^ No, I try very hard not to let the health stuff define me! I still have a career, friends, hobbies, exercise, travel a lot, and those are mostly the things I talk about on dates and in general. I 'pass' as completely 'normal', so I guess most of the people I've had dates with are interested in finding someone 'normal'. Sooner or later I have to disclose, though, and I've literally seen people's body language, the way they talk to me etc. completely change right away. Not everyone's, but quite a few people's.
I can't pretend to be issues-free about it though; my ex-husband treated me awfully so I would leave, because he, quote, "doesn't deserve a disabled spouse". But obviously, I don't tell people that right away. Although I do try to be honest with people once I have disclosed, since my health stuff does have a big impact on my life.
The one person who I was sort-of seeing, told about my health problems, and stayed super-interested turned out to be dying of cancer. And I think part of the attraction was that I always knew the right thing to say about his illness and the impacts it was having on his life, because even though my diagnosis isn't fatal (just incurable and progressive) I'd kinda been there. I couldn't be there for him in the way he needed me to, so I didn't get involved sexually, although we're still close friends and I do what I can to help him through it. (And also, he has pretty poor dental hygiene sometimes, which I know is a deal-breaker even for many 'normal' people, but I'm mildly immuno-compromised and have to work to keep oral infections under control pretty much all the time, so I just couldn't risk it.)
Re what kind of health problems, I have really diseased, scarred internal organs, including reproductive organs, so any time things are heading in the sexual direction, I end up having to have a talk with people that goes, 'having sex with me isn't like having sex with 'normal' people'. No quick, rough, up-against-the-wall sex for me any more unfortunately; my body needs about an hour of foreplay, usually. And I have allodynia thanks to years of chronic pain, so a lot of things that aren't painful to other people register as pain for me (ironically, got diagnosed with that one while attempting to have sex with someone who's a surgeon, after she checked every mole on my body for skin cancer and told me what size canula would fit in each of my veins... and here I thought 'playing doctor' meant something fun!
). So I have to have super-super-gentle sex basically, even though I'm very dominant and used to leave people covered in scratches and bites and stuff all the time. (Ah, the good old days.) I have figured out how to still be 'me' in bed even when I'm not very mobile and basically stuck lying on my back the whole time (grab hair, move 'em round, growl dirty-talk 'orders' etc.) but finding anyone who doesn't see someone with my degree of health issues as asexual hasn't been easy.
In the old days, pre- getting really sick, if people were talking about something sexual and I commented about it, they'd be all "details, details" and want to hear exactly how I figured that out. These days, I think they just figure I read it in a magazine or something; it's like the idea that I know sexual stuff through hands-on experience just doesn't even occur to them... which is bizarre since most of the stuff I know about from experience isn't exactly in many magazines!
Don't know if I'm just hanging out with the wrong people, or most 'normal' people are really that anti- getting involved with someone with major health issues, or if there's something more/else I should be doing.
