Dating for People with Disabilities and Illnesses – Our Inclusive Approach
“In a world where people with handicaps are doubly handicapped, you should not be alone but be strong together.”
Dating and Online Dating for People with Disabilities and Illnesses
Inclusion and accessibility for online dating and friendship search are the guiding principles of Consonance (Gleichklang) as a dating platform. At Consonance, we design matchmaking and friendship search so that members with physical or mental illnesses, disabilities, autism, ADHD, or other neurodiverse or neurodivergent characteristics have the same chances of success as all other members:
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Effective Online Dating with Disability, Limitation, or Handicap
We achieve effective online dating for people with disabilities through our matching principle of acceptance:
- Members can indicate whether they have a disability, physical or mental illness, autism, HIV infection, or sexual dysfunction that they would like to be taken into account in matchmaking or friendship matching. Members decide for themselves whether this is important to them.
- We also ask all members in online dating and friendship search whether they are willing to get to know a person with such a condition.
- The result is that members who value acceptance for their disability or illness are suggested other members who actually have this acceptance. In this way, we can significantly facilitate online dating and friendship search for members with disabilities, illnesses, mental health issues, or autism.
At the same time, through articles in our Psychology Blog, we also encourage our members to reflect on reservations and develop more openness toward relationships with people with disabilities and illnesses.
An important difference between online dating for people with disabilities at Consonance (Gleichklang) and a dating app for disabled people lies in inclusion:
- While dating apps for disabled people almost exclusively match disabled people with other disabled people, according to our acceptance principle, mutually accepting and compatible people are suggested, regardless of whether they have a disability or illness or not.
Online Dating with Disabilities and Handicaps
People with disabilities who are looking for a partner often face particular challenges: How will others react? Should I disclose my disability in my profile from the start? If not, when should I disclose it? How do I deal with possible rejection? What can I do so that I am not reduced to my disability or handicap?
These challenges increase when disabilities limit mobility or when one is dependent on a wheelchair.
Recently, based on suggestions from members, Consonance (Gleichklang) has also started specifically surveying the wheelchair situation to ensure sufficient acceptance among suggested individuals.
With the help of acceptance-based matchmaking, we counter these problems at Consonance and can thus significantly facilitate online dating for people with disabilities. By ensuring acceptance, a more relaxed and serene online dating and friendship search becomes possible. Rejections are reduced, and the whole person is the focus.
Online Dating on the Autism Spectrum
Only recently, we introduced the option to specify one’s own autism (autism spectrum) to receive suggestions from people who would also like to enter into a relationship with a person with autism if everything fits well. We introduced this autism criterion for our matchmaking at the repeated request of members with autism, who reported that they could approach their relationship search more openly this way. We use the term autism spectrum, and this includes all autistics who want to search for relationships through us, including those who continue to use the term Asperger’s for themselves.
Since then, we have found that this option is very well received by autistic members and significantly facilitates online dating for autistics. At the same time, we find that there is a significant number of members who can well imagine a relationship with members with Asperger’s syndrome or other forms of autism.
Furthermore, members who suffer from sexual dysfunctions (erectile dysfunction, orgasmic disorder, sexual aversion, pain during sexuality, etc.) can also name these. In this way, they can specifically search for people who have understanding for this and do not let a relationship fail because of it. Thus, a satisfying sexuality can be built even with existing sexual dysfunctions.
Online Dating with ADHD
Consonance (Gleichklang) also specifically supports online dating with ADHD. Singles with ADHD also have greater difficulties in building and maintaining partnership relationships. Psychological studies and also our own Consonance survey show that partner selection plays a crucial role here.
For people with ADHD, it is important to meet other people in their online dating who are characterized by patience, acceptance, and tolerance toward their ADHD. Such partners can also have ADHD themselves but do not have to.
Understanding for ADHD is the decisive factor that can enable a happy and stable partnership. Accordingly, we apply the same acceptance criterion in our matchmaking for ADHD individuals that we also use for disabilities, illnesses, or autism. This enables our members with ADHD to have high prospects in their online dating, as well as in their friendship search.
Online Dating with Physical Illnesses
For people with chronic or severe physical illnesses, the same challenges apply in their online dating and friendship search as for people with disabilities. Here too, rejection is feared, and people worry about being reduced to their illness.
For physical illnesses such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes, rheumatism, Crohn’s disease, or multiple sclerosis, those affected can indicate that acceptance in matchmaking is important to them. Acceptance of an HIV infection is another criterion at Consonance (Gleichklang), which is experienced by our members with HIV infection as relieving and helpful for their online dating. Likewise, we ask all members whether they would also be interested in building a partnership or friendship with a person with the corresponding illnesses. In this way, we can also reduce rejections in chronic illnesses and HIV infections and improve the chances of success in online dating.
Online Dating with Mental Illnesses
People with mental illnesses or psychological problems often find online dating and friendship search even more difficult than people with physical illnesses. Some lack drive, others suffer from anxieties, causing them to withdraw socially. Also, understanding for mental illnesses is often lower than for physical illnesses.
With the acceptance principle, we can also enable effective matchmaking and friendship search for people with mental illnesses such as anxieties (panic disorder, social phobia), depression, eating disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorders, personality disorders, or psychosis, and improve the social networking of these members.
Online Dating with Sexual Dysfunctions
Almost one in five adults suffers at some point from sexual dysfunctions, such as impotence, erectile dysfunction, delayed or premature orgasm, cramping during sexual intercourse (e.g., vaginismus), or other pain during sexuality (e.g., dyspareunia). Such sexual dysfunctions often — and actually unjustifiably — go hand in hand with shame and anxiety and thus hinder online dating, as well as the search for friendships that may include eroticism. In reality, such sexual dysfunctions do not pose a real obstacle to a positively experienced sexuality or a partnership relationship if they are dealt with openly.
People with sexual dysfunctions do not need to fear online dating at Consonance (Gleichklang) but can find suitable other members through our acceptance principle who do not see sexual dysfunction as an obstacle to a partnership relationship.
Effects of the Acceptance Principle in Online Dating
We make friendship search and online dating with disabilities, physical illnesses, mental illnesses, sexual dysfunctions, or autism/Asperger’s syndrome relaxed and effective through the provision of the acceptance principle. Because disabled or ill members can gain increased security at Consonance that they will not be rejected solely because of their disability or illness by other members shown to them.
By entering all these search criteria, members with disabilities, illnesses, or impairments can ensure that only members with acceptance for disabilities or illnesses are suggested to them. This reduces the fear of rejection in online dating and increases the effectiveness of online dating and friendship search.
Members can decide for themselves whether to use the acceptance principle or to align the matchmaking to all members without considering their disability, illness, or impairment in order to enter into unfiltered contact and possibly enable new perspectives in this direct contact. At Consonance (Gleichklang), those affected decide this themselves.
Our evaluations show that we actually succeed in effectively supporting the online dating and friendship search of members with disabilities, illnesses, or impairments. Members with disabilities and illnesses successfully complete their online dating or friendship search at Consonance just as often as members without illnesses or disabilities.
Finding a Partner and Finding Friends with a Disability
With the help of our psychological matching algorithm and the acceptance principle, we bring the online dating and friendship search of our members with disabilities, handicaps, mental or physical illnesses, and neurodiversity to success at Consonance (Gleichklang):
See for yourself and join now: ➨ CLICK HERE TO REGISTER!
