Disabled Dating and the Difficulties Within

I guess first of all I should start this article off by saying I am not an expert at dating. Now that I've got that out of the way, this article will discuss my experiences of trying to carry on a long term relationship/dating as a severely disabled person. So first of all I will discuss my past attempts at intimate relationships and then I will discuss why it is the severely disabled have so much trouble maintaining these relationships.

Since I am discussing dating someone with a severe disability I guess it would make sense for me to describe myself and my disability. I was born with staff pneumonia which was later diagnosed as Dubowitz congenital muscular dystrophy. For the most part growing up I looked like a normal kid but as I started hitting puberty the muscles in my back were too weak to keep my spine growing straight and began to develop a severe case of scoliosis. I always looked kind of anorexic because my muscles never developed and for some reason I couldn't gain weight. This caused a lot of self-esteem problems for me in junior high and high school and even worse in later life when the scoliosis was at its all-time worst. As you can see from the pictures that I have added my body itself is severely deformed. If you were to cut my body off and looking just at my head I wouldn't say that I'm ugly but I don't believe I'm very attractive looking either. On a scale between 1-10, I would say I'm probably a 4 1/2 or 5 on a good day. I don't think looks are everything but let's face it most of the time if you're not attracted to the person on the outside then you don't take the time to get to know the person on the inside. I would have to say my best quality would be my sense of humor and personality. I have to have a personality though because if Your ugly like me and you don't have a personality you're screwed. I guess that's enough about me now on to the topic at hand.

The first time I got the nerve to ask a girl out on a date I was probably about 12 or 13. I definitely remember I was in junior high and she was the most beautiful girl that I had ever seen. It took me half a year to build up the nerve to ask her out and two seconds for her to say no. You know how that old saying goes though if at first you don't succeed try try again. So to prove my love to her I asked her out every single day for two or three months straight. Every day I got the same answer no. She made some comments that hurt my feelings so I stopped asking her out. As an adult looking back I can't really blame her, it would have been really awkward for her to go out with somebody with a severe disability.

There's no way we could have actually went anywhere together and a lot of that had to do with my disability. We also lived about 60 miles apart because of my disability I had to be able to go to a handicapped accessible school and there was not any in my area. That in itself made dating in high school almost impossible. My electric wheelchairs have always been big and heavy. So I needed either a truck with a trailer or a pickup truck with some strong guys who would be able to put it in the back. It kind of takes all the intimacy out of a date if you have several people tagging along with you. I grew up kind of poor so we never had a vehicle nice enough like a van with a wheelchair lift.

That brings me to my next relationship. My freshman year I met a junior who had a slight case of cerebral palsy. She was able to walk maybe 10 to 15 feet before losing her balance and having to grab onto something. We started out as friends and she had somewhat of an abusive background at her home so I was there for her emotionally. I was pretty sure she liked me but was still afraid to ask her to be my girlfriend. A friend that we both had in common told me she wanted to be my girlfriend and all I had to do was ask. So I did and she said yes. For a short period of time it was heavenly bliss and I was experiencing everything that adolescents of that age experience. My first kiss, writing love letters, making out in the rain, and other intimate firsts. My mom fell in love with her also, and she started spending almost every weekend with us. We had been going out for about six months and my mom started telling everybody we're going to get married. I'm sure part of it was that my mom was just happy that I found a companion to spend my life with but the last thing you want to do at the age of 15 is to be tied down to one certain commitment for the rest of your life. Not to mention the added pressure of pushing the limits of what my life expectancy was for somebody with my diagnosis. So I broke up with her.

For someone with a severe disability such as muscular dystrophy the lack of control you have over what happens to you, your body, or your life can sometimes be the worst part. Now looking back, I think what I did next was due in part to the lack of control. Not to mention a part of me felt like she would be better off without me because I thought the only thing in my near future was a long and painful death. With all of the issues involving my disability and the stress of my own mortality staring me down at 15 years old I was either to immature or to stupid to realize I didn't deserve her. Like most adolescent males the whole relationship was about me and what I could get out of it. At this moment in time she simply adored me and would have probably jumped off a cliff if I told her to.

It wasn't long before my mom started questioning why my girlfriend never came over on weekends anymore. I explained to my mom I broke up with her about a month back. So like any good mom can, she laid a guilt trip on me for being the only real friend my girlfriend had and without spending weekends with my family she would pretty much be home alone all by herself. I returned to school the next day instructed to ask my ex-girlfriend if she wanted to spend next weekend with us. My ex-girlfriend continued coming over on weekends for pretty much the rest of the school year. Around the last week of school though she started making comments that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me at the time so I asked her what she meant. She explained to me that my mom had spoken with her mom and after my ex-girlfriend graduated she was going to move in with us. The community college she was going to be attending was less than a mile down the road from our house.

