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Smart Tips To Master Dating With A Disability
Just because you have a disability, doesn’t mean your relationship has to have one too, so if you want to master dating with a disability, there are a few things you should know.
Believe it or not, you can successfully have a relationship with you are disabled and your partner is not, and just like most things in life, it all comes down to compromise. When it comes down to it though, you’ll be amazed at how little things need to change when it comes to your love life.
If you are disabled, looking for love in a world of ‘regular’ abled people, there are a few things you’ll need to know. One thing in particular is the amount of times you will get asked a very simple question – “Can you still have sex?”
It doesn’t matter what your disability is, to a certain degree, you will always be able to have sex. A friend of mine was once asked if his penis still worked because he had been amputated from the knee down on both limbs. He walked away from that girl, and although we all laugh about it with him now, at the time, we didn’t blame him.
People come across as rude when they have awkward questions in the disabled dating world, and the earlier you learn to take the rude comments and questions on the chin, not letting them bug you or get you down, the better. Take it with a pinch of salt, and learn to laugh off the uncomfortable moments, and your dating life will get a whole load better for it.
At the same time, don’t disregard people too soon, One friend of ours, Samantha, once ditched a guy because he was too nervous about taking her to bed. She has spina bifida, and at times, it really wasn’t nice for her. It was more an awkward, ‘I don’t know how to ask this question” at the time for him, but for her, after a bad week with three bad blind dates, she’d had enough and snapped. Throwing her water at him, she rolled her way out of that bar in her wheelchair, and refused to call him back for two weeks.
She forgave him, of course, and they have since gotten married but it just goes to show – don’t take offence right off the bat as sometimes, it’s just a misunderstanding.
You will need to remember to take your time with disabled dating, and remember that you are going to need to adjust to this new person in your life, as well as them accommodating you too. It may take a little longer for them, bearing in mind your disability and all, but with a bit of patience and a positive attitude, you could be well on your way to finding love in no time at all. Not so difficult to master dating with a disability!
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Greatest Challenges of Disability Dating
One of the greatest challenges that you will face when dating as a disabled person is the confusion and misconceptions surrounding the topic of disability dating as a whole. Its crazy; the bizarre myths that people will believe and even spread, and just as most things in life, when people don’t understand something, they’ll just make up fluff to fill in the gaps.
That is exactly what has happened with the world of disability dating; a strangely bizarre taboo (still) in a world where we are all meant to be so sexually ‘free’.
Every part of the dating experience, especially with internet dating, has so many questions attached to it, that it can be hard to know where to find all the answers. For example, how open are you meant to be about your disability? Should you mention it in your profile? Is it that much of a big deal? Do people even care about it?
Whether or not you disclose details of your disability when looking at internet dating is completely down to you, and is a decision only you can make. However, if it has an impact on your life, and changes the way you do or feel about certain things, it is going to have an impact on any potential suitors that come along, and it will change the way they do or feel about certain things too.
If you have a missing limb, for example, or rely on a wheelchair or a walking stick to get around, you are not going to be able to go rock-climbing on your first date, and paint-balling probably won’t be a great idea either. You will need to be realistic about your dating life now, and that’s something very difficult to come to terms with if the disability itself is a relatively new one. It’s difficult to go from having two arms, to only having one after a car crash (like Sam, 28 from Kent), and it would be foolish to think that kind of thing wouldn’t have an impact on your dating life.
If you’re not quite brave enough to physically type the words into that little ‘About Me’ box, take a slightly more subtle approach. If you use a wheelchair sometimes, for example, include a picture of you in the wheelchair in the ‘Images’ section of your profile. This at least gives potential dates the chance to have a conversation with you about it, and also gives them a slight indication of what news could come. Of course disabled dating is going to have some challenges. It wouldn’t be classed as a disability otherwise, would it?
If you do manage to get over your fears and throw yourself to the little fish in the big disabled dating pond, there are more challenges to come, but these would be the same with any dating situation. That hot guy might not like you face to face, and you aren’t really sure if that one you were talking to last night is as good-looking or as funny as you first thought he was anyway…
Sadly, that’s dating life in general, not just disabled dating life! If you fancy a shot, why not check out Disabled Dating Review which has reviews on all the best disability dating websites. Our personal favourite is Disabled Dating Club, which has been around for years.
All About Disabled Dating And Disability Dating
