Interesting Websites

Newsweek had a short article about the perils of dating with disabilities -- being dumped as soon as you tell the truth about your health problems, no one even being interested if you mention them upfront.

 

www.Prescription4Love.com is a website for those with a variety of disabilities and health conditions.

 

www.IrritatedBeingSingle.com is for people with IBS and Crohn's.

 

[ADDENDUM: After posting this, Di in PA sent along two more: www.disabledunited.com is a community for people with disabilities & has singles.
www.disabledpassions.com is another dating site for people with disabilities]

 

We give up so much with CFS/fibro, it's not fair that we also have to give up companionship and affection. 

 

When the doctor explained to my husband that he was going to have to pitch in because this was not something that was going to go away, he muttered "I didn't get married to have to cook and clean".  And he was serious: whenever I relapsed, no cleaning got done until I felt well enough to do it, and if I wanted something to eat, I had to cook it myself.  He wanted to be taken care of, not be a caregiver.  He'd grab dinner on the way home and not even consider bringing something home for me.

 

Since kicking him out, I've found that the dating pool is full of men who are looking for someone to cook and clean for them, and they run the other way as soon as I broach the subject of disability.  I'd put an ad on a mainstream dating website and always had lots of responses until my symptoms got worse and I added the vague phrase "health issues".  Not a single nibble since then.  That was the only change to the text of the ad, so I know exactly what made me undesirable: honesty.

 

I'm not alone: statistics show that 3/4 of marriages affected by chronic illness break up.  Another activist remembers seeing a more refined statistic that 90% of wives stay to help, 90% of husbands leave.

 

As a friend and I often joke, there's a rumor in the fibro community that sex is a great pain reliever and sleep promoter.  We'd love to try it.  But no one is willing to date either us long enough for us to get to that stage; at some point before that, they realize that we're not completely healthy and stop calling.  Which is too bad, because if the rumor is true and "take one Tom (or Fred or George) four times daily" really does solve the pain and sleep problems, they'd be incredibly happy men.  I'd think doing a few extra chores would be a small price for them to pay for a benefit like that.

 

As Laura Hillenbrand's devoted long-time boyfriend observed, she's still Laura.  Most of any relationship is just "hanging out", and she can still talk, snuggle, watch videos, etc.  Yet the men I meet are more focused on the fact that I cannot hike, I cannot ski, I cannot jog, than on the fact that I can still go to concerts, watch movies, and other sedentary pleasures.  I still bake the best truffle brownies around, I'm still a gourmet cook, but they don't like my suggestion that they go hiking with their guy friends and I'll have dinner waiting when they get home -- they want a woman who'll go hiking with them.  I've even gotten that excuse from a guy who, when pinned down, admitted that he hadn't hiked in the past five years!

 

It's time someone recognized that the disabled are not eunuchs.  Having someone to love can provide a much-needed psychological boost (it's been proven that even in conditions with a biological basis, mood does have some effect on symptom severity).