I’ve been thinking about dating and new relationships after an MS diagnosis. Can they happen, or are we on the proverbial shelf as it were..?
Are we doomed to applying for The Undateables, or trawling through some kind of tinder for the less abled..? Are we still fanciable?
I think there might be hope yet.
I wanted to find some answers to my questions, so I decided to ask my Facebook friends and associates. I sent them a survey of sorts about what they thought about sex and romance with people with MS.
Here are the results of my totally unscientific survey on MS, love and sex! From teenagers to older friends, the feedback was really interesting.
Does MS cause problems with sex?
A big question people had was around sex. As in, could we do it, would it be difficult, would they hurt us physically..?
Obviously that depends on each person’s situation, we’re all different. But some of my older friends, while saying sex was important, felt that companionship and other types of intimacy (friendship, trust, laughing, touching, spending quality time together etc) more than compensated if there were any difficulties with sex.
Read our information on sex, relationships and MS
Feeling scared to put their foot in it
Quite a few people were frightened of putting their foot in it and offending us or saying the wrong thing. This made me a bit sad because personally I have a great sense of humour about my predicament! But I know not everyone is the same.
Not many people felt they would necessarily approach a stranger with a disability to chat them up or buy a drink. Some said the disability would put them off, but others felt they wouldn’t know what to say. This makes me think of a saying I recently heard, about how to treat a disabled person, and that was: like a person!
So some people definitely view us as quite different from the rest of the mainstream ‘singletons’, I guess.
There were a few outright no’s to the question of dating someone with a disability. That was because people felt it wouldn’t suit their current lifestyle, to which I thought fine, and I appreciated their honesty. 99% said if their partner was diagnosed, they would never leave them, but hopefully overcome things together.
Ultimately, it’s about the person
But the majority of people felt it was about knowing someone first, that it’s all about the person themselves. Ultimately it’s about getting to know and love someone’s personality and mindset.
So, kids, based on my small survey I feel we do still have a chance at the dating game and a bit of romance in our lives, even with our physical issues.
Let your awesome personalities shine through, let your smile brighten a day, your eyes twinkle with a thousand stories and your mind be free with its crazy beautiful thoughts.
Not everyone is looking for physical perfection. So remember, you could be somebody’s perfect by just being you.
