The Single Ostomate
If you are single, you have a bit more of a challenge. Dating is hard enough when you have little or nothing serious in your past. But now, you have a medical past that has affected your body, mind, and spirit. It can take some grit to overcome your anxieties about being with a new partner with your new body and the new you.
The single ostomate is a stranger to their body, just like a partnered ostomate. The fear of exposing this new body to a new lover is unrelenting, especially when you are getting used to it yourself. If this is you, a single ostomate, keep your chin up. Even though thoughts like these are uppermost in your mind, they don't have to be forever. Take back control of your life. Don't live in fear of your ostomy.
When you do start dating again, and you will, there is no right or wrong time to tell your love interest about your medical history. You have a history, and that doesn't define you. But you don't have to be in a hurry to reveal this part of yourself.
Take time to get to know them first and let them get to know you. Dating has never been easy. Dating with an ostomy is even harder. That said, some partners find that a person who has been through so much and is standing tall and living their life as a survivor is just the kind of partner they want!
If you want to find love, you have to reconcile the new you and appreciate all you have been through and overcome.
Once you love the person you see, others will start to, too. Find a partner who loves the changes in you because they make you feel so much more of a person.
No one else was able to take the journey you took, only you know what it was like, and only you know the pieces of your heart that were touched every time you were handled and prodded by the experts making you well again.
There is a loneliness there though … and a fear. A fear that is very real. It takes a very special person to recognize what you have been through. They may never completely understand it unless they have been through what you have been through.
But someone will get you. They will see you for what you are: a person that has been challenged, overcome, and regained.
As a result, you are even more beautiful. A person who can fight like you have and then stand up to the world and put yourself back out there is the most desirable partner there is.
Respect yourself and demand attention from the kind of partner that can not only handle the strong warrior that you are but who can revel in it. While you may not believe it, there are partners who think that someone who has done all that you have done and who has come out fighting are more desirable than any other person out there. Find someone who is smart, confident, and wise enough to let you shine.
If you are single, you have a bit more of a challenge. Dating is hard enough when you have little or nothing serious in your past. But now, you have a medical past that has affected your body, mind, and spirit. It can take some grit to overcome your anxieties about being with a new partner with your new body and the new you.
The single ostomate is a stranger to their body, just like a partnered ostomate. The fear of exposing this new body to a new lover is unrelenting, especially when you are getting used to it yourself. If this is you, a single ostomate, keep your chin up. Even though thoughts like these are uppermost in your mind, they don't have to be forever. Take back control of your life. Don't live in fear of your ostomy.
When you do start dating again, and you will, there is no right or wrong time to tell your love interest about your medical history. You have a history, and that doesn't define you. But you don't have to be in a hurry to reveal this part of yourself.
Take time to get to know them first and let them get to know you. Dating has never been easy. Dating with an ostomy is even harder. That said, some partners find that a person who has been through so much and is standing tall and living their life as a survivor is just the kind of partner they want!
If you want to find love, you have to reconcile the new you and appreciate all you have been through and overcome.
Once you love the person you see, others will start to, too. Find a partner who loves the changes in you because they make you feel so much more of a person.
No one else was able to take the journey you took, only you know what it was like, and only you know the pieces of your heart that were touched every time you were handled and prodded by the experts making you well again.
There is a loneliness there though … and a fear. A fear that is very real. It takes a very special person to recognize what you have been through. They may never completely understand it unless they have been through what you have been through.
But someone will get you. They will see you for what you are: a person that has been challenged, overcome, and regained.
As a result, you are even more beautiful. A person who can fight like you have and then stand up to the world and put yourself back out there is the most desirable partner there is.
Respect yourself and demand attention from the kind of partner that can not only handle the strong warrior that you are but who can revel in it. While you may not believe it, there are partners who think that someone who has done all that you have done and who has come out fighting are more desirable than any other person out there. Find someone who is smart, confident, and wise enough to let you shine.
