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Hey Doc,
Been enjoying your articles on virginity and low self-esteem in men. I’m 24 and admittedly a late bloomer when it comes to romance. Never so much as kissed a girl my age and lack of experience and intimacy has been bothering me for quite some time. Counseling and articles such as yours have helped a bit, and I realize that confidence plays a big role in meeting a partner, but a lot of the time it feels nearly hopeless to me.
I have no female friends and have only been on several dates through Hinge and the like. Just this past weekend I had a rare date with a very attractive girl but it ended in her ghosting me. This has happened every single date I’ve been on. I think how I look and move due to my physical disability (muscular dystrophy) causes women to be instinctively not attracted to me. I draw no attention to it during dates and try to be positive, light hearted, and funny, but the results are starting to speak for themselves. I’ve been exercising for over a year now and it hasn’t had any positive effect on how I walk.
Everyone is different of course but I think for the majority of women dating a disabled man is out of the question. Especially one who is not good with women or romance. Everyone has an extreme story about knowing someone who marries and cares for a quadriplegic or something or other, but I find that extremely suspect and not helpful. What would you recommend for someone in my shoes to do?
Thanks,
Squeaky Hinge
I’m going to start off by stating something that you already know, but I feel like it should be acknowledged anyway: yeah, you’re going have challenges meeting compatible people.
Here’s another thing that you already know but, again, I feel like it should be acknowledged: dating apps are rough in general, but they’re going to be especially rough for you.
Now, please notice very carefully that I said compatible people, not any, or that apps are going to be rough, not “you’re fucked”.
Because there’s a third thing to acknowledge – something that I don’t think you’ve fully accepted: you’re actually doing fairly well, all things considered. You’ve had several dates off Hinge, including one a little before you wrote in. That’s a strong indication that you’ve actually got a pretty good profile and you’re doing well at meeting people.
Now it’s a matter of meeting the right people, showing your best self, and making sure you connect with them.
Here’s something that people get wrong about dating apps: they’re not a tool that’s designed to get you dates or turn dates into relationships. They are, for all intents and purposes, a glorified introduction service. At the end of the day, their only true purpose is to put you in front of other people who are also single and looking to mingle. That’s it. Everything after that is up to you and them.
However, this service – putting you in the same metaphorical space as more women than you might meet in your day to day life – has its drawbacks. One of the things that people often forget is that being on a dating app means that you’re signing up for greater levels of rejection. This isn’t because the women on dating apps are spoiled for choice or they get their pick of guys – ask pretty much any average woman about her experiences on dating apps – but because you are approaching more people than you could in person. It’s not about unreasonable standards, it’s about simple physics: you can’t be in two (or more) places at the same time, carrying on two (or more) conversations with different women more or less simultaneously.
And this leads to another issue with dating apps: it can be hard to meet the right people. There’s a difference between volume and affinity; quantity does not have a quality of its own when it comes to dating. And because compatibility is about more than a picture and words on a page, dating apps increase the odds of meeting folks who seem great on paper but who aren’t a match in person.
So part of the challenge is making sure that you’re meeting the right people – and making sure the right people are finding you.
When it comes to meeting people, especially if you’re strongly flavored – like you are – then you want a two-pronged approach to meeting people.
The first is that, if you’re going to use the apps, you want to make sure that you’re using them the right way – which means that you want them to be a supplement to how you meet people, not a replacement. It also means that you want to filter for people who are actually compatible with you.
When it comes to a dating profile, you want to be clear about who you are and what you’re looking for – the sort of person you’re compatible with, what sorts of interests they would ideally share with you and so on. You are holding yourself out as someone who people should want to be with, not just listing out qualities and hoping for the approval of others like a puppy staring through the window at a pet store. Making it clear what you’re looking for helps you convey the fact that you know you’re a prize and you’re looking for the person who should win it.
But part of this means that you want to highlight a simple truth: you’ve got a physical disability that affects how you walk and move. You don’t frame it as a disqualifier or a reason to be down on yourself, you frame it as a singular data point about who you are and how that’s going be part of the story of dating you. People are going to learn that anyway; putting it out there now means that you’re going to be sorting out the folks who can’t hack it.
Yeah, that’s going to put people off and cut down the number of matches you get… but that’s a good thing. You want the people who aren’t going to be able to see past your having muscular dystrophy to keep moving and not waste your time. The matches you want are the people who aren’t going to see that as an issue.
