Disability, Dating, Intimacy, Relationships and Sex!

We are coming to the end of disability Pride Month. I have been thinking and trying to write for some time about Disability, Dating, Intimacy, Relationships and Let’s Get Talking About SEX!

Until now I have had writers block, which is interesting when I live with disability. Sometimes after a long week I do feel proud that I managed to get through it. You see, in my mind, I am still aged 18: still able to run for the bus, to dance all night, able to get up and down the stairs with no problem, and not have to worry how long it may take to recover. I look at the younger people in my family who are growing up with health issues and think to myself, ‘At least in my late teens and early twenties I danced and lead a near enough able-bodied life’.

When I had social services in recently for a home assessment it shocked me that after years of therapy and that assessment, I felt repulsed by my disabled body. With all my other intersections I don’t tend to feel shame. I hope by sharing some of where I am at it will help us to have a wider conversation finding disability joy when living with chronic health needs, physical disability, and chronic pain. I long to feel disability joy and physical peace but I am not sure about ‘disability pride’, because I will have days or weeks where I feel amazing and then suddenly experience what I like to call my ‘squashy leg syndrome’, and dystonia sets in (for those who find labels useful).

Services often make the fresh hold of being able to access support too high for disabled people, so our basic needs are not being met. Family and friends are great, but - as someone that supports clients and lives with a disability - I think even family, friends, and colleagues sometimes don’t get our anger and frustration; the fact that we have fought so hard to get our needs met, that we know how easily those met needs around access can be taken away. Often we are so focused on getting our access or disability needs met, but what about our needs around dating, intimacy, relationships, and SEX?

Relationships and Sex

So, let’s dive in and get a bit messy. Now, after living with my disability for just over 20 years, it has taken a bit longer to think about my chronic pain, sexual positions, how I feel when having sex. It amazes me that I don’t bring my disability into conversation when having or negotiating sex, and that - after lots of personal therapy - I have not had that conversation with myself as my physical disability has progressed in the last three years. This and my own gender recovery has made me want a good and healthy sex and relationship life.

Living in my non-binary body obviously means there are things around sex that I negotiate so that the sex I have feels more comfortable. We know that disabled people, and people who live with chronic pain, neurodiversity, or disability, are more likely to face problems of isolation and loneliness because of their disability and can also experience higher rates of depression and anxiety. These feelings can lead to addictive behaviours that some disabled people have learnt as a coping mechanism to numb both the emotional and physical pain.

Dating

“Why am I - as a very open, queer, non-binary human - not comfortable enough to name that I have a disability in my profile, or with some people do not mention it all. I figure if that can’t handle it then it is their problem, not mine”.

Just like with my HIV, I have been rejected due to my disability, statements like:

“I’m not sure I want to have sex with a spastic”. “You should have warned me you have a disability”. “Why don’t you put your disability on your dating profile that you are ‘sick’”. “I really like you even love you, but I don’t want the burden of your disability”. “I have a hard enough work life as it is, I don’t need to be worrying about my partner”. As much as our queer and wider world can be free, liberal, happy, and joyful. It can also be horrible, nasty, disablist, and just down right ‘RUDE’.

Finding a space to have this conversation

I used to be able to go out on the kink and queer scene, but you try finding a queer venue where it would feel accessible and comfortable walking around with my walking frame. Disability, intimacy, and sex isn’t a new conversation but is a current conversation that I am having with myself and in my own therapy. I am curious about what support systems give disabled folk permission to talk about physical disability, chronic health stuff, chronic pain, and how it affects you having a good sex, relationship life and their relationship with intimacy.

When having a check-up with our GP, contact with the GUM clinic or in your therapy session - why aren’t these people engaging with us about the sex we are having? And now - as a therapist that walks with a walking frame - when clients look you up on a directory and you say you are accessible, what does that mean? The biggest thing that prevents disabled people getting therapy is due to access. I have had disabled clients come to me before reporting their therapist or support service because they said they were accessible, but they weren’t, so the client literally could not get in the door. I am feeling myself getting frustrated having to write that, as it is 2023, 13 years on from the Equality Act 2010. Just saying! Please do more to not leave disabled people outside your service.

How do we find sexual joy and pleasure whilst living with chronic ill-health, neurodiversity, or a physical disability? I know it is possible!

I really want to open the floor to my fellow queer, disabled community and have an open and messy conversation about neurodiversity, disability, queer joy, good intimacy and having great sex. Who is in?