The Ultimate Guide to Sex and Disability by Miriam Kaufman Page B

a relationship can help us avoid the topic. This isn't great for any sexual relationship, but it really doesn't work if communication is a requirement of having sex. If we need to tell a partner about positions, or if we require assistance undressing, we must communicate. Not doing so means not having sex with others at all, having unsafe sex with other people, or having lousy sex with someone.

    When I'm having a date with my partner and my attendant isn't here it's always like, "I need this, I need that." Sometimes I feel really demanding, so then maybe I'm kind of shy about saying, "I need you to touch me, I need to touch you."
    One way we often let our sexuality get muddled with other aspects of our lives is when we confuse daily needs with sexual needs and desires. Many people who are in relationships, and whose partners help them with some aspect of care, talk about how difficult it is to be sexual with someone who just tied your shoe laces, or wiped food off your face. Why is it supposed to be sexy to watch a Hollywood movie where a woman is wiping cream off a man's face and yet it's the opposite of sexy when our partner removes crumbs from our beard because we can't? Is it about power? Freedom? Control? Maybe it's only sexy when unrealis-tically good-looking people do it. Maybe it's about our inability to be in more than one role at one time ("don't try to flirt with me now, because right now I'm 'taking care of your needs' ").
    When some needs are considered more important than others, a hierarchy can be created in a relationship. There may be an unspoken rule that it's not okay to flirt with your partner while they are doing the dishes or making the bed. The need for both partners to flirt, to be playful, becomes secondary to the daily living stuff. It can also happen that help with dressing, answering the phone, running for a cab, or cooking become the only way one partner can meet the other's needs. We may think that, because we need to ask a partner for help getting dressed, we shouldn't ask them to be more open about what turns them on. Letting our partners off the hook from the responsibility to create an honest sexual relationship because they help with dressing or other things has a negative impact on the relationship. Note the difference between your asking for help with something and wanting to engage in a two-way conversation about what's happening between yourself and your partner.
    / know that there have been times when I've been in a relationship with nondisabled lovers and I've not always been able to talk to them openly about how I'm feeling because they're providing some

    kind of support outside of the sexual relationship. It feels like that relationship gets put into different compartments depending on what is happening at that time. I feel at times that I might be burdening them with having them attend to one more thing. It doesn't feel good when I get into that space because then we both lose out on having an honest discussion, and also I might be feeling horny and then the moment is lost because they're doing something else for me.
    In any relationship there is interdependence. The balance can shift from day to day, but there are always things that each person gets, or needs to get from the other. Too often, in a relationship between someone living with a disability and a nondisabled partner, the disabled person is perceived as being dependent on the other, yet the ways in which the nondisabled person is dependent are seldom acknowledged. Our needs can come to be seen as overwhelming while our partners' demands are hidden or viewed as minimal, or are even addressed elsewhere, outside the relationship.
    Creating Positive Communication
    Good communication has to start with you. We've said this before and we're saying it again because it's so important. In most sex manuals, communication is written about as if it is something that we can isolate from the relationship as a whole. But it is impossible