Sex with paraplegics

Almost anyone who has experienced any degree of paralysis can tell you that friends often share questions about your disability once they feel close enough to ask. And when the braver friends have exhausted their polite questions— Do you feel any pain? Do you enjoy it? But just as we said while discussing back injuries and amputation , paralysis is not the same thing as being sentenced to a sexless life.

After the trailers for Me Before You started airing on TV, some disability rights activists began to speak out in protest. One of the many problems people have pointed out about the film is that the main character Will, who became a quadriplegic after a motorcycle accident, assumes that having a fulfilling sex life is not possible for someone with his type of physical disability. It's a very common misconception, Mitchell Tepper, Ph. But while feeling sexual pleasure again after a spinal cord injury isn't easy, and for some takes years or decades , it is indeed possible for many quadriplegics. Tepper speaks from a place of both clinical and personal experience—he broke his neck over 30 years ago and has since been paralyzed from the neck down though he still has some sensation, and is considered an "incomplete quad". For many people who become paralyzed, the first attempt at sex again is masturbation in the hospital, Tepper says.

Sexual identity is a significant and encompassing aspect of one's personality — sexuality plays an essential role in how we feel about ourselves, how we relate to others, how others relate to us. To be sure, paralysis often impacts people's sexuality, including changes in physical functioning, sensation and response. Self-image can be shaken. Paralysis affects a man's sexuality both physically and psychologically.

The physical act of intercourse is not all that defines your sexuality. When we talk about sexuality, we mean more than what goes on behind your bedroom doors. Sexuality is the intimacy between you and your partner, your preferences, your body image and desires. The definition above is not usually what most people think of when they think of sex. This is especially true when people have experienced a spinal cord injury SCI.