Hurdles

Am I wrong to think a relationship isn’t realistic for me? I think I’ve been sold an idea of love that doesn’t apply to my life, and I want to know if I’m wrong. I am straight and 34-year-old male. I have a rare progressive disability. I’m blind, I have severe hearing loss (I can’t follow speech with background noise), I use a wheelchair, and I have almost no motor control. I need full-time care, so I’m always with a caregiver. My voice is weak and hard for strangers to understand. Dating in the real world basically doesn’t exist for me. I can’t see or hear people approaching me, I can’t initiate contact, and even with help from caregivers, communication is awkward and exhausting. I use dating apps, but nothing has led to a real connection.

Here’s the question: Is it actually realistic for someone in my situation to have a romantic relationship? Or am I holding onto something that just isn’t going to happen? I don’t want reassurance for the sake of it. If the answer is that my chances are extremely low, I’d rather hear that and figure out how to build a life around that reality. But if I’m missing a way of approaching this that could work, I want to understand what it is.

I’d also be interested in hearing from other readers — especially anyone who has dated someone with significant disabilities, or who lives with one themselves — about what is possible.

Yearns Eagerly After Relationships Now

Dating in the real world — relying on chance meetings in bars, on the street, at work, etc. — doesn’t work for many people anymore, YEARN, which is why most people are on the apps these days. And most people on the apps have similar complaints to yours: they’ve been on them, sometimes for years, with no real connection to show for their time and effort.

Okay, that’s where the sugar-coating ends — you said you didn’t want reassurance for the sake of reassurance.

It’s highly unlikely that you will ever find a romantic partner, YEARN, as your pool of potential partners is vanishingly small. I imagine that you would like to be with someone who is attracted to you, YEARN, but you probably don’t want to be with someone who fetishizes your disability (no “devotees”), which significantly reduces your pool of potential partners. But the right woman — someone who is into you but not a fetishist — would also need to have the patience to work through your significant communication barriers and the willingness to work through and with your caregivers (and possibly become one), YEARN, which seems like a lot to ask of a stranger on a dating app, even one for disabled people like Special Bridge.

Returning to devotees for a second: While most people would urge you to avoid “devotees,” i.e. women (in your case) who are specifically attracted to disabled men, I don’t think you should rule them out. Years ago, I interviewed a woman who’d lost a limb. While the attention of devotees upset her at first, she wound up marrying a man with an amputee fetish. Men who were willing to date her despite her disability, she explained, made her feel worse about herself (and her body) than this one particular man who was initially attracted to her because of her disability.

If you were open to dating devotees, , YEARN, you (and your caregivers) would need to be on your guard against someone who fetishized your helplessness; if someone sought to isolate you from your established caregivers and make you solely dependent on her, that person would obviously have to go. But I don’t think you should rule out someone who was initially drawn to you because they had a lifelong and inexplicable attraction to disabled men — so long as that person saw you as an individual and a person and not just a particular kind of body. (Most able-bodied people — the partnered ones — are with people who were initially drawn to their bodies, YEARN, but we don’t regard an attraction to “normal” bodies as fetishism.)

While love may be possible for you, YEARN, it’s not going to look like the idea of love you were sold. But like any single person who feels like the odds are stacked against them (due to age, opportunity, income, disability, etc.), your best course of action is to build the best and most rewarding life you can, YEARN, while continuing to put yourself out there on the apps — consistently, not obsessively — in the hope that lightning strikes.

P.S. I shared your question with Andrew Gurza, a disability awareness consultant, activist, and author. “As someone with severe physical disabilities myself and who needs a caregiver for just about everything too, I understand YEARN’s feeling wholeheartedly,” Andrew replied via email. “You just reach a point where romance and dating feel impractical and inaccessible in so many ways. I’ve only had a handful of actual dates in my life as someone with severe Cerebral Palsy. I wish I could have more, but I’m reaching a stage where I think I’ll be okay if I don’t. I don’t want to tell anyone to give up hope, because it fuels us in so many ways, right? At the same time, I know that we can live a fulfilled life without romantic love. Part of being disabled is not following the pathways that others have walked, but making your own. You can still find pleasure, sex, and all the other joys without tying them to romance. Sex work has saved my life in so many ways and shown me that I’ll be okay on my own. I hope that helps even just a little.”