But as I said: dating apps are a supplement. They’re convenient, but not a requirement. And if you’re someone who’s strongly flavored, one of the best ways of finding relationships is to meet people in person and let them get to know you. One of the issues that comes with dating while disabled is that people have a lot of ableist ideas about what having a disability means. They know a label and have a mental image; you want them to see the person. It’s much easier for them to see the person if they have a chance to get to know the person over time, rather than trying to make the spark happen over the span of a few emails and dinner or drinks. Propinquity and exposure, after all, are the most under-appreciated aspects of attraction and one that people frequently neglect.
Finding places where you can, among other things, enjoy your passions around and with other like-minded people, places where you can socialize and meet folks who you share commonalities are precisely what you want. You want to become a regular among the other regulars, giving people the chance to get to know you and let your star qualities shine in ways that often don’t on dating apps. You, especially, want folks to know you as you, not as Dude What Has MD.
Now, again: you’re going to end up with friends first, more than dates. That’s a good thing; having more friends helps you immensely. I mention this because the fact that you don’t have female friends kinda leaps out at me. That’s going to be a drawback – not in the eyes of other people, but in terms of how having good female friends is a benefit to you besides just friendship. Having women as friends helps you feel more comfortable and at ease with women in general; the more you hang out with your friends, the more you recognize that women and men aren’t separate species. You demystify attractive women by realizing they’re people, same as everyone else; being comfortable around them makes you more confident and better able to be your best authentic self and connect with people in genuine ways, rather than coming to the interaction feeling as though you need to justify your existence to them before you can even talk to them.
Similarly, having friends – friends in the places where you hang out as well as female friends in general – is a form of social proof. It tells others a story about who you are. If you’re someone who knows everyone at the Makerspace (or what-have-you) and everyone there knows you, people are going to see a confident, social guy who clearly is a lynchpin of the space and someone worth getting to know. Similarly, having women in your life who clearly like you and enjoy your company and spending time with you is a sign of someone that other women should get to know – you’re being vouched for by others.
But there’s another thing to keep in mind: you have to see yourself as the prize if you want other people to see it too. And right now, I wonder if you do.
The other thing that leaped out at me was the comment that you think women are “instinctively” not attracted to you. That’s going to say a lot more about how you think of yourself, not them. You’re making assumptions based on what you think, not on what they’re actually feeling – and you can’t know what they’re feeling because they almost certainly didn’t tell you. It might be because you have muscular dystrophy… or it could because you liked the wrong streaming service. Or wore white after Labor Day. Or literally anything else.
Now, one of the issues with people with disabilities, especially visible ones, is the tendency for folks (including disabled people themselves) is to see them as being somehow just asexual beings. This isn’t instinctual, it’s societal; it’s part of how disabilities are treated and portrayed and we take our cues from there. Part of changing how you see yourself is going to require embracing yourself as a sexual being – being as unashamed of your own sexuality and needs as an abled person is.
Now to be fair: it’s a lot harder to find inspiration or examples to work from when you’re disabled than an able-bodied person can. Most disabled characters in fiction have a tendency to either be written as model-minorities or inspiring plaster saints and even ones that get romantic stories are treated as incipient tragedies. But they are out there.
One example you might want to look to is the character Isaac, from Netflix’s Sex Education. To be sure, his disability is different than yours, but part of what makes his character notable is that he’s… another character. He’s disabled, sure, but that’s just a part of who he is. Just as importantly though: he’s a character who is comfortable with himself as a sexual being – he may not be the typical lover people might expect but that doesn’t mean he’s not one.
That, I think, is important and will be an important part for you finding the right people: acknowledging that while you may not be the typical lover that people may expect, that doesn’t mean that you aren’t one at all. Different is just that: different. Not worse, not non-existent… just different. The more in tune you are with your body, how you work and how you work with others, the more that you’ll be able to express yourself sexually as well. You’ll have people who don’t get it, sure… but again, those are people who are just telling you that they’re not the one for you.
Again, I want to emphasize: you are going to have challenges. We live in an ableist society and that’s going to affect things. It means that you may be dealing with a smaller pool of potential dates and lovers than an able-bodied person. But a challenge is not the same as impossible. It just means that you’re going to be more discerning and will want to winnow out as many wrong matches as possible so that you aren’t wasting your time on them.
But like I said: you’re doing better than you’ve given yourself credit for. You’re clearly adept at getting dates – more than I think you realize. Now it’s a matter of making sure you get the right dates.
Good luck.
Hi Doctor,
My girlfriend of 4 months is going to be going to a bachelorette trip in Miami with a few of her girlfriends. I’ve never met these friends as they are high school friends; of course, one of them is getting married and has been in a relationship for 7 years.
