glickchick
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- Aug 3, 2011
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Hi Everyone,
So it's been a couple of months since I became completely deaf. I'm adjusting as well as you'd expect, and I'm slowly but surely learning ASL. Before I lost my hearing, I was active in the dating world, as you'd expect a girl of my age to be. Naturally when I lost my hearing, I stopped dating to attempt to get my life together and adjust to my new circumstances.
While I'm still not totally adjusted, I think I am ready to start pursuing a relationship again. I mean, I see so many of my friends in great relationships, and to be totally honest, I want that too. Before going deaf, meeting/attracting guys was never a problem at all, and (thankfully) it seems like guys are still attracted to me. I want to put myself back out there. Here's the issue - I really believe that communication is the key to relationships, and communication is a major, major challenge for me. As I'm learning ASL, I'm heavily reliant on lip reading (though that's imperfect at best), writing things down, texting, etc. Since going deaf, I don't really use my voice all that much, though I can still speak and do so from time to time. So how do I engage in a relationship if communication is so hard? For those of you who lost hearing later in life like me, how did you know when you were ready to start dating again? How do/did you communicate with your significant other?
Any help/advice/tips would be so greatly appreciated!
-Lauren
So it's been a couple of months since I became completely deaf. I'm adjusting as well as you'd expect, and I'm slowly but surely learning ASL. Before I lost my hearing, I was active in the dating world, as you'd expect a girl of my age to be. Naturally when I lost my hearing, I stopped dating to attempt to get my life together and adjust to my new circumstances.
While I'm still not totally adjusted, I think I am ready to start pursuing a relationship again. I mean, I see so many of my friends in great relationships, and to be totally honest, I want that too. Before going deaf, meeting/attracting guys was never a problem at all, and (thankfully) it seems like guys are still attracted to me. I want to put myself back out there. Here's the issue - I really believe that communication is the key to relationships, and communication is a major, major challenge for me. As I'm learning ASL, I'm heavily reliant on lip reading (though that's imperfect at best), writing things down, texting, etc. Since going deaf, I don't really use my voice all that much, though I can still speak and do so from time to time. So how do I engage in a relationship if communication is so hard? For those of you who lost hearing later in life like me, how did you know when you were ready to start dating again? How do/did you communicate with your significant other?
Any help/advice/tips would be so greatly appreciated!
-Lauren