Seeing in the Dark :: Navigating the World of Dating with a Disability

For some people, the just-passed Valentine's Day is an occasion to celebrate your mate, while for others it's simply a holiday used by businesses as an opportunity to market their products. As someone who is blind and has a public voice via a weekly radio segment and a syndicated column, this is a time when I get flooded with emails asking for relationship guidance.

I suppose because I give career advice - and because everyone has heard through a song or a movie that "love is blind" - some people think that automatically makes me some sort of love expert. The truth of the matter is that when it comes to romance, I am just as knowledgeable as anyone else in his or her mid-30s.

Furthermore, losing my sight in my late 20s forced me to change my dating habits. I went from being the one who buys the dark and handsome guy across the bar a cocktail, to being the one who waits for someone else to make the first move. And even though I have published a memoir, I can sometimes be a little shy about sharing my cause of blindness - especially since it often upsets the guy hearing the story for the first time.

Recently, I was prepping for my Monday night creative writing class when I heard my laptop read a new email message:

"Blind girl needs dating advice," said my computer in a robotic voice.

Swiveling my chair closer to my laptop, I began to listen to the rest of the message. I will call her Alexa, and she said she was a 25-year-old lesbian from Miami. Alexa had met a woman on Craigslist and their communication had gone from email, to phone to now planning their first date.

"Be safe," my computer read out loud as I typed, "and meet in a public place. Also, let her ask a few questions about your disability at the start of the date - it will help with some of the initial awkwardness."

Feeling like a big brother, I hit the send button and reached for my guide dog Oslo's soft head on the floor. Sensing his tongue on my hand, I reflected on the young woman's ability to put herself out in cyberspace to find love.

With an hour before class and with nothing else to do, I decided to give online dating a shot. But as I went back and forth on describing the kind of guy I wanted to meet, I also debated if I should reveal my disability in the post.

I should make this a social experiment, I thought, and write two versions of the post - one that says I am blind and another version that does not.

Over the next few days, I experimented with different websites and decided on Craigslist, Match.com, and MyPartner.com. After one week, my blind ad had only received one reply, from a 70-year-old man in San Francisco who promised he would cook for me and my little guide dog too.

However, the ad that concealed my blindness received multiple messages per day and replying to each note quickly became a part-time job. But as I revealed my blindness to each bachelor, they all responded the same. Each would claim it was not an issue, only to stop all communication shortly after I had confessed to being blind. Not ready to give up on meeting someone, I opted to plunge into the world of chatrooms to give that channel a chance.

On Adam4Adam and Grinder, I was met with similar feedback. Guys wanted to meet up until they found out I was blind. Once the cat was out of the bag, the men would say something along the lines of, "Let's meet up some other time."

Then there was someone I will call JazzGuy, since his web identity on Adam4Adam is the name of an old jazz tune. He was forever chatting about music and, in fact, we chatted so much about lyrics and artists that I would always forget to tell him I was blind. For weeks, we chatted here and there about all things music - never sharing anything personal about each other. Aside from knowing he was 31 and lived in San Francisco, I knew more about his musical likes and dislikes than anything else.

A week before Valentine's Day, I sat down before my computer and began to cancel my memberships to the dating sites. It was hard to stomach the fact that my blind ad had only received one response across the different services I enrolled with, while my other ad had sent 124 bachelors my way. Still, out of the 124 gay men I connected with via the dating sites, none made the effort to want to meet me once they learned about my lack of sight. And the 70-year-old, well, he never replied to my note that explained that, like my ad mentioned, I wanted to date men near my age, but that I was open to something platonic.

I logged onto Adam4Adam to close my account when JazzGuy messaged me. Feeling that old hunter instinct, I asked for his number and promised to call later that evening.

A few hours later, I nestled into my sofa wearing my pajamas to dial JazzGuy. He answered after the second ring and his greeting sounded like a song. We jumped into our familiar musical observations and time quickly went by.

When he mentioned he had something to share, I told him I too wanted to confess something and asked to go first. After I said I was blind, my admission was met with hearty laughs.

"Me too," he breathed. "I'm a total."

"Me too," I echoed, my voice full of surprise.

We made plans to meet up that weekend and neither one of us asked about each other's cause of blindness. I suppose that's a conversation better suited for an in-person meeting.

I jumped into bed and reflected on all of the men who didn't want to even invest in a friendship because of my disability. Smiling, I thanked my blindness for filtering out all the men who, for one reason or another, didn't have an open heart.

Belo Cipriani is a staffing professional, the award-winning author of "Blind: A Memoir and Midday Dreams," a spokesman for Guide Dogs for the Blind, and the career expert for the Ed Baxter Show on Talk Radio San Francisco 910AM. Learn more at BeloCipriani.com