Just ask yourself. You don't gave to answer me.) Some mood disorders are like cancer, and some are more like acne.

If your history of having a mood disorder tells you that you are likely to have bouts of exhibiting unpleasant behavior, then he is going to figure that out without needing a report from a psychiatrist. What counts is the behavior, not the diagnosis. Yagr, above, has put up an exellent post, re-reading.

So you don't want him to get the impression "that everything is great." Everything isn't great with anybody. Obviously, it is the good things that attract us to want to date someone. Dating is all about finding out if we can tolerate the not-so-good things. With time, those things become apparent.

Don't go sending him a written message about this. I would dump someone who did that, just because I think that's kind of creepy. Until you know more about the downside of this guy, you don't even know if he is someone you really want to be with.

Avoid physical intimacy, until you know each other a bit better, which takes time. I really believe most hurt feelings come from being rejected, after being physically intimate, when that intimacy was embarked on by two people who knew little about each other, but were looking for a quick fix for loneliness and horniness.