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Blind love: Intimacy with a vision loss

Cartoon of man and woman walking in a park, man has a walking stick

If you have never dated a blind person before, you may be worried about how blindness and sexuality go together. You may not be sure what to do when the time comes to be intimate. Feeling like this is completely normal. You would probably feel the exact same way even if your partner had normal vision. While the best way to go forward is to discuss the subject of intimacy with your blind partner, speaking about sex is just not easy for some people. In order to avoid any unnecessary confusion or relationship problems, here is what you should know before you have sex with a blind person.

Feeling attraction

While people with normal vision usually feel attracted to someone based on their physical appearance, blind people rely on something else entirely. A blind person gets stimulated by the sound of someone’s voice or the way they move, talk or smell. This means that people with visual disabilities need to spend some time with someone to determine whether they find them attractive. The interaction has to be direct (but not necessarily physical) because blind people rely on their instincts and other senses when meeting new people.

When a blind person does find someone attractive, they will want to get to know their potential love interest better through the use of their senses. The way someone smells can be a huge turn-on for blind people, so smelling nice and fresh is very important when dating a blind person. Sound also plays a huge part during the most intimate moments. The electrical charge in your breath and voice is almost visible to a blind person and it can reveal plenty of how you feel. Touch is often the most dominant sense and a direct substitute for sight. Facial features, skin and muscle texture, and hair softness are what blind people convert into visual images and use to form a picture of their partners inside their heads.

Sex feels different

According to people who were not born blind but lost the ability to see at some point in their lives, sex feels extra special now that they cannot see their partner. During sex, a blind person gets to experience their partner’s every feature at once and finally “see” them as a whole. For those with visual impairments, it is not just about physical attraction but about a much deeper sense of intimacy between two people who can truly reveal themselves to one another.

Due to their inability to see, blind people focus more on other aspects of their relationship. From the moment they meet their partners, whether through a dating site for the blind or in person, people with visual disabilities work harder to get to know the real person instead of just paying attention to physical attributes. This is why a relationship with a blind person revolves more about exploring intimacy and learning how to be more attentive and aware of each other’s needs.

It is a common misconception that blind people do not experience sexual attraction because of their inability to see, but this could not be further from the truth. In reality, blind people have happy and successful sexual relationships just like everyone else.

500,000 Canadians are blind or
partially sighted.
Source: CNIB

Let your guard down

Being intimate with a blind person may feel new to you, but if you are open about your fears and honest about your expectations, there is really nothing to be concerned about. Once you let your guard down and realize that intimacy is more than just being physical for those who are blind, you will experience sex like never before and enjoy it with someone who will cherish you with every fiber of their being.

It’s just coffee

It takes time and effort to play the dating game but try to have some fun along the way:

Style in your profile. Skip the corny lines and add personality with a little humour to your dating bio.

Be real. Honesty is always the best policy and reduces the chance of an unhappy ending.

You guessed wrong. Some of the best stories come from dating disasters and crazy situations. Take heart, you might have to kiss a lot of frogs to meet your prince or princess.

Please don’t rush it. Go for a long walk or coffee date for the first meeting just to see how swoonworthy and compatible this person is in real life.

Three dates and three months. Experts suggests that three dates will give you a good feel for the person and three months is just about enough time to figure out whether this relationship has good long-term potential.

Reprinted from disableddating.com

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