Should people with disabilities date and get married?

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With how hard dating and marriage are should people with disabilities even attempt those things?

What do you guys think?

Thanks in advance!! !

It should be entirely their decision.

No. Oh wait, I'm married, to an NT. Hmm. Maybe it just depends on the individual.

RFK Jr. doesn't think so. All the more reason to do it.

If you have Netflix, watch Love on the Spectrum and Down With Love. Proof that yes, it's possible.

if it's for the right reasons, sure

They do it every day. It shouldn't stop you.

I think it depends on the circumstances. It's a problem if the disabled are not really mentally capable of making their own decisions or if they are being used & exploited. Otherwise I agree with enz that it should be their decision.

Married yes, they sure care, but without passing their genes.

To the OP's question: A resounding yes.

Will I ever find someone to marry? No.

I think so many NT men are also struggling to find suitable partners. And yet there are so many single women out there. Why can't I just be okay with them? I must be full of ----.

If by "disabilities" you mean developmental disabilities, then I think it depends on a couple of things. Let's begin by saying that in general, people who engage in dating usually have the hope of eventually experiencing physical intimacy. But sometimes such people may simply not have the capacity to support a family i.e. raise children. For that reason, society seems to reserve dating (and marriage) for those with "agency" meaning they can take care of themselves i.e. live independently and support themselves. Those who can't, who need support from others, are generally discouraged from dating except in a supervised way that usually denies them the privacy required for intimacy. To give a concrete example, there was a couple in our community who were using the Family Washroom at the mall for that purpose (of course their families, or at least the woman's family, saw to it that they were separated, basically by convincing her the guy was a jerk).

I personally believe that people who want that should be allowed, however there should be safeguards (and insisting on such safeguards might not be acceptable to some for a variety of reasons) nevertheless that's my opinion. But like I said, society will by and large takes measures to discourage that.

Another concern is asymmetric relationships. I am quite certain that, 100 years ago, it was very common for a man to take as a bride a woman who could bear him children but would probably depend entirely on his support, not being able on her own. And at that time nobody would question that, in fact they'd say he was a good man to care for that woman (and be faithful to her if that was the case). Nowadays, we would have nothing good to say about that same man. Draw your own conclusions!

Nevertheless, I think this is basically the situation.

I have seen the innocent sort of dating that involves people who basically live in their families' care and get driven to the cinema for an evening of hand-holding maybe followed by milkshakes after, but never actually get married. Some of those people are very happy and will tell you in all honesty they are deeply in love, but I don't think that's what the OP has in mind.

Well...depending upon your definition of "Disability" we might be an example of (at least sometimes): YES!
• We've been married for 25 years.
• She's ADHD and has known it since she was a child.
• I'm ASD-1 (fitting the pattern of Asperger's) and found out after we'd been married almost 20 years.

Our lives, however, indicate we were not "Disabled", just "Different".

P.S. Getting old is sometimes an inconvenience, though.

My autistic friend (mid-30s) has had many short-lived girlfriends in all the time I've known him (since we were teenagers). But I'm not sure if it's him finding it hard to maintain a relationship, or if he just attracts the wrong type of girls. He does go for ND girls but even they don't last long. It's usually about a week. But I think he's been dumped so many times in his life that he's just used to it now and doesn't really get upset. Most of them turn out to be troubled, or start bullying him. I don't know why.

I don't see why not.

Yes, I too think that it really depends on the individual and the circumstances. Like they say, "when you've met one person with autism, you've met one person with autism".

I will also add that those of us Aspie men have a big barrier to overcome - even if we WANT to date, we won't find very many women (or men) who are willing to continue dating us after the initial contact. It's sad but true, from my own experience (and that of many others I've spoken with). I'm married now to an NT, who's thankfully more introverted and accepting...but part of this big barrier I talk about is the circle of our romantic interest, i.e. if a young woman that an Aspie man is dating introduces him to her friends and so forth, he might not pass "the smell test", they might sense that something's off with him, and discourage the woman from pursuing anything further. And she probably just viscerally knows this, which factors into her selection process.

This is why I rigourously masked and suppressed my "Aspie traits" in my younger years in the aughts decade.
People can be very shallow and prejudiced otherwise. Also, an Aspie male dating an NT female may be unlucky enough to find himself being accosted or confronted in some social setting (e.g. a bar, or coffee shop, or restaurant etc.) by some toxic types who pick up on his differences and ask the young lady "What's a girl like you doing with a (insert insult) like this?!?" Then we're hard-pressed to defend ourselves and stand up to the aggressor. And I'm sure that a potential scenario like THAT factors into her visceral selection process, too.