Dating and Relationships After Brain Injury

Dating and Relationships: Betty Part Ten

Betty’s relative success in regaining her adulthood is verified by the long term marriage she is a part of. But to go from college girl to rehab to the dating scene is a difficult transition, one fraught with peril.  Alcohol, not knowing who to trust and impulsivity made dating unproductive.  Most of it is too personal to post publicly, even in a forum with some confidentiality.  Her mother and father helped her through it and then almost 20 years after her accident, she met her husband.

Her father was particularly helpful with the long wait:

I’d be so upset because everyone else in my family was married and had children and he would look at me and say just wait, if the time for you is going to come it will come when you least expect it.  So at that point, I was probably 45 or 46 at that point after dating a bunch of knuckleheads, I went out one night with some friends and we were having a good time, we were playing some cards and then everybody was getting ready leave and as they got up to go I was the last one to get my coat and I’m walking out and all of a sudden this young man says, hi, would you like a soda?  I thought wow, because I had been staring at him a little bit.

They started dating and the relationship started well but when Betty started having some difficulty, she decided that he wouldn’t be interested in someone with her problems, so she stopped calling him. Fortunately, her brothers convinced her to give the relationship one more try.

I told them the problems that I had and both of them told me, they said probably on Monday while he’s at work call his apartment and just tell him that you’re sorry for what had happened and that if he’d like to talk that you’d be willing to talk to him.  And well he called me back and we started talking and going out again, we ended up getting married that June, no the following June.

When asked if he had been surprised about some of her challenges after they got married, she explained:

I never realized this until a few years ago.  My mom actually took him aside and gave him an opportunity to say he didn’t, like maybe he did not want to participate, or did not want to go through with the wedding because she told me deficits and problems that I would have and he listened to her, and he told me later he said your mom told me this would be a problem.   And I said, and “You still accepted?” He said: “I love you for who you are, so.”

For Part Eleven, click here.