Dating and Disabilities

The dating world is one that is difficult to navigate for anyone, not even taking into account disabilities. It was also a world that scared me and, because of that, I had never ventured into it. As I mentioned in my first blog posts – Recrudescence and New Year, Same Journey – I spent a lot of 2018 trying to improve my life. As part of that I felt that it was finally time, at 19 years old, to enter the dating word. It’s not that I have ever felt incomplete without a relationship before, or that I think you need one in order to live a full life. It’s just that I want to start a family some day and, I’m sure everyone would agree, it can take years to find the person that I would want to do that with. I didn’t want to wait until I was nearly 30 and realise that it was too late.

I fantasised about all of the ways that I would meet my soulmate – locking eyes across a bar, bumping into each other at university, being paired up for a group project, blah, blah, blah. But, in reality, that wasn’t going to happen for me. At the end of 2017 I had to defer my university degree for a couple of years because of how much my health had declined; I put a lot of my energy into my part time office job, where I saw the same three people every day; with the little energy I had left, I tried to spend time with family and keep in touch with the few friends I had left since being ill. This didn’t leave me any way to bump into my future husband or wife. And that’s how I came to download Tinder.

The app was easy to use and setting up my profile was simple as well. Of course, this didn’t solve the issue of all the people looking for a fling when I wanted something more serious, or the people who liked me but didn’t message back, or the feeling that it was hopeless anyway.

As someone with multiple chronic illnesses, the opportunity to talk to someone before meeting them gave me the chance to work out if we were a good match without wasting my precious energy and gave me the opportunity to mention my illnesses early in case it wasn’t something that they wanted to deal with. I didn’t blame anyone for feeling that way – I didn’t want to have to deal with it, so why would anyone else? And, as a young adult most activities require doing things that I can’t do – even things as simple as going into town can be too much walking for me. I don’t have the luxury of being spontaneous or wild – my life needs planned around my health and, even with careful organisation, plans still often need cancelled.

I count myself incredibly lucky, as within two weeks of downloading Tinder I met my current boyfriend. He accepts me for all my flaws, and cares for me when I can’t do it myself. For someone to take on that responsibility at 18 years old is a massive thing but, despite me giving him countless opportunities to leave, he has stuck by me. I talked before in my post Resolutions about how much he does for me, and every day I am grateful to have met someone who loves me so unconditionally and is willing to do anything to make sure I’m okay. We might be young, and we may have only been together for six months, but I don’t see myself spending my life with anyone other than him. And I hope that, one day, he won’t have to care for me as much as he does now and we can have a somewhat normal life.