Settling Part 2

I forgot to talk about a very important part of the "settling" equation. Lots of the men I talk to tell me that it's sometimes challenging to find a mate when one has a disability. Hearing that statement from so many different men has led me to wonder just how likely it is that my future partner will consider a relationship with me "settling".

I would like a partner who chooses me because he loves my personality and my sense of humor; someone who respects the things I believe in and stand for even if he doesn't share all the same ideals and beliefs. I want someone who loves me enough to put up with my faults for the rest of our lives. I want to be chosen by a partner who picks me because he can't imagine a life with anyone else. I don't want to be the woman he chose just because I'd have sex with him.

Settling

We were discussing the topic of "settling" in one of the groups I frequent and I wanted to address my personal feelings on the matter here a bit. I already talked about the qualities I look for in an ideal mate. Over the years I have found that life's lonely road has led me to consider men who don't fit the criteria I set.

When I was younger I dated able bodied men because I thought my attraction was bizarre and that no one else in the world felt the way I did so it would be best just to try to suppress it and be like everyone else. It's probably quite fortunate that I never ended up marrying any of those men. I've run into lots of other devs married to non-disabled men and they all eventually drift back to the devotee/admirer communities even if it's only to share a fantasy.

When I finally did find the community it was a great relief to know that I wasn't alone and I immediately started searching for guys to date. The folks who contacted me fell pretty far outside of my attraction so I became a bit disheartened. Just about that time I learned about pretenders. I thought to myself perhaps the man for me doesn't really need to have a disability. Maybe it will be enough for me if he pretends to have one. I know now that my thinking on the matter was flawed. I have made many pretender friends but I know that I would never want to date a member of that community.

Even today I will sometimes meet men who I find physically attractive but who doesn't meet my ideal in other fairly major ways and a little voice in the back of my head will try to tell me "go for it anyway"! Now, of course, I'm old enough and wise enough to resist. The road may be lonesome but it's the right road for me to be on.

Seven things I plan to do before I die
Fall in love
Own a vacation home somewhere beautiful
Watch my child graduate college
Travel the world
Publish something I have written
Earn a "comfortable" salary
Learn to play chess

Seven things I do well
Make people laugh
Understand another's point of view
Listen
Read (for myself and to kids)
My Job
Write
Parent (usually)

Seven things I can't do
Navigate (I have no sense of direction)
Manage my time well
Sing
Play sports well
Play an instrument
Cross my eyes
Stop analyzing people

Seven things that attract me to the opposite sex (besides disability)
Eyes
Smile
Humor
Nice back and shoulders
Intelligence
Compassion
Honesty

Seven things I would change about myself
Lose weight
Exercise more
Develop better time management skills
Longer attention span
Finished my degree sooner
Be less shy about approaching men
Buy a nicer wardrobe

Seven things I enjoy
Reading
Writing
Learning
Playing with my child
Travel
Intimate discussions
Snuggling

Coming Out

No one, outside of the internet communities I frequent, knows I'm a devotee. In all likelihood no one besides my future significant other ever will know. I am at peace with my special attraction. I've accepted it as part of who I am. I don't share it with the public at large because I'm not comfortable with the reactions I'm bound to receive if I share that information. I know that many would question my sanity. Others who are more familiar with the phenomenon would lump me in with the fetishists and predators who use the same label. Of course the vast majority of people I meet on a daily basis simply don't need to know this about me.

The fact that I keep my attraction a secret does give me the privacy I desire but it's also rather lonely. I work in a office full of women and when we all get together the talk inevitably turns to men. We all discuss who we find attractive and what we like in a man and those of us who are single talk about what we'd like in a relationship too. I always join in on these conversations but of course I keep one factor out of the conversation. It makes me feel like I can't truly be myself even among my closest friends. I also feel a bit like a liar. I'm more honest with complete strangers on the internet than I am with my own friends!

I wish there was some way to network with other female devs in my area. It would be great to have a real live friend with whom I could discuss things. It would be great to have a single dev friend to go out with so that we could search for "Mr. Right" together. Oh well, not having live dev friends is certainly not the end of the world. I have made several great online friends anyway.

Would I Date Me?

There are a couple of sites where people with disabilities can place personal ads and I have been spending some time going through them recently. At least half the 400 profiles I found were devotee men and the vast majority of them were looking for women who were amputees. Out of curiosity I did a search for female amputees. I got 31 profiles world wide! I only looked at a few of them closely but I'm reasonably sure 3 or 4 of the ones I saw were not actual amputees but cyber pretenders. Compound that with the fact that many women with disabilities are extremely mistrustful of male devotees and I'd say, for men with this attraction, the situation looks pretty bleak.

I know many women and a few men have had terrible experiences with badly behaved devotees. I suspect though that the experiences of the women have been far worse. It rather makes me wonder what it would be like to be a female amputee out in the world in search of love. For that matter, what would it be like to be a male object of my desire? Would I be wierded out by the fact that someone was attracted to such an unusual feature of myself.

I have some experience in this area. I have been approached by many men who are attracted to Black women and it is always an uncomfortable experience. I try to keep an open mind; after all I have a unique attraction too. Invariably these encounters turn out to be men who are very submissive and they have built up in their minds that Black woman=dominatrix. If another man were to come along at this point and tell me honestly about his attraction, I'd probably be quite wary of his motives. It makes me sad to think that I will be prejudged by people because of my attraction but I certainly understand why it happens.