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Of course, another thing that has more to do with people’s attitudes than anything is I think it doesn’t even cross people’s minds that two disabled people could be in a relationship. And even within the disability community, I notice a lot of lateral ableism in that way. Like people will say things like, oh, I would never date another person in a wheelchair. I’ve always found that interesting, curious, and kind of disconcerting that people who have spent their entire lives trying to get people to see them in a complete way and encouraging people not to be ablest towards them.
We’d be so willing to just write off all other people with disabilities as potential partners. Because to me, it’s not really something that would matter so much. I would go based on if I like the person. There is tremendous pressure in the disability community to find a nondisabled partner. I think there’s almost this internalized feeling like you prove something if you get a nondisabled partner, which is all kinds of like, there’s a lot of psychology and built in ableism there, but it happens a lot. I mean, I went to school with a bunch of other people with disabilities and two people who were both disabled were dating each other in our dorm.
People would say things like, what are you going to do, hold hands for the rest of your life? First of all, I don’t agree that’s accurate that all people with disabilities can do as far as intimacy is hold hands. But I also, on the other hand, if somebody did just want to hold hands with their partner for the rest of their life, then that’s their business, isn’t it?
I’d say just the logistics of needing care from a financial perspective and from the interpersonal perspective of how do you coordinate the caregiving into your life are really big obstacles. Because I agree that you don’t necessarily want a partner to become super invested in your caregiving because you don’t want to become dependent solely on them. But at the same time, I think that a degree of caregiving is a way of loving someone. So, I don’t think they should be completely removed either. But a lot of times people want it both ways.
They’re like, I don’t want to be your nurse or whatever, but then if you have outside caregivers, they also don’t want that either because it limits your privacy. So, it’s like a lose, lose, lose situation.
