Life Goals

Since it’s Valentine’s Day, I thought I’d be original and write about dating. Enjoy!

On my next birthday I will be 30. I still have just over 10 months left until I reach that milestone, but there are a lot of things I want to accomplish before then. I want to become a more established writer and blogger. I want to improve my design and coding skills. I want to figure out how to bring music back into my life somehow. But, my number one goal for 2016 is to start dating someone.

Now ,this isn’t completely foreign territory: I had a girlfriend for six months in college and I’ve dated girls since then. Other than that one college girlfriend, the girls I’ve dated or expressed interest in up to this point have decided we’re better off as friends before any romance began. I’m not sure exactly why that is, but that’s how things have seemed to work lately.

Actually, that’s not entirely true. The reasons I’ve heard for why things don’t work out, either directly or by proxy, often relate to my disability. Some women can’t envision what life would look like with a man who can’t hike or dance or fend off attackers. For the record, there are plenty of beautiful, wheelchair-accessible outdoor places to visit, I actually can dance and I will gladly run over any hypothetical thugs who try to harm my hypothetical (for now) girlfriend.

Another reason I hear is that women don’t think I’m capable of fathering children. This is also not the case. Without getting into specifics, I’ll just say that I’m perfectly capable of impregnating a woman the old-fashioned way with some minor adaptations. Too much information? Maybe, but I think an honest discussion of what dating with a disability looks like might be enlightening to some of my readers. I completely understand if some (or even many) girls just aren’t into me. This is the nature of relationships: you win some, you lose some. However, I think there have been times when girls liked me (and I liked them) and things didn’t work out due to incorrect assumptions about my disability.

As I’ve been recruiting my friends to help with Girlfriend Search 2016, they keep asking me what I’m looking for in a girl. At first, I would say that as long as she loves the Lord and I find her attractive (and she finds me attractive), it’s worth a shot. But as I’ve been thinking about it, there are some more things I would like in a relationship. For starters, I’d like to date someone who can see the many positive attributes my disability has cultivated without always focusing on the negatives. This is sort of the minimum requirement for dating anyone with a disability. Of course, good communication is an integral part of any healthy relationship. As trust builds, I want someone who feels comfortable talking to me about anything, even the hard stuff. Clearly, going out on dates is an important aspect of dating and so is being able to just hang out together and chat or watch Netflix. I’m looking for someone who is okay with the occasional night in and will go do stuff with me, too.

Is that a tall order? Maybe. Fortunately, I’m not completely at the mercy of others to make this happen. I have hundreds of people praying that I will find a perfect match and God to guide me to her. Maybe He will even use this blog for that purpose! No matter what happens with my love life, I can be assured of one thing: God loves me more than I could ever imagine. And, although it’s possible, I don’t think He wants me to be single forever. Stay tuned to find out!