However, it obviously concerns me that I haven’t met her friends and I don’t know the moral character of them. I trust my girlfriend wholeheartedly, but when alcohol is involved in a “feral” weekend(direct words from the bride to be), I get a little bit nervous. We only live about 30 minutes from Miami and they will be sleeping at one of their friends’ houses who live in Miami and attending the bachelorette weekend, so I’m happy that her safety is going to be taken care of.
I wanted to know how I can get over this anxiety and worry about what could happen. I feel like I’ve been brainwashed by modern media, movies and TV shows that depict bachelorette parties as a “final night as a free woman”, and how her friends who I don’t know could influence her.
Any advice is appreciated!
Feral Weekend, Indoor Cat
Normally I would leap in on this with both feet, but I’m trying to start the year by giving people a bit more of the benefit of the doubt. So with that in mind, I want to point something out in your letter that I’m not sure you realize you’re saying, FWIC: you’re talking about your girlfriend as though she were more of a pet or a child than a grown-ass woman.
It’s the little things: “I haven’t met her friends and I don’t know their moral character”, “her safety is going to be taken care of”, and “friends who I don’t know could influence her.” These all come across as though you see your girlfriend as some helpless naïf, an ingenue who’s too pure and innocent to be left on her own out in the wild wide world.
That’s not a good place to start from, quite frankly, and it makes me cock an eyebrow when you say “I trust my girlfriend wholeheartedly” and then toss out a “BUT” so large that Sir Mix-a-Lot pulled up quick to get with it. That “but” means that everything after “I trust my girlfriend” is thrown into question by the rest of your letter.
The anxiety and worry suggests that no, you don’t trust your girlfriend – either to not cheat, to not be able to take care of herself or not be able to handle herself over a party weekend away from your watchful gaze. It suggests that you would feel better if you could control things, help guide her decisions and… well, not allow her to be a person with agency and to make her own choices.
Well I’m here from the future to tell you: it won’t help, and getting hung up on who she’s going out with comes a lot closer to Andrew Tate-level bullshit than most people are going to feel comfortable with. You can’t control her and trying to exact control over the situation – such as checking the “moral character” of her friends – is only going to make things worse.
And it’s certainly not helped by dwelling on “what may happen”. Having seen more than a few bachelorette parties in party destinations – South Beach, Vegas, Bourbon Street, Dirty Sixth, etc. – I can tell you what’s likely on the agenda: drinking, scavenger hunts, brunch, hangovers AT brunch and generally having a good time with the acknowledgement that rather than her “last night as a free woman” this is going to be the last opportunity for a while for a group of friends to have a weekend that’s just all about them having a good time together before the responsibilities of life creep back in.
Maybe that’ll involve being outrageously flirty and acting out in a way they feel like they can’t in their day to day lives. Maybe there’ll be trying some things that they don’t normally do when they’re at home and have to be at work the next day. But there’s what porn, Reddit and movies will tell you is likely to happen and then there’s what I’ve seen over the years of not just seeing bachelorette parties out and about but watching the dudes who follow them like seagulls following a shrimp boat.
Because here’s the thing: I have seen a ton of guys try to peel someone away from a bachelorette party because they think like you do – they’re drunk and wild and looking to get crazy because it’s their last night of freedom. Every time the guys learn the same lesson: it may be their “last night of freedom”, but bachelorette parties are like the Rangers: they never leave a soldier behind. They may be out to party hard, but there’s a difference between “partying hard” and “roving maenad orgy”. They’re out to have a good time, not to blow anybody’s life up. And considering the risks that women face that aren’t faced by men in similar circumstances, I suspect they’re far more aware of the potential pitfalls than you are.
I get that you’re anxious and worried. That to me suggests that either you don’t trust your girlfriend or you don’t trust in your own value and the strength of your relationship. That’s leading you to feel like the answer is to try to maintain some degree of control. It’s not, and you can’t, and at four months, you really aren’t going to have much of a leg to stand on to make demands. You either trust her to make good choices or you don’t. And if she hasn’t shown a tendency to make poor choices? Well, then that’s coming down to being a you problem, not a her problem.
The best thing you can do is make like Elsa and let it go. Wish her a good time, remind her to drink plenty of water, not to take Tylenol to deal with the hangover and then find some ways to occupy your time so you aren’t preoccupying yourself on what she’s getting up to in your absence.
Trust is a practice. So trust her. Otherwise, you may as well end things now, because trying to make this an issue is going to end up being far worse for you than whatever she gets up to in Miami.
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