Andrew Gurza is the author of Notes From a Queer Cripple. Follow him on Instagram @AndrewGurza.

I’m a 43-year-old woman currently undergoing IVF treatment to become a single mother by choice (SMBC). Five years ago, I was on this path and gave it up for the chance of a relationship with a man who ended up being abusive. So, I am naturally skeptical of ending up in the same spot. I have wanted to be a mom for forever, and that relationship was my last-ditch effort for the “picket fence.” I’m glad to be back on the IVF path and feel comfortable with my choice. I’m going to do a frozen embryo transfer in the next month, and we’ll see how that goes.

Here’s the issue: My best friend was with her boyfriend at a coffee shop, and they ran into an old friend of his. He’s a man I’ve met a few times, when I was in the bad relationship I mentioned. He seems very kind and has always shown interest, but I never reciprocated (even though I thought he was hot) because I wasn’t single. They gave him my number (with my permission) and he seems very interested. (We’ve already set up a time to talk — at his instigation.) I don’t want to be dishonest, but I also don’t want my ex to be the last man I slept with before sleeping with someone else — anyone else — got a lot more complicated and a lot less likely. “I might be pregnant this time next month” doesn’t seem like a great first date conversation but when do I bring this up? And how? Or do I? It might be a moot point if we don’t vibe but by the time I hear your opinion I might really need to know how to do this!

Wants To Get Laid

While no one is obligated to disclose their long-range plans to someone they just met and might not fuck more than once or twice, WTGL, I nevertheless think you should tell this man your plans for this time next year sooner rather than later.

You’re a 43-year-old single woman without kids, which means there’s a good chance he doesn’t want kids and assumes you don’t either. (It’s not an unreasonable assumption about a woman in her forties who doesn’t already have kids.) If you can’t bring yourself to tell him before you fuck him once or twice (for fear of your awful ex forever holding the title of Last Man You Fucked), WTGL, I wouldn’t blame or shame you for waiting to see if y0u vibe. But you absolutely, positively have to tell this man you’re trying to get pregnant before you fuck him a third time. (If you don’t know what to say, WTGL, send him a link to this column, tell him one of the questions is from you, and ask him to guess which one is yours.) Because in cases where a perfectly reasonable assumption about us isn’t actually true, we’re obligated to disclose the truth before someone gets too emotionally invested.

If he wants kids or is open to the idea of having a kid or being in a relationship with someone who does, great! You can keep fucking him and see where this goes. If he absolutely, positively doesn’t want kids and doesn’t want to be in a committed relationship with someone who does, great! The position of prepartum and postpartum fuckbuddy is open, and he can fill it – provided the fucking is good, which you have yet to determine.

I’m a queer and non-monogamous woman. I live with my nesting partner and our cat and dog. Now, the quandary with which I come to you seems a little bit trivial: I have a crush on my dogwalker. I have a decent feeling that she may be queer, but no idea if she is interested — nor if there is an appropriate way for me to let her know that if she were interested, I would be interested too. I know that it can be extremely awkward to be hit on at work, especially if your answer is no and you’ve been asked face-to-face and then you must continue to interact with the person you rejected regularly. So, hitting on her like that seems out of the question, as I don’t want to lose her as a dogwalker. Is there some sweet spot solution I’m missing here?

Ruminating Over Very Exciting Romance

Got problems? Yes, you do! Email your question for the column to [email protected]!

Or record your question for the Savage Lovecast at savage.love/askdan! 

Podcasts, columns and more at Savage.Love