Disability and Dating

Happy New Year to you all! Sorry I’ve been a little quiet lately, I’m still struggling with the side effects of my medications; leaving me sore, anxious and a bit low, but I’m powering through, steaming ahead and slowly getting back to my normal chirpy self!

Anyway...

Tomorrow evening (Tuesday 8th on Channel4 at 9pm) the much loved series Undateables returns following 6 mentally or physically disabled people looking for love. I adored last season of the show and I feel it highlights that disabled people want and have loving relationships just like everyone else.

I have a special interest in the show as my old school buddy Gareth is featured this year on his quest to find a soul mate.

I feel very luck that my dating history has been fairly simple without too much drama. I had no interest in boys until I went to college at 16, when I started dating a guy called Pete. He became my first love but other people’s views of our relationship were very odd. Many thought that I was lucky someone was and could be in love with me, giving Pete pats on the back for being a hero.

In my eyes we were sweethearts and he was just as lucky to have me as I was to have him; dare I say it?..... We were equals!

When Pete and I broke up, after 4 years together, my confidence took a blow (as would most after a long term relationship) and I started to believe that no one would “put up with me” or be able to live with my disability.

After 18 months of countless girls nights out I became sick of people trying to get my number for a dare or asking me if everything below the waist still worked – cheeky buggers! I tell no lies - one guy came up to me and said that he’s buy me a drink if I’d go home with him as he’d never slept a cripple!

One of my friends thought that as I was such a geek, meeting a guy on the internet would be perfect (I’d met my ex this way too) so she put my ad up on a singles website called Love@Lycos. 

I was very chuffed when I received a lot of messages from potential men and then horrified when I had messages like “I like a girl who can’t run away” and “I bet you’d be a really grateful girlfriend in your position!” or “Don’t you have dating website’s just for your kind rather than clogging up our inboxes”.

Of course these men were swiftly told were to go and blocked from my profile!

Then I had a message from Mike or a.k.a Vanilla Gorilla. We got chatting and he seemed lovely and completely unfazed by my disability (I later found this is because his parents were full time carers to disabled adults) and he seemed genuine but since he lived 80 miles away I blocked him! Luckily for me, my friends were far too involved in my love life and kept unblocking him and they became Mike’s cheerleaders.

Almost 7 years later the rest is history, because of Mike’s work we’re apart a lot still to this day but the point I’m trying to make is there are lots of “Mike’s” out there if you’re disabled and dating you’ll probably come across some of what I’ve told you but keep going – it will be well worth your time and effort!

LilPinkDuck & VanillaGorilla

L x