The Disability Act: Would You Date A Disabled Person?

Dating can be hard in general. For girls, for guys. For everyone, including disabled people. Because of the recent studies, I have found that we have a lot of disabled people in the society. From lame, to deaf to dumb, to others, there are about 25 million disabled persons – one way or another – that make up our society

Following the new Disability bill that is poised to increase inclusiveness, it is important ask these sensitive albeit important questions.

I asked many Scooper Readers if they could date a disabled person and the most answers were a NO. While many of them insist that they would continue to be with a person who used to be “able” but because of an accident lose a body function, would rather not date a disabled person from the start.

Some insist they can…

I can and I have. She was a lovely woman, but I don’t think I could bear the decline and ultimate death of a loved one while in my 20s and 30s.”

Isaac

“I have. It was a young lady with an extremely rare genetic disease. It basically slowly robbed her ability to walk, speak and feed herself. This was several years after her diagnosis and she was still functional, but noticeably disabled. We were together for a year before I had to move away for school.”

Risi

No! I want a fit man please

Tony

“Never! I already think marriage is hard, why compound it”

Moshood

“I would date anyone with a physical disability if I were attracted to them and liked them. I would not date someone with a developmental disability because I would worry I was taking advantage of them on some level.”

Dafe

“The real question is would she date me. I don’t want an insecure woman”

Festus

Probably not. That would present some challenges that I don’t want to deal with.

Omonigho

I’m glad you’re so honest about it. As a disabled person I’ve told people several times that it’s OK to have a preference to not date a disabled person. Like you said, it comes with so many challenges, pain and stress – its painful to see my boyfriend having anxiety attacks while I’m being in an ambulance or whatever.

Ruth

It’s painful to know he won’t be able to fulfil his dream of travelling the world if he stays with me. 99% of us never have the time, money and lack of responsibilities in combination required to see the world anyways. Everyone wants to. Very few get to.

Gabriel

I am deaf myself and my boyfriend doesn’t find it an issue.

Yemi

Depends on the disability I suppose. Something like being wheelchair bound for the rest of their life would be fine. Most any physical disabilities would be fine. It’s really just mental disabilities that I don’t think I’d be able to adjust to. I just really like to talk about things, and create constructive conversation that really makes you think sometimes. I’d like to be able to share my mind with my SO and ideally receive their thoughts or views on subjects in a way that makes me think, or question my own opinions/ideas.

Ebuka

I think this is my answer too, I’ve been thinking about it while I peruse the replies. But it really would depend on the disability. Most physical things I’d get over pretty quickly as long as we figured out how to do the things we wanted to do, and I wasn’t made to feel guilty for sometimes doing other things.

Glory

And that’s sort of why mental disability is a line for me, because conversations, deeper thoughts and topics, and such are extremely important to me, and I can’t date people I can’t talk to. I can’t even get attracted to people I don’t find mentally stimulating (sapiosexuality, it’s called).