The Dating Game

I've written about diabetes and dating before. When I was first diagnosed with type 1 I was seeing someone, so they got to learn with me as I learned how to give myself injections, check my blood sugar and carb count.  After that relationship ended and I started dating again, I began to strategize how I was going to tell people that I had diabetes.  Now that I am back in the 'dating world' I once again am wondering how I am going to approach the situation.

I am very open about my diabetes (obviously) and if anyone goes googling my name to find out more about me, they're going to find endless pages of "Kayla & Diabetes" from my blogs, to the meme page, as well media outputs. So, 'hiding' my diabetes isn't an option and frankly, I obviously don't want to hide something that is such a huge aspect of my life.

I have talked about dating with the teens I meet with a bit, actually, I learned that it is called 'wheeling' now.  So while we have discussed 'wheeling' it is a bit of a different game from high-school to post university.  You're dealing with a different type of people (hopefully) so you have to assume that the people you may be going on dates with or getting to know have some understanding of diabetes even if they're not sure what type of diabetes you have.

I have found that my approach is to be upfront about my diabetes from the get go because if you think about, if the person can't handle you talking about diabetes or the fact that you're living with diabetes, they're not worth your time. And you move on from there.

I have made my life around diabetes, but that is not what I am all about. It's funny; however, how much make or break qualifications have to do with diabetes such as if you're going to ask if I can eat that every 5 seconds, than no.

Diabetes has made me who I am today and has given me more than half of my best stories, if you're going to date me, you're going to date diabetes too...

Kayla