I can, however, state emphatically that I have gotten rather sick of that attitude in my own life. *wrygrin* I hear "oh, I just wouldn't be able to handle that" from some of my closest friends, and others have tried to 'help' me by encouraging me to break up with my SO, or declared me to be "an angel" when I indicated that I had no intention of doing so, thank you very much.
Yeah, this is the kind of thing I was talking about in my other comment.
Also, once when I was at university, one of my dorm-mates found out my SO was in a wheelchair, and blurted out "but how do you have sex?!?!" - at the time I was so gobsmacked I just said "how is that any of your business?" but later I wished I'd said "Creatively." Because that's the biggest component I've observed in having a relationship (sexual or otherwise) with someone who has disability issues (to whatever degree.) You just have to be willing to be creative and mentally flexible about your expectations of how things are going to happen and when and so on.
I mean, from a purely sexual point of view- there are how many positions in the Kama Sutra? Plus there's a lot of things you can do which have a sensual or sexual element which may not fall into the traditional concept of 'having sex'.
I don't know if it would fit into the framework of the lesson, but one thing I've noticed as someone who has gone out with folks who are visibly disabled (particularly when they're in a wheelchair) is the tendency of people to talk to the apparently able-bodied companion rather than the person in the chair. So that might be something to address somehow. Maybe a 'what would you do?' type thing?
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Date: 2008-01-28 08:07 pm (UTC)Yeah, this is the kind of thing I was talking about in my other comment.
Also, once when I was at university, one of my dorm-mates found out my SO was in a wheelchair, and blurted out "but how do you have sex?!?!" - at the time I was so gobsmacked I just said "how is that any of your business?" but later I wished I'd said "Creatively." Because that's the biggest component I've observed in having a relationship (sexual or otherwise) with someone who has disability issues (to whatever degree.) You just have to be willing to be creative and mentally flexible about your expectations of how things are going to happen and when and so on.
I mean, from a purely sexual point of view- there are how many positions in the Kama Sutra? Plus there's a lot of things you can do which have a sensual or sexual element which may not fall into the traditional concept of 'having sex'.
I don't know if it would fit into the framework of the lesson, but one thing I've noticed as someone who has gone out with folks who are visibly disabled (particularly when they're in a wheelchair) is the tendency of people to talk to the apparently able-bodied companion rather than the person in the chair. So that might be something to address somehow. Maybe a 'what would you do?' type thing?