Dating While Disabled & Discovering an Unexpected Role Model

Fourteen years ago, on Friday the 13th that October, I went on a first date with a woman whose first and last name was 13 letters long. I took her to a local Ford dealership where they were having a monster truck demonstration and then we went to a corn maze. On the back of a monster truck, I made my move when I told her, “I am scared,” and reached for her hand. Happily, she took my hand. We kept holding hands for the rest of the night. It was a pretty amazing first date taking advantage of the quirks of attending college in a small midwestern town.

For most young adults a first date is nothing new. But for me it was new. For the first time in my life at age 22, I found someone who found me attractive and wanted to be in a romantic relationship with me. Someone who wanted to hold my hand in public, someone who would say I romantically love you. This is something I never felt would happen to me…. Because I had a disability, a pronounced speech impediment.

I felt pretty lucky that night. Finally, someone saw past my disability, I thought then that I found someone who could see the true me, not the disabled costume that I was forced to wear. (It would take me many more years of interpersonal work and going to seminary to accept my disabled body as my own instead of something apart from me.)

Part of the self-loathing was due to the culture I grew up in. As a child, I had no disabled role models in romantic relationships. I only saw disabled people as being people that can be good friends or can be an inspiration for others, like the title character of the movie Simon Birch or Corky from the television series Life Goes On. I never saw a disabled character being cast as a love interest or as being pursued romantically. The message I received from popular culture as a disabled youth that I could be someone’s friend, but not their lover. I could inspire others, but not give them pleasure.

To be honest, I went through much of my growing up trying to act “normal”, trying to act like I didn’t have a disability. How could I be disabled? I can walk, hear, and see. I just talk a little differently. Part of this disjointed thinking was due to doctors’ misdiagnosing me and being told that I would just outgrow my speech impediment by high school, thanks to the miracle of puberty. This foolishness didn’t prepare me for my teenage years and hormones.

Instead, I grew up idolizing a scene from the popular TV show Full House, when a cousin comes to visit the Tanner clan, and before he arrives, the girls talk about how geeky he is. But when they open the door, he has transformed into a handsome young man. In the years in-between, he had grown out of his acne, glasses, and, namely, his geekiness. From this scene and misinformed doctors, I had this false hope that one day I would be transformed from a desexualized disabled body to a “normal” body that would be desired and wanted by romantic partners.

That first date on a fall Friday night led to a brief relationship but two weeks later on Halloween, I was dumped. But it still took several more years until I was finally able to realize that the costume I had so desperately wanted to take off was the role model I had needed years earlier.