After two disasters, third time's a charm!

Meet another great people named Danny Sloan (43) that wants to share his experience about online dating. At age 27, my disability introduced me to the world of computers. I had all this free time and got immersed in chat rooms. One attraction was that it was a safe way to socialize, I could enter a chat room, and nobody would know I had a condition.

I soon realized that not everybody was who they said they were. There was manipulation and toying with hopes. One woman was passing herself off as actress Katie Holmes, she turned out to be a 52-year-old cake decorator from the UK.

I've never lied; and although I didn't always disclosure I had a disability right away, I would when it was necessary, usually early on. About 10 years ago, and four years post injury, I discovered some disabled dating websites. I also met people through Yahoo disability support groups and found out what devotees are. I wavered between dating able-bodied people and dating someone with a disability.

My first trip to meet someone I met online was an absolute disaster. She was a California girl I met on a US-based disabled dating site. As my visit progressed, it became increasingly uncomfortable. I think we had gotten too close before we met, and since the expectation were high, it all fell apart.

The second trip, to Englad, was just as bad. This girl was intriguing, yet somewhat mysterious. When I arrived, I realized why, she hadn't disclosed she had a form of spinal collapse and her life expectancy was only about 40 years. If I had known about it, I might have accepted it. But being surprised with it? I discovered soon after that her life was actually quite chaotic. The first night we went out, her sisters got into a bar brawl, with a prostitute. Again, I moved on.

There's not a lot of traffic on disability online dating sites. You can make a profile and let it sit there, checking in once in a while. Because your condition is out in the open, you don't have to worry about when and how to reveal it (often, an non-disabled dating sites, when my condition got disclosed, and if things were going well, you had to mention it or else you were leading people on, I would get shot down. It hurt.)

I met my wife on a Russian disabled dating website. I was on three sites; the other two were in UK and the US (the disabled community is so much smaller, so you have to open that net wide). She approached me. When I checked her out, she didn't appear to have a disability. But I could tell that her photo wasn't professional, which can be a giveaway for dating cheats. I got the feeling that she wasn't out to deceive me and we immediately hit it off. It turned out she had alupecia, a protein deficiency causing her hair not to grow properly.

She was from Tunisia, and The Arab Spring had begun there a year earlier. She got tear-gassed; she grew up in a police state. I love politics and history, so we had lots to talk about.

Eventually, I went over and met her in person. She turned out to be shy, beautiful, witty and moralistic. However, she had not dated a lot, and she took a risk in her culture by dating a non-Muslim. She rented an apartment for me and we spent a lot of time together. I stayed for several months, and she came more alive as I got to know her. She wasn't looking for a ticket out, that had been a concern, because I wanted it to be genuine.

We got married in Istanbul four months after meeting. A few months later I came home. My wife worked in Kuwait as she awaited immigration. We were apart a year before we reunited.

I'm not embarrassed to have met my wife online. That said, I think it's so much easier for someone with a disability to meet someone in person, if they decide to date in the able-bodied world. It's easier to explore differences in person. Online, there's too much choice, and it's too rapid. There are just too many people looking for something serious too quickly.