Life on Wheels (66 page)

According to the University of Michigan’s Sandra Loyer, men have a greater challenge adjusting to a disabling injury to their wives. She says:

Adjustments are possible. The following 40-year-old woman has C5 quadriplegia and has been married for 22 years. She became injured by a gunshot 18 years into her marriage.

If you don’t currently have an intimate partner how do you get started?

Finding love is tough enough for anyone these days. Single Americans complain more and more about the difficulty of finding companionship, much less a mate. Personals ads and Internet dating sites abound, flooded with people on the hunt for a partner. Bringing a disability into these environments is hardly an advantage.

This 23-year-old man with an SCI struggles with finding a partner:

Likewise for this woman born with a disability:

Women have a greater challenge finding partners. The culture has historically promoted the idea of the male as aggressor. Women were supposed to wait for men to approach. This has changed somewhat, with women more able to make the approach, but some disabled women still find that men are less likely to approach a woman with a disability.

This woman born with spina bifida found that growing up with a disability had its challenges:

According to the Baylor study,
⁹
women with disabilities reported their perceptions of the obstacles to dating:

Someone who is interested in me might not ask me out because of what others might say.

Many people do not ask me out because they assume I am unable to have sexual intercourse.

People seem surprised that I might be interested in sexual intimacy.

People I would like to date see me as a friend, not as a romantic partner.

Margaret Nosek elaborates on the cultural differences that women face:

When it comes to attracting partners, women in the study found themselves in a paradox: you can scare off potential partners by aggressive pursuit, but, if you don’t pursue partners, they’re gone.

The good news in the search for partners is that there are more singles on the market now. People are marrying later. Women have more options for a profession and independence than society once allowed. Life expectancy is much longer as medical advances preserve our health; making a commitment when you are still young can mean being together for quite a long time, so what’s the rush? With later marriages and the increased divorce rate, there are a lot of unattached folks out there looking for love.

You certainly won’t meet anyone by sitting at home. You can meet people through volunteer activities, political groups, clubs of all sorts, classes at the local college or community center, or professional organizations and trade shows. Centers for Independent Living sponsor activities, including social and educational events. Although the percentage of success is not high, people do find partners through personal ads and on the Internet. It’s worthwhile to say hello to someone interesting at the grocery store or movie theater. You never know. There are dating resources specifically for persons with disabilities (see the Appendix).

It is not unusual for couples to meet in hospitals or clinics. Therapists, nurses, volunteers, and other staff get a unique chance to know the person beyond the disability. Friendships form, and sometimes romance results. These can be equal and sincere meetings of people for whom the opportunity to see each other regularly allowed authentic intimacy to develop. Mitch Tepper notes:

At the same time, these relationships have no guarantee of success. Says Tepper:

Its just reality: there are extra challenges when you have a disability. In
Enabling Romance
, a 36-year-old man used a personal ad to seek a partner. He was open about his disability and received no response, and then:

This is really the only approach—be honest. It can work to first discuss other areas of interest, but don’t wait too long to identify your disability. Allowing the connection to go deep before you reveal your disability is risky and can be taken as a violation of trust. Then, if the other person is unable to accept you, it is best to move on with no regrets, possibly having made a friend in the process. Yes, it can be painful and disappointing, but try to remember that you’re looking for a partner with the ability to see and respect you on a deeper level than your disability.

Women can have a more difficult time finding a male partner. There is more social pressure on women to fit the supermodel image; men tend to be more attached to the public image of having a beautiful woman on their arm. Margaret Nosek doesn’t think that media images make people with disabilities aspire to fit those images so much as they lead others not to consider a person with a disability as a potential partner:

Humans give out certain cues to attract a mate: a deeply ingrained, evolutionary system of physical signals. In
The Anatomy of Love
, Dr. Helen Fisher writes that:

These signals are hard to give while sitting down, so a person on wheels can be at some disadvantage. They must exaggerate their body language and use other signs to transmit the message of interest to someone they might see at a party, a museum, a restaurant, and so on. According to Fisher, the ensuing stages include getting close enough to begin a simple conversation, achieving those first subtle touches of a forearm or shoulder, and getting into a body synchrony, in which two people begin to mirror each other’s movements and posture. You will need to find other ways to overcome your physical limits. For instance, eye contact is very powerful and gets the message across just fine.

The impact of your sitting in a wheelchair is undeniably powerful, and you might find yourself drawn to circumvent its effect as did this quadriplegic woman in her early 20s:

In some cases, the message that a wheelchair sends—that the person in it has a physical limitation—can be welcome. A man who uses a chair because of his difficulty walking found that his awkward gait had been an obstacle to meeting potential partners:

If you doubt someone showing signals of attraction could be interested in someone who uses a wheelchair, you might miss important cues. Be open to signals, while taking care not to mistake friendly signs for more than they are. Go gently, and allow things to take their course. Respond subtly, and if a relationship is meant to proceed, it will.