Dating with Disability Part 2: Oh, What A Feeling To Be Loved

Someone to kiss

Someone to miss

When you're away

To hear from each day

To be loved, to be loved

Oh what a feeling to be loved

-Jackie Wilson

People living with disabilities and nondisabled people share one particular thing in common and it is their human nature to want love and to be loved. When one speaks of love, it is sometimes the type that is received from someone else. Having our feelings validated by others is a way by which we measure our worthiness. This is the type of love that says, “Who I am depends on how you feel about me.” Yet, when we don’t receive this love from external sources, it can leave us feeling defeated and unworthy. 

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. shares a new perspective on how we can experience love. He writes, “Before you can love other selves adequately, you’ve got to love your own self properly.” It is true that the love we offer ourselves is paramount to our emotional health and is unfortunately the one that is often malnourished. 

Nurturing self-love takes work. Yet, when we work on loving ourselves, we reap an even greater reward than the love that anyone else can provide. In his book, How to Be Love(d), Humble the Poet writes, “Love doesn’t have to be earned or found, it just has to be realized.” We have deep within us an unmatched love. It is a love that reminds us that every line on our face, every scar on our body, every limp, every stutter, every unique thing about us is worthy of love and that that love already exists. We simply have to open ourselves up to it.

When was the last time you looked in the mirror and said, “I love you.” If you’ve never done it, then start today. Take yourself on a date, get up, clean your apartment, go on a walk, work out, and plan a staycation with yourself. Work on you. Do beautiful things that make you happy so that you can then share that happiness with others. Remember that the attributes that make you different, don’t make you less. They make you, you, and you have to find a way to love those parts of who you are. As Tom and Donna from the television show Parks and Recreation would say, “Treat Yo’ Self.” 

The love that you are seeking from some other body is already present in yours.