QI’m a smart, professional woman in my mid-30s who dates the same. I also happen to use a wheelchair; I was diagnosed shortly after my first birthday with a motor neuron disease. I have about as much physical strength as a quadriplegic but I have full sensation. (Boy howdy, do I!) I am careful about who I date because of my physical dependence on the people around me. I am also wary of folks who call themselves “devotees,” who are individuals with disability-related fetishes. They gravitate toward amputees, but some are attracted to women in chairs. I’m not sure what about this bothers me so much; I suppose it feels reductionist, and I’ve spent my adult life becoming more than a girl in a chair.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
I’m sure you can see where this is going. I started dating a lovely, successful, witty, beautiful woman a little more than a year ago. As time progressed, it became clear that we were sexually compatible. Things have been great. At the eight-month point, I told my BFF that this might be “the one.” At the nine-month point, she confessed to being a devotee. I was crushed. But I trusted her, as I had gotten no icky feelings from her. Then she said that she wanted to try using my chair during sex—except with our roles reversed. Because I try to be GGG, I consented, as long as she agreed to couples therapy, which she did. In therapy, she said she had no idea I was in a chair before we met—which is plausible, as it was a blind date—and she just felt lucky when I showed up in a chair and then didn’t know how to tell me. So . . . we’ve been working it out.
AYes, GIMP, it’s time to DTMFA.
It sounds like your girlfriend has many good qualities, GIMP, and it sounds like you two clicked. Maybe your girlfriend can be salvaged. Maybe losing you will be the shock she needs to get help. If it is—if she went and got help of her own accord, not because she thought it would win you back (because that wasn’t on the table)—then bizarro DTMFA (“date the motherfucker again”) might be an option. But you two should start seeing a counselor together if you TTMFB, you should take things four times as slowly this time, and she should get a phone that doesn’t have a camera.
AIf you think your husband would respond positively to the challenge—if he’s not weepily sensitive about his weight, if he likes set goals and specific rewards—then I think you should toss this proposal on the table right next to that bag of Doritos. Of course, I couldn’t give you the same advice if the genders were reversed because . . . well, it looks like we’re out of room. So we’ll have to leave the gendered politics of fat for a future column.
