By Jaxx Davis
Last August, my partner and I celebrated the 15-year anniversary of our first date together. We met in 2010 on a site called OkCupid. She had this gorgeous personality and mind that just bled off her profile page. It pulled me in, and we hit it off instantly.
Our relationship has always been queer. I am not talking just about the rainbow spectrum of our identities, although we are both trans and definitely not straight. I am talking queer as in not being able to or wanting to fit into society’s expectations of us or of our relationship, whether that involves how we interact, the timeline of our relationship (like when we marry), or if we want to have children. We guide our relationship by our wants and what is best for us. Having a relationship built on needs and wants, and not on demands, has been very healing and it seeps into everything about our relationship.
Society has clear assumptions about how relationships look and how things like intimacy, communication, and understanding have to work—even though we don’t all have the same needs. These assumptions can be very harmful, especially when prejudices are at their root. Although ideas around relationships are slowly changing, societal expectations are hard to shake. Relationships that break those barriers are still seen as not normal, and participants in those relationships need to be willing to be okay with it. We definitely were, but I have to admit it was a process.
My partner and I had to unlearn a lot of biases and learn how to prioritize each other. A lot of that came down to consistent and ongoing communication, especially about the things we wanted and needed in a relationship. My partner and I are different people and we have different needs. She needs a lot more alone time than I do, while I crave more together time, in part because I am bedbound with severe ME and spend little time overall connecting to people outside of online spaces. We communicate and adjust accordingly to whoever’s needs take precedence at the moment. I get time together and she gets ample alone time. That type of consideration for each other is actually a form of intimacy. Intimacy is not just physical; it is in the little things. They are acts of love.
One of the most important forms of intimacy in our relationship is access intimacy. Access intimacy is a term first coined by Mia Mingus, a queer disabled woman of color. Access intimacy is not just about disability—it’s connected to queerness as well.Access or a lack thereof is also about who fits into society and who does not. It is one of those terms that shows how closely interwoven disability and queer politics are.
For us, access intimacy is how we love. From the beginning, my partner was very quick to understand my access needs. She let me set the pace and rest when I needed to. Honestly, she was nicer to me than I was to myself. I’m now more disabled than when we started dating, and she has become my carer. Although I have more pressing needs, we try to make as much space as we can for her access needs as someone who is also disabled. We have ongoing conversations about our access needs because they can change.
Fifteen years into the relationship, we are still going strong. It is because of love for sure—I love my partner to bits—but having a relationship that moved beyond societal expectations and allowed us to do our own thing is a huge part of it. We focus on what we want in our relationship and it works. I have come to realize that I need this, this type of love that she and our relationship offers. If we ever break up (and I hope we never break up) I know I will no longer settle for a relationship without access intimacy, or one that isn’t queer4queer. Those things might not be a requirement for anyone else, but they are for me. It is what works for me. I would need my next partner, whatever their gender might be, to also be queer and to not erase my bi-ness to make me more palatable. I need them too to love me with my disabilities, not despite them. I need to be with someone who sees my whole disabled queer self.
But I want this relationship to be with her. I want her. So I hope this formula will never break for us. I hope her face is the last face that I see when I die. That my last words will be that I love her. This relationship with her has become my home. I will never want anything less.
Jaxx Davis (they/them) is a queer and disabled activist, artist, and writer from the Netherlands. Bedridden with severe ME, they write and create from their bed, creating simple but raw works about their life and the world.