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Showing posts with label dating and disability. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dating and disability. Show all posts
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Talking about Dating: Disability Awareness Month
Josh Sundquist talks about dating and has a message about Disability Awareness Month in this video.
Please note that CC is available here.
Please note that CC is available here.
Friday, June 20, 2008
Dating and Disability
Over at My Life as a Platypus, Goldie has written a wonderful post about her relationship with a friend she calls Todd, who used a wheelchair. Todd was her boyfriend in college and she writes candidly of her memories going out with him and running into access issues, as well as other aspects of their relationship. It's a great followup post to the 30 days segment, if anyone is interested in reading about relationships and disability from the point of view of a girlfriend/significant other. Here's an excerpt:
Todd and I met at the Special Olympics where we were both “Buddies” and were cheering on the athletes. I actually walked up to him and introduced myself because I had heard who he was through some mutual friends. We clicked immediately, (he liked that I was not intimidated by his chair) and had a date that same night. During that date I didn’t know how he did things and or if he needed help with anything so I just asked. He really appreciated that I felt comfortable asking but that I also didn’t assume he was helpless. Turns out he did NOT need any help.
Todd was an intelligent, kind, and strong man who was a lot of fun to be with. He also happened to be in a wheelchair. During our relationship we openly discussed our lives and the challenges we each faced… because we ALL face challenges in life.
...
We did a lot of normal couple things, and some more unusual things. I learned how to do wheelies using his extra chair, and we would have wheelchair races in his apartment. There were also some challenging situations. We once attended a formal event at a local restaurant and discovered there were steps but no ramp. I had to help him wheel up the steps backwards. This happened more often than you would expect. My arms got very strong that year. He would get upset because EVERY place open to the public should be accessible (we were in the country and they were still catching up), and when they were not it made him feel like a second-class citizen. He did not like to make scenes where he seemed different than everyone else.
To read the rest, go here.
Todd and I met at the Special Olympics where we were both “Buddies” and were cheering on the athletes. I actually walked up to him and introduced myself because I had heard who he was through some mutual friends. We clicked immediately, (he liked that I was not intimidated by his chair) and had a date that same night. During that date I didn’t know how he did things and or if he needed help with anything so I just asked. He really appreciated that I felt comfortable asking but that I also didn’t assume he was helpless. Turns out he did NOT need any help.
Todd was an intelligent, kind, and strong man who was a lot of fun to be with. He also happened to be in a wheelchair. During our relationship we openly discussed our lives and the challenges we each faced… because we ALL face challenges in life.
...
We did a lot of normal couple things, and some more unusual things. I learned how to do wheelies using his extra chair, and we would have wheelchair races in his apartment. There were also some challenging situations. We once attended a formal event at a local restaurant and discovered there were steps but no ramp. I had to help him wheel up the steps backwards. This happened more often than you would expect. My arms got very strong that year. He would get upset because EVERY place open to the public should be accessible (we were in the country and they were still catching up), and when they were not it made him feel like a second-class citizen. He did not like to make scenes where he seemed different than everyone else.
To read the rest, go here.
Friday, July 20, 2007
Totally Devoted to You
Shortly after I acquired my disability, my brother suggested I buy a computer so I could go online since my mobility was limited. I still remember setting up AOL, including the IM feature. I composed a profile in which I mentioned that I was female, what my hobbies were and that I used a wheelchair.
My IM's started going off within 20 minutes. I had, within the space of several hours, six men IM me asking me questions - not about me, but about my disability. By the time the sixth one did it, I wondered what was up so I asked him. He replied that he was a devotee - attracted to women in wheelchairs with disabilities.
"If you don't want IM's from people like me, you better take the wheelchair out of your profile," he told me.
I did delete the word wheelchair out, feeling kind of queasy and yucky at the same time. Attracted to me simply because I used a wheelchair? What was that about? So, one of my first searches of the web was of devotees.
Not all, but several of the devotees were unpleasantly persistent even in the face of me asking them to leave me alone once I caught on. One night I was online with a good friend and she said she was being IM'd by this really nice guy in Cleveland and I checked her profile. Sure enough, it said wheelchair user, female. I mentioned his cybername and she asked "How do you know?" I told her. Like me, she wasn't particularly interested either.
I found it just as unsettling to be chosen because I have a disability and use a wheelchair (or whatever the particular devotee attraction is, since it varies) as it was in everyday life to be eliminated from the running because of my disability. Both situations make me feel as if I'm not being treated like a person.
At that time, I began dating offline as I regained my mobility and went through the usual "blind dates" (although I insisted the guy know I was disabled - I'm just not sure any of them understood what a 'quad' is until they watched me try to eat) and dating scene. I never went through a dating service although one of my friends met her husband there. I dated through groups I belonged to with common interests, dated business acquaintances and friends of friends.
