[BlindTlk] Dating as a Blind Person: Revisited

[Humberto Avila]

Dear Everybody, 

I hope your weekends are going very well, and you are in good health and spirits.  

I am slightly following up on a question I've asked earlier on this list and am thankful to Marion Gwisdala, Judy and others who have responded to my many curious and perhaps dumb and silly questions. 

Anyways, I am interested in your experience with dating sighted partners, specifically with regards to getting around, and demonstrating your mobility and other alternative blindness skills in front of said person. Let's say, I am beginning to chat with someone over an online dating website, or at work. She asks me out (or I do, for that matter) and we both agree to go to a public venue (E.G. coffee house) to meet up. According to my early research on this subject, online dating app experts highly recommend both parties procure their own transportation to and from the site, for if something were to go wrong during the encounter. 

To cut to the chase here: What has been your experiences with dating for the first time, and dealing with transportation-related barriers? I know that in bigger cities there is a lot more flexibility with rideshares being more accessible, and buses running more times. But I now live in a city that doesn't have a lot of those options and their paratransit is, for lack of a nicer word, horrible, and doesn't run most evenings — time of day usually reserved for the activity I am trying to undertake. Did you have to disclose your blindness, merely because of the transit issues you experience, and not for anything else? For those of you living with / or lived with parents or loved ones when starting their dating journey: did they assist or provide with any accommodations so that your experience is smooth, despite the awkwardness? 

Over all, your solutions and challenges you undertook when dating sighted partners in a sighted world for the first time will be appreciated. I know these discussions can get heated sometimes but this is very relevant as we transition into a world that is going more and more physical and in-person. 

Thanks, 

Humberto 


“Be kind; for everyone you meet is fighting a really hard battle.” — πλατο