Myths about disability and relationships, debunked

Myth: disabled people are asexual

Disabled people want romance and intimacy at the same rate as non-disabled people. The asexuality myth isn't a description of disabled lives; it's a description of how able-bodied culture handles disability - by quietly removing it from any picture that involves desire.

Researchers Mimoun and colleagues, writing in 2025, identify the most common societal misperceptions of disabled people as "helpless, incompetent, and intellectually challenged," with a particular tendency to assume asexuality because disabled bodies don't fit the "able-bodied model of beauty and desirability." Notice the framing - it's the model that's narrow, not the people.

The cost of this myth is concrete. It shows up as a parent asking an adult disabled child if they "really" want to date. As a doctor who skips the sexual-health conversation. As a Hinge match who unmatches the second a wheelchair appears in a photo. The asexuality myth doesn't stay a myth - it becomes a wall.

The counter is just as concrete. Disabled writer and activist Ellie Smith, who has Erb's Palsy, puts it directly: "You are worthy, you are wanted and you have EVERY RIGHT IN THE WORLD to date." That's not aspirational language. That's the baseline. Our confidence and self-acceptance guide walks through the inner work that often follows years of being told otherwise.

Myth: disability prevents marriage

Disability does not prevent marriage. US benefits policy sometimes does - and that's a different problem with a different fix. Conflating the two has cost a generation of disabled adults the language to even talk about long-term commitment.

The marriage rate among disabled adults in the US sits at roughly half the national average. It's tempting to read that as a story about desirability. It is not. It is a story about the so-called "marriage penalty" - the loss of Medicaid, SSI, or other supports that often follows a wedding. Many disabled couples we hear from are not unmarried because they lack love; they are unmarried because marrying would cost one partner their healthcare.

What the data actually shows

Strip out the policy distortion, and the picture changes fast:

• Disabled adults form long-term partnerships, raise children, buy homes, and grow old together at rates that look like everyone else's once support structures are stable.
• Adults with developmental disabilities, including Down syndrome, have the legal right to romantic and sexual relationships. Specialized platforms such as Special Bridge exist precisely because the demand has always been there - not because someone invented it.
• Television representation has caught up unevenly. Love on the Spectrum and The Undateables show partnership is normal, even as both shows have been critiqued for sometimes leaning on inspiration framing.

If you want to see the receipts, our success stories page features couples across the disability spectrum - wheelchair users with ambulatory partners, two autistic partners who found each other, deaf couples, chronic illness pairings, little-person love stories, PTSD-recovery partnerships. Marriage isn't the endpoint of every story, and it doesn't have to be. But it's there for those who want it.