Again without any choice in the matter that's exactly what happened. It wasn't long before what I like to call the Gilligan's Island effect started to occur. For those of you who don't know what the Gilligan's Island effect is I'll explain. It's when two opposites like let's say Ginger and Gilligan end up together due to lack of choices. Being confined to the house because of our wheelchairs is a lot like being stranded on a deserted island. The only differences are we had TV and didn't have to hunt for food. We did not have a lot in common but when you spend so much time with somebody you begin to adapt and to enjoy what each other like. Eventually we ended up back together and even went on to get married but for right now this article is just dealing with dating so if you would like to read more about being severely disabled and married you can read my other article Disabled and Getting Married.

After an ugly divorce I really felt the need to find real love, the kind of love that lasts a lifetime. So when my wife left me I had a couple friends move in with me to help take care of me. One of the ex-girlfriends of my roommates who lived in the neighborhood started coming over and since neither one of my roommates seemed interested in dating her she began to flirt with me. We played cards together, watched movies, and even grabbed some takeout a couple of times. She even insisted that I ride with her to get it. I honestly thought we were kind of dating. She was living with her mom at the time and there wasn't a lot of room for her and her six-year-old son, not to mention the place was a disaster. My place definitely needed a woman's touch so I invited her to move in which she quickly accepted. However before she could even move in she ended up in bed with one of my roommate's. She ended up moving in anyways but into my roommates bedroom instead of mine. They didn't even last a month together and so I saw this as my opportunity. I gathered up all the courage I had and I asked her if she would like to be my girlfriend. Not only did she tell me no, she said she could never go out with me because I was like her brother. I was crushed and for the next five years I did not asked another woman out.

This relationship simply didn't work out because of her inability to see past my disability. I can't say that I really blame her. I'm not sure if I could see past somebody's disability if I was in her shoes. I don't think that makes me superficial I'm just trying to be honest. In all honesty I think very few people are willing to look past a severe disability to see the person trapped inside their own body. It's one thing to befriend somebody with a severe disability but it's a completely different ballgame to get intimate with a severely disabled person.

After almost dying of double pneumonia I ended up living back with my mother and stepfather. I had been completely emasculated and pretty much given up on ever having another relationship. That's when I met my current fiancé. She was my stepfather's niece and my stepsister would talk to her online under my ID. I guess out of sheer boredom and lack of anybody else to talk to she started a conversation with me. Before long we talked every day for several hours a day. My sister had a truck with a trailer on it and agreed to chauffeur us if she agreed to go out to the movies. So I asked her out and she agreed to go out with me. She agreed to be my girlfriend on Christmas Day 2002 and we've been together ever since.

Although we are still together there are many difficulties in dating an able-bodied person. For instance your options of where you can take them on a date are limited. Someone in my condition can pretty much only do one thing and that's go to the movies. Sure it's fun to go to the movies or rent movies every now and then but that's not all they're going to want to do the rest of their life. We live in Florida which means there are theme parks galore but I'm unable to ride any roller coasters. Which means if we do go we both end up feeling awkward because she feels bad because I can't ride with her and I feel bad because I'm unable to ride with her. Also I covered this earlier I don't believe a woman wants to play nurse mate to her severely disabled boyfriend for the rest of her life. We do have a van now which makes things a little bit easier because we have a way to load my electric wheelchair in it but it's still very difficult for her and going somewhere with me is like performing manual labor. Also I only get a little over $600 and she has to work a full-time job just to support us then come home and pretty much work another full-time job taking care of me. I'm unable to earn any kind of real income which is why I'm trying my hand at Associated Content. Her life would be a lot easier if she was dating somebody able-bodied like herself . Sometimes I feel like it's not even fair to her to be with me. That being said nobody likes to be lonely and my biggest fear is that I will die alone.

I guess what I'm hoping to accomplish with this article is for the next time you see somebody with a severe disability you might look deeper to see the person on the inside. They have the same hopes, desires, and hunger for love just as much as each one of you do. I have disabled friends who have had women flirt and let them believe that there's more to their relationship then there really is because they felt sorry for them. This doesn't help them in fact it hurts all the more when the able-bodied person moves on to a real relationship and a disabled person figures out what happened. It crushes them worse than if the able-bodied person had just told the truth to begin with. Rejection is a part of life we all have to go through it. It might not be easy to tell somebody disabled you're not interested in dating them but it's the lesser of two evils. A pretend relationship doesn't do anything but cause a lot of heartache in the end.