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Dating with a Disability

Yesterday, I uploaded a new video to my YouTube channel where I talked about dating with a disability, and whether or not I’d ever dated a sighted person. I spent most of the video talking about my general opinions on dating within the disability community as well as outside of it — and came to the obvious conclusion that it’s up to your own personal choice on the matter.

While I am definitely not opposed to dating in the sighted world, I personally feel it can be easier to date within the blind community. That also poses its own challenges — the main one being that everyone, for the most part, knows each other. But within the sighted world, we have to field constant questions about how we do X (which is usually a very basic daily skill and/or something too personal that you’d never ask an able-bodied person), and hear things such as “isn’t [arbitrary thing] hard for you because of your vision?” No, it isn’t. And while it can be exhausting to be advocating and educating all the time, everyone does things differently — one blind person doesn’t represent the whole community, and if you feel comfortable asking your blind friend/roommate/family member a question about their blindness, please go ahead!

Those of you who follow me on Twitter may know exactly what I’m talking about.

Point is, dating is hard regardless of how you spin it: Whether it’s two sighted people, two blind people, or a combination of both. Although dating within the blind community can present its own hassles and challenges, I personally find it easier to relate to others who are blind or low vision. But, due to being partially sighted, I also have a foot on the other side — while I’ve never dated a sighted person longterm, the relationships that I’ve had with other members of the blind community have, for the most part, been successful. And I believe it’s in part due to the fact that we can relate to each other a bit more in the struggles we face as members of what some would call a marginalized community. But another issue I see in this is stigma.

As I’ve said before, there’s still a large amount of stigma associated with people with disabilities, and disability in general. There are some able bodied people who haven’t even seen a person with a disability, let alone interacted with us. So many are afraid they’ll say the wrong thing, offend us, and yet there are others who still think we need help throughout every aspect of our day. It’s unfortunate there’s still stigma and, in some cases, a sense of intimidation… especially since disability advocacy organizations made up of people with disabilities, continue to fight for inclusion and education.

I wish I could say it were easier, but in some cases, it’s not. I’m not telling everyone to strictly date and form relationships with people within their own community. I want there to be more open-mindedness, less of a sense of precaution. There are plenty of relationships out there where one member has a disability and the other doesn’t. But things are in no way perfect.

None of this is to say that I’m opposed to dating sighted people, because I’m not. I’d be open to both. However, the way things worked out for  me personally is that I never ended up doing so, and that’s okay.

I could continue to go on, but at this point I don’t really know what else to say (and I’m rambling again, which is something I always do). If you got this far, thank you. And if not, well, that’s fine too.