Dating with a chronic illness feels like dragging a plus-one along

• When I got a lupus diagnosis, my husband said it felt like there was a third wheel in our marriage.
• Six months after my divorce, I started dating again. I was worried about what people would think.

"Being married to you is like being in a relationship with three people," my now ex-husband once told me. "There's you, me, and your chronic illness."

I never felt more understood by him than I did in that moment. I appreciated that he didn't conflate my illness with my personality.

I'd been diagnosed with lupus at 22. Two years into my marriage and four years after my diagnosis, I still struggled with bizarre and unpredictable symptoms. My chronic fatigue made it impossible to keep up with my peers. The brain fog I sometimes experienced meant I'd forget names or even entire conversations. I started carrying plastic bags in my purse in case I randomly vomited.

Having a severe chronic illness with symptoms I couldn't control felt embarrassing, like going to a nice restaurant with a badly behaved family member and getting stares from the other diners. But I could always trust my husband to see through the haze of illness to the person I really was. He was someone I could depend on. Until he wasn't.

A flare-up left me unable to walk or talk

At 27, I stood up and forgot how to walk. A severe brain flare, called lupus cerebritis, obliterated my ability to understand time, my short-term and long-term memory, and my ability to think like an adult.

I spent the next six months bedridden and the next year and a half relearning how to walk, speak normally, and function in the world outside my bedroom. But when I finally began feeling and acting like myself again, my husband was no longer the man I remembered.

He now screamed at me in situations we'd once calmly talked through. His sudden bouts of anger meant I constantly tiptoed around his moods. And his infidelity showed me how little he respected me. Even therapy made no impact on his behavior.

During my period of extreme sickness, he saw only my disease; he stopped seeing me at all. After a while I stopped seeing him too. His impulsiveness, explosive temper, and selfishness had eclipsed the man I'd once fallen in love with.

Dating again was intimidating

I set up a profile on a dating app six months after my divorce. I second-guessed myself as I swiped through pictures and read profiles. On dates or while messaging new people, I alternatively hid my illness or overshared too soon.

I didn't want potential partners to see only my disease, but I also didn't want them to be blindsided by it when I inevitably got sicker. Having a serious illness seemed like a huge liability for another person to take on. I again felt like that woman cowering next to the obnoxious person at the restaurant table, hoping everyone else will just look away.

Surprisingly, the vast majority of men I met were respectful. I met single dads navigating difficult custody arrangements. I met men who'd been abused by the women they'd dated and were understandably skittish about reentering the dating world. Men who talked unabashedly about their enthusiasm for gaming or for hiking, or even for growing mushrooms. Men who were devoted to a religion that wasn't mine.

I slowly realized I wasn't the only one bringing an awkward plus-one to a relationship. Everyone in a relationship is dating not just their partner but all their partner's quirks and issues — their family issues, their social anxiety, their fear of abandonment, even their extreme Lego obsession.

Eight years after my divorce, I've stopped feeling embarrassed about my disease while meeting new people, and I no longer believe it makes me less fit to be in a relationship. If every person has that one thing they've been made to feel ashamed of, perhaps none of us should be ashamed at all. While my disease has taken a lot from me, it's also left me stronger, wiser, and more resilient than I would've been otherwise, and the right man will see that part of me.

In the meantime, I'm looking for someone who's kind, intelligent, and curious — but also someone who has a plus-one I can embrace and who's understanding of mine.