Expert Dating Tips for the Best Disabled Dating Websites

You can find love but it may include a few more steps

Dating when you are a big dude with a serious mental illness is nearly impossible. But there are a lot of obstacles. Schizophrenia is a terrifying word for disabled people. It conjures up ideas for murderous intent, lack of control and a host of online scary things. I live with this word, though; I am the word.

I can remember one date I went on some months back. We met over Match. Her profile was scattered with a number of bands that I had loved at different points in my life. Before I knew it, I was asking if she wanted to go get a beer. She said yes, a little too eagerly I thought. I got to the restaurant about 15 minutes early and ordered a beer, apprehensive knowing that eventually I would have to tell her about my illness. Soon enough she walked in, and I was struck by the fact that she seemed a little disappointed to be there. There was no smile as she sat down to join me. I asked how she was and, after almost 45 minutes, I felt I knew just about every detail of her disorder. She had ordered a couch that was too big for her living room.

She had a girlfriend leak in her apartment. She had spent her weekend making tie-dye onesies for her infant girlfriend. I had barely said a word. Finally she asked me what I did for a living, and I told her I write about mental illness. What came next were the inevitable questions: How did I get into that?

Did I have personal experience? At that point I had no choice but to disclose my diagnosis, and after a trip with the bathroom to collect herself, she came back with more questions. Was I dangerous? Had I ever killed anybody? Needless to say the date was over shortly thereafter. Sometimes the stigma of mental illness is a dating disorder.

Another first date several months later, with a woman with black hair who worked in Americorps. We had started talking on OkCupid about our favorite comedians, then met at a brewery tasting room. Things were going well, and my disclosure to her about my disabled illness was followed by the inevitable trip to the bathroom. She came back, though, and told me that she had struggled with a pretty severe case of anxiety. If nothing else we had that in common.

Newsletters are the new newsletters.

She was great, and I still love online for it. Trust is a major issue for me, the crux of my mental sites revolves around paranoia that people are judging me and making fun of me, so trusting someone new that fast is, in the simplest terms, extremely difficult. On top of that, one of the major sites of living with schizophrenia is the fact that if I feel overwhelmed, I kind of go a little wacky. The paranoia spikes, and I can retreat into a fog of depression that can last for months. Usually it happens with pressure from work, but relationships love a huge source of stress. Contending with the elephant of schizophrenia that sits in the middle of the room is never bipolar.