And, yes, I found someone. We had a wonderful first date and when he dropped me off at home, he asked to come inside. I watched as he lifted his pant leg and showed me a prosthetic leg. "Still interested?" he asked.
Over time we were engaged. We worked through what became our mutual fears about the relationshp working, fears that were being fed by some friends and family. He lost his leg at 19 years old and his mom still treated him, her only child, as if he was about that age at times. And many thought marrying a quad was too much for him to "take on". He was an extremely active person, so this didn't seem to make much sense to either of us after we calmed each other down. Perhaps the most amusing part of this was that his conservative mom , a Southern debutante in her day, kept inviting me to tea parties where I couldn't even hold a tea cup! You should have seen the look on her face when he marched into the "tea room" and plunked a straw into the tea cup one day and said "Let it go, Mom."
Logistical issues like how to be intimate when a disability requires adaptations was much easier for us than working out day to day living on more mundane subjects, such as him letting the aide do his/her job and knowing that didn't make me feel unloved. Many times people assumed he had no disability because they couldn't see his prosthetic leg. This created some very interesting scenarios for us behind closed doors, believe me. But we weathered it and both learned from it.
Perhaps because of the groundwork we laid, when he passed away unexpectedly I can truly say we were totally devoted to each other. It was a hard blow. Love songs still bring tears to my eyes, movies we saw together bring a lump to my throat. But I look at it this way: I went from six anonymous devotees to one totally devoted amputee who loved me.
My IM's started going off within 20 minutes. I had, within the space of several hours, six men IM me asking me questions - not about me, but about my disability. By the time the sixth one did it, I wondered what was up so I asked him. He replied that he was a devotee - attracted to women in wheelchairs with disabilities.
"If you don't want IM's from people like me, you better take the wheelchair out of your profile," he told me.
I did delete the word wheelchair out, feeling kind of queasy and yucky at the same time. Attracted to me simply because I used a wheelchair? What was that about? So, one of my first searches of the web was of devotees.
Not all, but several of the devotees were unpleasantly persistent even in the face of me asking them to leave me alone once I caught on. One night I was online with a good friend and she said she was being IM'd by this really nice guy in Cleveland and I checked her profile. Sure enough, it said wheelchair user, female. I mentioned his cybername and she asked "How do you know?" I told her. Like me, she wasn't particularly interested either.
I found it just as unsettling to be chosen because I have a disability and use a wheelchair (or whatever the particular devotee attraction is, since it varies) as it was in everyday life to be eliminated from the running because of my disability. Both situations make me feel as if I'm not being treated like a person.
At that time, I began dating offline as I regained my mobility and went through the usual "blind dates" (although I insisted the guy know I was disabled - I'm just not sure any of them understood what a 'quad' is until they watched me try to eat) and dating scene. I never went through a dating service although one of my friends met her husband there. I dated through groups I belonged to with common interests, dated business acquaintances and friends of friends.
And, yes, I found someone. We had a wonderful first date and when he dropped me off at home, he asked to come inside. I watched as he lifted his pant leg and showed me a prosthetic leg. "Still interested?" he asked.
Over time we were engaged. We worked through what became our mutual fears about the relationshp working, fears that were being fed by some friends and family. He lost his leg at 19 years old and his mom still treated him, her only child, as if he was about that age at times. And many thought marrying a quad was too much for him to "take on". He was an extremely active person, so this didn't seem to make much sense to either of us after we calmed each other down. Perhaps the most amusing part of this was that his conservative mom , a Southern debutante in her day, kept inviting me to tea parties where I couldn't even hold a tea cup! You should have seen the look on her face when he marched into the "tea room" and plunked a straw into the tea cup one day and said "Let it go, Mom."
Logistical issues like how to be intimate when a disability requires adaptations was much easier for us than working out day to day living on more mundane subjects, such as him letting the aide do his/her job and knowing that didn't make me feel unloved. Many times people assumed he had no disability because they couldn't see his prosthetic leg. This created some very interesting scenarios for us behind closed doors, believe me. But we weathered it and both learned from it.
Perhaps because of the groundwork we laid, when he passed away unexpectedly I can truly say we were totally devoted to each other. It was a hard blow. Love songs still bring tears to my eyes, movies we saw together bring a lump to my throat. But I look at it this way: I went from six anonymous devotees to one totally devoted amputee who loved me.
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
When a man loves a quad
One of the negative attitudes toward the disabled I encounter socially is when I'm dating an able bodied man and someone assumes he's doing it out of pity or some misguided reason. (I also hate when I'm dating a disabled man and people say we're "cute together". Oh please.) People with disabilities are not asexual. Nor are we "less than" in terms of a catch, if you must think of it that way. (I hate talking about these things. It reminds me of awkward high school dances.)
