Disability Horizons reviewer Zec Richardson wrote candidly about his sex life as a married disabled man, prompted by noticing how often people search phrases like “disability and sex drive” online — a pattern suggesting either an assumption that disabled people don’t want sex, or disabled people themselves genuinely unsure whether they still can.

Zec wasn’t always disabled: he was diagnosed with myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME/chronic fatigue syndrome) in 1997, and years of worsening pain, multiple knee surgeries, and shoulder and wrist damage from crutches eventually put him in a wheelchair. His first fear, before he even worried about walking, was that his sex life was over. Decades later, married to his wife Donna since 1995 with two daughters and four grandchildren between them, he says the opposite happened — their sex life today is better than it ever was.

His point is straightforward: arousal doesn’t check a diagnosis first. The same oxytocin and endorphins fire regardless of disability; what changes is how you act on it. Some of his worst pain and fatigue days arrive at exactly the moment his body signals arousal anyway — and his wife, reading the signs, will sometimes talk him out of it, correctly pointing out he’s already in enough pain. He’s candid that he doesn’t care: a multi-day flare-up is, to him, a worthwhile trade for having had sex at all.

Adjusting meant giving up entire positions — doggy style and missionary both became impossible with his knee and hip issues, and thrusting itself isn’t always physically available to him. On better days (pain around a 3 out of 10, fatigue manageable), penetrative sex is still very much on the table, typically with his wife on top, him as the big spoon, or a side-lying position they’ve worked out together over 31 years as a couple. On harder days, they lean entirely on sex toys and aids for foreplay-to-orgasm rather than attempting penetrative sex at all — toys Zec now reviews on his own website. He’s frank that he was initially embarrassed by the idea of a toy designed for men, but found one that reliably works when his body can’t manage intercourse unassisted. He specifically credits devices like Hot Octopuss’s Pulse (and its partner-inclusive Pulse Duo variant) for making orgasm possible even with erectile dysfunction from spinal cord-type injuries, and points to adaptive positioning aids — foam wedges up to larger pieces of furniture, some built to hold a toy hands-free — as underused but genuinely useful equipment.

His closing argument is simple: sexual desire is a basic, universal drive, and disability doesn’t suspend it. Where there’s a will, in his words, there’s a way — and there’s no reason to be ashamed of needing to find it.

Based on an article by Zec Richardson for Disability Horizons, February 2021.