“She feels that people hold her in higher regard because she is accompanying someone with a disability.”

This does good, but on the other hand it is not what I would really want. Neither a negative nor a positive bias towards people with impairments. Just a natural accepting of all kinds of human beings and ways to live one’s life, as long as nobody else is hurt. That would be my ideal.

I know I am naive ;-)

I think the only thing I ought to add here is that there’s a difference between *understanding*, and *accepting*. You’ve talked about understanding a fair bit. I also share the opinion that as I don’t really understand BIID, we shouldn’t expect our partners to do so themselves.

But one doesn’t need to understand something to be able to accept it.

Absolutely right Chloe, we must talk – a lot.

I’m a bit confused as to why a partner would feel ashamed or embarrassed to be seen with someone in a wheelchair. Alicia’s perception is exactly the opposite. She feels that people hold her in higher regard because she is accompanying someone with a disability. She has encouraged me to use leg braces or a wheelchair in public with her from the beginning.

Like Peter, I have decided to get a leg paralysed. This was arrived at through intensive discussion between Alicia and myself. We are in complete agreement that, while it may not be enough in the long term, it is something we can be sure will not cause any regrets. It is something I will be very happy about, and avoids the risks entailed with skiing off cliffs.

The point I am making is to talk to your partner. Talk a lot.

Our partners might be a bit ashamed about us. They have the same fear of reactions of others to BIID and disabilities which we have/had, but they don’t have the desperation that helps to overcome these fears. “What will other people think?”

Maybe also surgeons and other health professionals would be open to help us, but they fear the reactions of their peers. “What will other people think?”

And I myself am not really certain how much of the “counterweights” that I have in my mind are my own wishes, values, thoughts and feelings and how much of them is “what will other people think?”.

And that doesn’t only apply to BIID… “What will other people think?” has too much power, I think.

But now I’ve decided to get a leg paralysed, I’m hearing “I’d find that hard to accept”.

He’s very accepting of the chair and we go places together with me wheeling but he’s also quite embarrased by it and hides it when we have visitors! This is ridiculous as we have a perfect reason for the chair. We work in film and video and the chair is great for fast moving shots – it beats spending hours laying dolly tracks. So you see, spouses can be accepting but maybe they just have hangups like “What will other people think?”

If there’s *real* love between them, this hangup is overcomable (is that english?) surmountable.

I think Elisabeth got it exactly right. Self acceptance, self respect, and self love come first. And yes, it’s really hard. After that, one can love another and seek their love not out of desperation and insecurity, but as a pure gift.

I am I, with or without legs. The girl knows that her guy has BIID. So she does know him. He would be the same man, but maybe happier and even more able to love her if his BIID wish was fulfilled.

Give them time.

When I share my BIID with others, I don’t expect them to understand. There is very little to understand, as
Phil says. I hope for their acceptance of me as I am, I give them my trust and hope for respect. And as respect and acceptance are necessary ingredients of love and friendship, we need to learn to respect ourselves and move on when that respect is not given.

But heck it is hard. And it’s hard to see somebody going through what we have gone through and not to be able to help. Your guy, Sean, will have to accept himself first, respect himself, love himself, really. And that’s probably one of the hardest things we ever have to learn.

I have never heard of anybody who was able to “give it up”. Just to tolerate or decide for a life with suffering but no disability of the body. I also know people who were married and had children and only after 25 years they finally couldn’t stand it any longer and started to live their gay side.

Life offers a lot of options. And (most) often only after a decision one can know what it is like.

I can understand the partner who cannot understand BIID. I don’t understand my own BIID, I don’t understand myself. But when we are honest to ourselves and each other, we have to admit, that we never really do understand ourselves…

It takes time to get acquainted with the thought that one’s partner has such a problem/disability/dis-ease. The best the couple can do is when they give each other the time.

And if the guy is able to push his BIID aside for some time: lucky him!

Sean wrote: “Perhaps these folks have to go through the same experiences to learn themselves.” I guess this is true for everything. Somebody who isn’t gay and hasn’t had to overcome all the conventions and rejection and struggle won’t understand what it means to be gay in our society. Somebody who never experienced depression cannot really know what it’s like. That’s why I think that the best doctors and therapists are those who have had to overcome diseases and problems themselves.

Suffering makes us grow, as sad as it is. Not all kinds of suffering, though, and it additionally requires a certain attitude to learn.

My therapist recently attended a seminar. In a break, she asked some other participants, among them a meditation teacher and a psychiatrist, if they had ever heard about BIID. Nobody had. She explained. The “professionals” said they couldn’t understand; the psychiatrist said she couldn’t work with such a patient; and it were against nature… The only one who showed some understanding was a man who had suffered a severe mental disease and had gone through something very hard. He said that he knew some transsexual persons and that BIID was a bit similar. But of these transsexuals, after surgery most were not happy…

Written sitting in my wheelchair… (which I do very seldom).

But I don’t think we yet know enough about BIID to say for sure that no-one who has it is able to ‘give it up’. There just hasn’t been the research.

Personally I think I could give up all outward manifestations of BIID without damaging myself (though if I had a partner who demanded I did, I’d be questioning whether someone so intolerant was right for me). And maybe with the right kind of therapy I could stop feeling this way too. We just don’t know, because no-one’s done the research.