Andres Rodriguez matched with Ellen Froliklong last Christmas Eve. He uses a wheelchair because of a muscle wasting disease, and she is in treatment after a mental health crisis that has since stabilized.
They ended up talking until 4 a.m.
“He said he was looking for something real, and that he was an open book,” Ms. Froliklong, 33, said. “He asked about my mental health history and I was honest, even though I thought it might scare him off.”
But she said, he was accepting right away. She paused, and added, “I thought he was cute, too.”
The two connected on Dateability, a dating app for people with disabilities and chronic medical conditions. While the app’s reach is modest compared with many conventional dating platforms, its user base has almost doubled since 2025, reaching 65,000 users as of this month, according to the company. Other apps, including SpecialBridge and Dating4Disabled, similarly cater to those with disabilities.
Ms. Froliklong had shied away from conventional dating apps after her illness emerged. She is on disability and said she felt uncomfortable with the strong emphasis on careers. And she feared being seen as “too damaged.” Mr. Rodriguez, who lives with his parents, said he had never had a serious relationship before.
“The appeal of Dateability was knowing, going into it, that everyone else has a disability. They’re not going to judge you,” said Ms. Froliklong, who now travels from her home in Cleveland to Chicago to see Mr. Rodriguez twice a month.
Many users said they were drawn to Dateability after uncomfortable experiences on dates with able-bodied people they met on other apps, or after their hearts were broken by partners who had little patience for their medical problems or let them down during health crises.
“I had people I was messaging on other apps, and the moment I would mention anything about any health issues, they would ghost me,” said Jessica Stewart, 29, of Harrison, N.J., who met her partner on Dateability.
Ms. Stewart has a rare congenital condition that affects her digestive and reproductive systems. She said she never knew what the right time was to tell people about some of the messy — and intimate, even painful — details of her diagnosis. That includes the fact that she cannot bear children, although she wants to be a mother, and that she relies on an ostomy bag attached to her abdomen to collect her bodily waste.
“If I was making out with someone, and he was going for my shirt, I’d have to stop and say, ‘I have to give you an anatomy lesson,’” she said. “It was exhausting.”
Collin LaFon, 28, said that on other apps, he felt he had to compete with other men and was at a disadvantage.
“I feel like when women see somebody with health issues on a dating app, it’s kind of like, ‘Ooh, a red flag, stay away,’” said Mr. LaFon, 28, who has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair. He said he feels many women are looking for a man “who’s going to be a provider, and take care of them.”
Several women said that men they matched with on other apps lost interest when they said they could not bear children. “It’s seen as almost a moral failure,” said Lori Adams, 31, of Van Buren, Arkansas.
The stigma is real, research shows. Data shows individuals with disabilities are less likely to marry than people without disabilities. And in surveys, young adults have indicated they are unwilling to date people with disabilities, especially those with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
When a healthy, able-bodied person marries someone with a disability, he or she is often referred to as a caregiver, and is told, “Oh, you’re such a saint,” said Rhoda Olkin, a psychologist and author who survived polio and relies on a wheelchair for mobility.
“There is no recognition of the worth that the disabled person brings to the relationship,” said Robyn M. Powell, an assistant professor of law at Stetson University in Gulfport, Fla. who has written about the barriers to marriage faced by people with disabilities, and who herself is disabled.
About eight million Americans with disabilities risk losing their eligibility for federal cash benefit programs or seeing steep reductions in benefits if they marry or even cohabitate, according to Ayesha Elaine Lewis, a senior staff attorney with the nonprofit Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund. Marriage can also jeopardize the access of people with disabilities to government health insurance, which provides critical in-home services.
“All of these programs are structured on the assumption that people with disabilities would not be in relationships and not be forming families,” Ms. Powell said. “It comes down to: ‘Do you want love, or do you want to get out of bed?’ People with disabilities have to choose.”
Dateability is the brainchild of Jacqueline Child, 32, who said she has lupus, rheumatoid arthritis and a number of other chronic disabling conditions, and her sister, Alexa Child.
The two came up with the idea during the Covid pandemic, after Jacqueline had several off-putting experiences on conventional dating apps. She said that one date told her it would be selfish of her to have children given her medical conditions, and another said his mother told him his life “would be miserable” if he stayed with her. Alexa described being ghosted by a date after insisting on outdoor dining, which she did to protect immune-compromised people like her sister.
They released Dateability in 2022, with both phone apps and a browser version that is now accessible to people with visual impairments or limited manual dexterity. Users have the option of identifying their health issues on their profiles, either by selecting from a list of disabilities and chronic illnesses or typing something in.
“Disability is much more common than people realize, and varies so much,” Jacqueline Child said. “Someone with depression might identify as disabled or chronically ill, or someone who is diabetic — there are truly so many of us out there.”
Being able to connect with people in a similar boat “gives people a sense of normalcy, Jacqueline Child said.
The app is not meant to marginalize people with disabilities or to imply that they should only date other people with disabilities; able-bodied healthy adults are also free to join, Alexa Child said.
So far, the app has led to at least one wedding — that of Mr. LaFon and his wife, Kaci Lafon, who has an inherited connective tissue disorder. They matched in May 2024 and were engaged by November of that year. Their wedding last September was featured in People magazine.
Right now, the couple live in a basement apartment in Mr. LaFon’s mothers’ home near Birmingham, Ala. But they dream of a home of their own in Atlanta. They want to travel — France and Ireland top the list — and say they would like to have children, though they would need to use a surrogate.
“It might not come in the way that normal people expect it, or in the time frame that normal people expect to do it in, but we can work around anything,” Mr. LaFon said.
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