Both before and after I acquired my disability, I've dated able bodied and disabled men. I never thought of it that way - putting people in categories. I dated a guy in college who was blind so I learned about radar canes and braille and such. We loved going out to dinner and theaters. When I dated an amputee, I learned about prosthetic legs. They, like the able bodied men I dated, had their own way of doing things in life. I don't see the difference if it happens to be about a piece of assistive equipment or a resourceful way to do something because of a disability. How is that any different from the able bodied man I dated who would only drive into New York city on one route and park in one parking lot? It was his way of doing things. Actually that was different - he was just being stubborn. But you get my point.
It's very difficult to write about this. There are a lot of bad memories-like the times when I've been at a social function with an able bodied man and another woman sidles up next to my wheelchair and asks "How did you catch him?" and I smile politely until she adds "with you in a wheelchair?" Or the people who ask him - or me- intrusive questions like whether I can have sex. Then there are the able bodied boyfriend's friends or family members who talk to me privately and suggest that I break up with him and not be "selfish so I don't ruin his life".
No, it's not easy to talk or write about this kind of thing from the point of view of the person who is being seen as the deficit. Much of it is like a quick hit and run where you don't even want to deal with the insurance company at all and prefer to take a hammer to the fender, bang it back in and pretend the accident never happened. But this behavior needs to be addressed just like other attitudes toward the disabled that continue to lurk around .
These attitudes come from a negative way of seeing the world - and disability. It says that a person with a disability is less than an able bodied person and a deficit as a partner. (When they refer to you as a "special someone", they don't mean it in a good way at all.) You might hold him back or, worse yet, "drag him down with you".
Into what? Where are we going? Where is all this fear coming from and where is it all taking us? Not toward inclusion. Not toward a vision of the world where all people are treated with dignity and respect. It is up to us to work out the boundaries and issues surrounding our relationship - the give and take and the reciprocity. This is the same as it is in all relationships. For those who assume that an able bodied person will become a burdened caregiver, I can only say this shows an exquisite lack of imagination as to the myriad possibilities that can be worked out. It exaggerates the situation in a negative way.
And if I have to be the special someone to say this, I will : jokes, sarcasm, crude and rude remarks, busybody interference and other misbehaviors are not only ableist but disrespectful of my autonomy and the autonomy of the man who loves me - as a quad
Both before and after I acquired my disability, I've dated able bodied and disabled men. I never thought of it that way - putting people in categories. I dated a guy in college who was blind so I learned about radar canes and braille and such. We loved going out to dinner and theaters. When I dated an amputee, I learned about prosthetic legs. They, like the able bodied men I dated, had their own way of doing things in life. I don't see the difference if it happens to be about a piece of assistive equipment or a resourceful way to do something because of a disability. How is that any different from the able bodied man I dated who would only drive into New York city on one route and park in one parking lot? It was his way of doing things. Actually that was different - he was just being stubborn. But you get my point.
It's very difficult to write about this. There are a lot of bad memories-like the times when I've been at a social function with an able bodied man and another woman sidles up next to my wheelchair and asks "How did you catch him?" and I smile politely until she adds "with you in a wheelchair?" Or the people who ask him - or me- intrusive questions like whether I can have sex. Then there are the able bodied boyfriend's friends or family members who talk to me privately and suggest that I break up with him and not be "selfish so I don't ruin his life".
No, it's not easy to talk or write about this kind of thing from the point of view of the person who is being seen as the deficit. Much of it is like a quick hit and run where you don't even want to deal with the insurance company at all and prefer to take a hammer to the fender, bang it back in and pretend the accident never happened. But this behavior needs to be addressed just like other attitudes toward the disabled that continue to lurk around .
These attitudes come from a negative way of seeing the world - and disability. It says that a person with a disability is less than an able bodied person and a deficit as a partner. (When they refer to you as a "special someone", they don't mean it in a good way at all.) You might hold him back or, worse yet, "drag him down with you".
Into what? Where are we going? Where is all this fear coming from and where is it all taking us? Not toward inclusion. Not toward a vision of the world where all people are treated with dignity and respect. It is up to us to work out the boundaries and issues surrounding our relationship - the give and take and the reciprocity. This is the same as it is in all relationships. For those who assume that an able bodied person will become a burdened caregiver, I can only say this shows an exquisite lack of imagination as to the myriad possibilities that can be worked out. It exaggerates the situation in a negative way.
And if I have to be the special someone to say this, I will : jokes, sarcasm, crude and rude remarks, busybody interference and other misbehaviors are not only ableist but disrespectful of my autonomy and the autonomy of the man who loves me - as a quad
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