Dating with PCS?
 

I'm about 16 months out from my car accident. My physical injuries from the accident are healed up, but I have ongoing PCS, and for the last 4months or so, have had a bit of a downturn. My physiatrist and ND suspect endocrine issues, but my endo's booked til January. I'm still working full time, and for the most part I function pretty OK. Biggest problems are executive function issues, fatigue, and sleep issues. Going without sleep for awhile or lots of stress affects my mood pretty badly, but I mostly try to keep positive.
At the time of my accident, I was involved with someone in a long-distance relationship. I had thought it was serious, but it was pretty obvious that even after I described things going on with me, he didn't really understand how much the TBI was affecting me. Eventually, we broke up. His lack of compassion and concern played a big part. We had originally talked about it being a long-term thing, but obviously didn't manage to stay together through this, even at a distance. It makes me very leery of trying to date again.
Has anyone else started dating after their concussion/ TBI? If so, when do you bring it up? How have people reacted? I don't want to be a burden. I'm not looking for someone to take care of me. I guess I'm afraid of general pre-conceived ideas about people with TBIs.

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Almavera,

I am not in the situation to date someone, but I think it will not be easy to find a partner who understands.
It also depends on how you are feeling and if you are limited in things you can do, like sports, party, traveling and so on.

I an separated from my husband since a few weeks, but I cannot imagine to do all that stuff, that a healthy person can do.

I wish you all the best in finding an understanding partner!

Anja

I stopped seeing the girl I had been dating for about a month after my TBI in April. In my case however the biggest symptom is just complete emotional detachment where I can't make genuine eye contact at all. This sounds worse for dating than some of the other PCS symptoms.

I would say go for it! There's definitely enough awesome people in the world where you could luck out with someone patient enough to understand your symptoms and still see you for you.

Best of luck :)

From my experience I would say it's difficult (almost too difficult to be worth one's attention), but still possible. I find that people my age— not just in a romantic context, but even in the context of friendships— have some sort of an inertia or aversion to those struggling with their health, for reasons not hard to surmise. Also there are the issues of our brains, and I have noticed that the technological/social habits of the society are most often counter to what someone with brain injury can work with.

For instance, even some of my oldest friends don't want to come around because it would mean, for them, having to sit with me in the quiet, no TV, no exciting music, maybe not even conversation for lengths of time. I have found that this is very hard for a lot of people my age— and many older people also— to do, at least in the current social climate.

That said, I did meet a girl some months after my injury who had an auto-immune disease, and so she was very sensitive and accommodative to my situation, and we had a very nice time together. But similar to what herminator said, I found myself feeling quite emotionally detached (not to mention bedridden a lot of the time), and she just the opposite— so it ultimately petered out before developing into anything long-lasting. Despite this, the experience gave me hope that there are people who are especially sensitive and receptive to those of us healing from injury or illness, they just might not be the ones out on the town socializing, and so they would be a rare sort to run into…

I imagine the people I'd get along with best at this point leave their houses about as often as I do.