3 - Potential As Dating and Relationship Partners

One of my overarching career goals is that people with disabilities (PWD) are seen more potential dating and relationship partners. What does this mean? For the Dating Relationships Disability (DRD) work I do, there’s the micro goal of the work I do with PWD to help them become more confident in dating and relationships, but then there’s the macro goal of changing the HEARTS (notice I didn’t say minds) of society so there is acceptance of the potential that PWD have to be dating and relationship partners.

Opening Your Own Mind 

If we want others to open their hearts to us as dating and relationships partners, we have to begin by opening our own damn minds to that thought.We can’t expect others to believe what we don’t believe for ourselves.Invitation to consider what beliefs are holding you back from this.Who would want to be with me?I’m not attractive.It’s too hard to be with me.

Then Work on Their Hearts

Once you can begin to open your mind - you don’t need to believe all the way - you can then work on changing hearts.While we of course want to change people’s thinking, we ultimately want people to open their hearts to us.When the heart is open, when they call see ALL of us - person and disability - then they can begin to love us, which is the basis for an intimate partnership.

 Where Do We Go From Here?

You’ll hear me compare sexual ableism (see Episode 2) a lot to racism on here because I think the comparison is very tangible for us who see racism as flawed way of thinking.When you’re a member of a race that is marginalized, you don’t think “Oh yeah, they’re right, I am inferior to them.” Rather, you may believe to your core in your equality and be mystified and angry why people treat you otherwise.The way to begin to transform sexual ableism is to hold that vision of how we want things to be - we want to be viewed as potential dating and relationship partners.

Resources

Podcast SurveyFree download - Rising Above Sexual Ableism

Credits

Music by: https://www.purple-planet.com "Successful Motivation"
Artwork photo by Elevate