Disablism and relationships

Last night i had a long phone conversation with a friend who has progressive physical and visual impairments and is in a long-term relationship with a non-disabled partner. The last time i had spoken to her, her partner had mysteriously disappeared for a few days and she was really worried about him. Last night, she called me, we talked about other stuff for a while, kind of skirting around the subject, then i kind of stupidly asked, after she said she was having to delay going back to uni because of inability to find a PA, "couldn't X do PA stuff for you?" (yeah, me and my Aspie mouth)... which led to her telling me all about the reasons for the problems between her and her partner, which basically come down to disablism interfering in the relationship...

Basically, the partner's friends and family are putting pressure on him to dump her (if not explicitly, then implicitly) - asking stuff like "what are you doing with her when you could be with an able-bodied woman?" or "do you want to have to look after her all your life?" - and his behaviour is showing her pretty strong evidence that he feels "ashamed" of her, doesn't want to take her out anywhere because of stuff like the hassle of dealing with accessibility issues and other people's assumptions/prejudices, that it sounds like he's internalising into himself (or maybe always had, unexamined... although it's a little hard to believe he didn't examine them after getting into a relationship with a disabled person)...

Then there's the issue of him wanting to do stuff, both sexually and in other contexts, that he can't do with her because of her impairments, and what she said to me that he basically wants "a walking, non-disabled girlfriend"... leading to her feeling that no matter how hard she tries to be the best partner that she can be, she will never be good enough for him (and until recently she was certain that she wanted lifelong commitment, marriage and children with this guy)...

The thing that really fucks with my head is how impotent i feel because i can't do anything about the situation, despite how strongly i feel for her and want her to be happy and for it to be resolved... this seems like one area in which i really can't think of a way to fight against disablism effectively...

It's also got me thinking about whether crip/non-crip relationships can work, or whether disablism will fuck up every one... there are some that seem to be successful, like Wheelchair Dancer's (she says some very relevant stuff in her post to this situation, just unfortunately not anything that offers a solution for when the non-disabled partner thinks differently), Elizabeth McClung's, and Dave Hingsburger's, but i know from my (pre-diagnosis) relationship with a visibly impaired person how strong the effect of social attitudes to disability can be (even in supposedly "liberated" circles)... it's probably stronger when an impairment is visible than when it's invisible, but i know that i would need someone to have a good understanding both of autism and of the social model of disability for me to feel comfortable having a r/ship with them, which in practice probably means limiting myself to crips as potential partner material (I think there may be an analogy with "political lesbianism", a la the previous post, here)...

I think it's probably relevant that all 3 of those examples are r/ships where the disabled partner acquired their impairment after already having been in the relationship for several years, and also that the latter 2 are queer/same-sex r/ships. As i said in the conversation last night, the whole "normative expectations that crips might not be able to live up to" thing is part of why i think queer theory (and related stuff like polyamory and BDSM) is so relevant to disability... queer theory is all about rejecting the normative assumption that a certain kind of partnership, with certain kinds of sex and certain roles and obligations, is the only "valid" sexual relationship or the norm that everyone needs to aim for in their relationships or compare their r/ships to, and being able/allowed to carve out your own niche, to define (consensually) your own relationships as the kind you want, with the roles and responsibilities (sexual and otherwise) being "user-defined", rather than having to conform to a pre-existing template.

Because that pre-existing template is, by default, a heterosexual one, same-sex r/ships (and ones involving trans people, etc) are already outside of it, and thus arguably freer to reach self-definition without the assumption that template-fitting is necessary. IMO, the same is true of disabled people's sexual relationships, because we may not have the ability or the inclination to have "normal" kinds of sex or to fit "normal" gender-based roles - thus we need to create our own roles and relationships, or else we are doomed to "not feel good enough" or to have our relationships infiltrated and undermined by all of the normative, disablist crap... which goes quite well with the slogan i've heard that "all disabled sexuality is queer sexuality" (something touched on in, but actually not the main focus of, Eli Clare's Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness and Liberation, a fucking awesome book which i'm still planning to write several posts on).

Still, despite my feelings of powerlessness to help, my friend said that she actually appreciated talking to me about the situation, because of my ability to talk "logically" about such things... so maybe some of my AS traits are actually useful in friendship situations...

This post is probably a bit incoherent and there are probably things i was intending to add to it. Oh well, it's late, maybe i'll think of them tomorrow...