They say love is a war: easy to start and difficult to end. But according to me, for persons with disabilities, its the other way round. Difficult to start and very easy to end. Why? For a person with disability, it takes time before they can fully trust someone. It may seem like we trust easily because of the need for assistance at some point during the day, but to trust someone with my future plan, more is required of them. Tragedy is, the concept of trust is so much abused among persons with disability right from the start. For instance, when you are born with a disability and have to go through therapy, (more so physiotherapy), it is your parent or caregivers who take you to the physiotherapy sessions. Of course, physiotherapy is painful and emotionally torturous. By the time you come to realize these things are for your benefit, you've lost trust in people who tell you they won't harm you. You learn to expect the worst even when its not there.
In terms of relationships, you hesitate from opening up to someone even when you badly want the person. Why? You are not so sure whether the person you want to pursue is there for the long term or is a passing cloud. And even when you open up, you fear long term commitment because you convince yourself this person is not here to stay. Why is it a war? It is a war because all these things are in the head, unspoken. The reality may be different but still, the situation in the mind will not let you see the difference. What makes it worse is that we feel nobody can understand our situation so we just keep it to ourselves. Or the person we want to pursue has another person in their life so we don't stand a chance, disability not withstanding.
Confusion sets in when the opposite happens. Expecting rejection, only to find acceptance. It becomes a whole ballgame, since you did not envision the other person loving you back. You have to deconstruct the negative expectation that this is a short lived experience and begin to think long term, this time with a partner in tow. Sometimes the situation could be that the person you are pursuing is far away and this further complicates the situation.
What then is the way forward? The solution, I think is to take everything positively whatever the outcome. A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor. After all, one cannot win the lottery without buying the ticket.