What advice do you offer about sex and dating after a spinal cord injury? - Sigmund Hough, PhD

The question of sex, sexuality, dating—sometimes for a lot of people, dating is hard to start with, and it speaks to how you feel about yourself but also opportunities, access. So we talk your readiness in terms of what you want, also what your knowledge is, and then whatever knowledge you had and experience you had. You also need to know where things are at in terms of function, but function isn’t necessarily functioning that’s taken away, so you also want to talk about function that you can bring back. And through all of this, we always spend time talking about bringing back, not just what we lost, what we’ve lost and get back. One of the things, in terms of dating, is to go out there and participate. And one of the things we’ve learned about is that you can’t live if you don’t participate. If you don’t give a person a chance to say “yes” because you’re always afraid that they’re going to say “no,” you don’t hear the “yes.” That’s a guarantee.