Recently, a stranger left a comment on my TikTok asking me when and how I tell people I’ve dated about my disability. At first, I saw the message and thought well that’s a great question, let me give it some proper time and attention, rather than fire my camera up right now as my housemate and I eat another snack one of us found in the reduced section. But then this is such a nuanced question for me that even after filming a 2-minute video, I don’t feel like I properly answered it. So here I am, not slumped on the sofa with a biscuit in my hand, giving it some focused thought.

I find introducing my disability to new people very complicated – for lots of reasons. Although I had to give plenty of explanations of it to friends as a teenager, I also went to the same school with the same people pretty much all the way through. Therefore, whilst they might not have known or particularly cared to know the details of how my condition can affect me, they did see me in a wheelchair at points when blisters or footwear had caused me some issues. They had also spent years growing up alongside me, so they knew me way more than just as a physically disabled person. In fact, half of the time I had to remind them of my Spina Bifida because even my closest friends would often forget that it was a thing at all.

Then I went traveling and onto university, where I experienced intense but very short friendships with people; an exercise in distilling myself and my disability into words to try to gain understanding in a very short period of time. Some individuals were amazing and I felt more listened to than I had even within my childhood friendships, and others were very dismissive. But the thing with my disability is that I put so much into maintaining the condition of my feet to ensure that I don’t have that many problems, that this can lead to it seeming like I don’t actually have many problems. Therefore, I’ve often felt that in order for people to believe that I’m not exaggerating, they need to see it get worse. But, as the one who’d have the bandage on their foot, I’d rather not go there – I’d still like to feel understood though.

So in the context of dating, it’s really tricky. I’ve definitely never opened with it because unfortunately, people have preconceptions and make very silly assumptions about disabilities in general, let alone about dating somebody with a disability. For example, one of the big assumptions is that if we’re together, the lad’s going to become my full-time carer and ultimately end up sobbing next to me when I’m in a hospital bed. Like babes, maybe ask me some questions about it first before we jump straight to a Hollywood catastrophe. But I also can’t not mention it because you have to know about it to know about me.

***I’d like to specify here that a lot of the time, individuals don’t even acknowledge that they have these preconceptions about disability; these aren’t things anyone ever says out loud, it’s just a narrative that’s knocking about society which we rarely address. I mean, some people say it out loud, but that’s just because they’re —–

Honestly, I think that I still don’t really know how to tell someone about my disability because I don’t think it can be effectively explained using words. Yes, I can give you the rundown and list off my operations, but those tales sound like catastrophe after catastrophe and don’t always feel like an accurate reflection of my life. Plus, were you actively listening when I told you? Like with anyone, you have to invest time in me to get to know me and you’re only going to understand how my Spina Bifida impacts my life if I let you see it.

Without a shadow of a doubt, in any relationship I’m in, it’ll probably come as a bit of a shock to the lad if the condition of my feet goes south because it’ll highlight just how much I do on a day-to-day basis to avoid that. However, you’d hope that if we have to go there, we’d be into each other enough for him to be more than happy to drive me to the hospital, pick up my antibiotics, and help me hop around the house until my foot heals. Just like you would if your girlfriend randomly broke her leg.

If society didn’t think of physical disabilities as life-destroying and a huge burden on people’s lives, then I wouldn’t hesitate to tell a lad about it on a date because I’m not ashamed of my body, or how I have to take care of it. But that’s not the world we live in. So I cover my shoes until I work out whether it’s relevant to the conversation because it’s not always helpful to share everything about yourself all at once. And like everyone, I’ll be able to work out after the first few dates whether you could potentially be right for me, and that’ll include whether I think you’d have an issue with being with someone disabled. I might not always be right, but I do think it’s sensible to give it at least a few hours to feel everything else out before we workshop the medical history.