How to Date Someone With Emotional Impairment

Someone classified as emotionally impaired has trouble making friends and interacting socially with others. They may have been placed in special education as a child and may have had anxiety or temper problems. While it may not seem likely that you’ll find yourself dating someone with emotional impairment (EI), these individuals are often very creative, intelligent and loyal to the people they become close with. If you do find yourself dating someone with EI, there are some things you need to expect.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

1. Understand that someone with emotional impairment had a very different educational experience that you did. Whether this person was put in special education or mainstreamed into normal classrooms, there’s a very good chance the person you’re dating did not like school. While someone with emotional impairment has no cognitive disabilities, school would have been difficult from a purely social perspective. This person may avoid college and dismiss traditional learning environments as “not for him.” People with emotional impairment prefer independent learning to group learning.

2. When you date someone with emotional impairment, it’s important to not introduce her to too many people at one time. While a family dinner with the parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents may seem like a good way for your whole family to meet her at the same time, she’s likely to be incredibly uncomfortable in that kind of environment. If you arrange social activities for you and your date, limit the number of new faces in the room.

3. Compromise on the kind of dates you go on. He’s likely to prefer staying home over spending time in a crowded bar.

4. When you date someone with emotional impairment, your arguments will be very different than arguments with anyone else. People with emotional impairment often develop coping strategies so they don’t lash out at others. If your date needs to take a walk in the middle of a fight, respect that he knows the best way to handle his emotions.

5. Because people with emotional impairment have trouble making new friends and socializing normally, they may have ideas that are different than yours about what “friendship” and “love” mean. It may take a little longer for someone with EI to acknowledge you as a valuable part of her life, but when it happens, you know it’s genuine.

Tips & Warnings

• There are four different sub-classifications of emotional impairment. When you date someone with EI, ask specifically what kind of emotional impairment he has so you can better understand where he’s coming from.
• Because people with EI are slow to make friends, do not belittle your sweetheart’s established friendships. The people in her life that she feels closest to are likely to be people she sticks with for a very long time.

[momksmith]

on 4/13/2008 This was a very good article. I know poeple who are EI but were not "special Ed." This article described exactley what I was looking for when I saw this article.

[MichaelJMotta]

on 2/27/2008 Very good topic and article! I have some background in basic abnormal psychology, but not so much EI. EI seems to speak a different language, more of a special education language and maybe an autism related language than does the traditional categorization into affective disorders, personality disorders, anxiety disorders, dissociative disorders, etc. So I'm curious as to how the traditional disorders overlap (or don't overlap) with EI. Any thoughts on that?