A paralyzed reporter talks about the challenges of dating in a wheelchair and how he lost the use of his legs in a tragic accident at the age of 19.
ABC News Breakfast South Australian correspondent Charles Brice said when he started using dating apps he faced a dilemma.
“There were definitely moments where I thought, 'Would someone in my situation want to date me?'” he told the ABC Hack Instagram channel.
'I was only a few years post-injury so I probably felt a bit and wasn't ashamed of my situation, but I thought if I made my disability public and showed my wheelchair in the photos on the apps , I probably wouldn't get the success rate that able-bodied people would achieve.
'So I didn't show my wheelchair at first and some people took it very well.
ABC News Breakfast reporter Charles Brice has shared his experiences dating while paralyzed
“There were probably a few times where people said, 'You need to announce that right away.'”
Once he said to a girl who had agreed to meet him for drinks, “Me I was in a motorcycle accident and broke my neck, so I sit more than the average person.”
“Oh, I'm sorry to hear that, but at least you can walk a bit,” she replied.
“And that was kind of an awkward moment where I had to tell her, 'Look, I can't walk at all,'” Brice said.
“She was a soldier, she was great.”
Brice said he has been in a wheelchair for 11 years after a motorcycle accident on a farm in South Australia's Riverland region, where he worked at the age of 19.
“I went for a motorcycle ride with some other guys and, as always, I was only a few miles from home when I had an accident on the motorcycle,” he said.
'I ended up breaking my neck and that left me paralysed, so not quite the direction I expected my life to take.'
Brice, the South Australian correspondent for News Breakfast, has been confined to a wheelchair since a horrific motorcycle accident at the age of 19
In another interview with the Neurosurgical Reseach Foundation in 2022, Brice described the accident in more detail, revealing at the time that he wanted to become a pilot and was in the process of obtaining his driver's license.
“As I came around a little bend in the track, there was a series of successive bumps,” Brice said.
“The front wheel dug into one of those bumps and sent me over the handlebars, head first onto the soft sand.
'As I lay alone on the floor, I realized I couldn't move. I was the only one in the group with a phone. I tried to reach into my pocket to call for help, but I couldn't.
'I could only lift my head a little, I could see my legs were at strange angles, but other than that I didn't have a scratch.
“It took about thirty minutes for someone to find me, but it felt like an eternity lying there, alone, scared, with a million thoughts racing through my head.”
Brice shattered, shattered two vertebrae and completely severed his spinal cord in the motorcycle accident
Brice wrote on Instagram that he was then sedated for three weeks, but when he regained consciousness, he and his family were told that he had shattered two vertebrae in my neck and completely severed his spinal cord.
The devastating news left him 'quite shocked' and it took him some time to 'come to terms with reality'.
“I was 19, I was active, I was fit and strong and stories like this don't happen to me,” he said.
“As a 19-year-old you almost feel like you're invincible.”
Brice also gave his top three dating tips for people with disabilities.
“Be yourself, show your disability and don't shy away from who you are or what your situation is,” he advised
'Don't be afraid of rejection. Everyone gets rejected in life, it's not because of your situation or disability.
“If you're not sure, pretend.”
He also had some advice for able-bodied people dating people with disabilities.
“Have a pretty open mind about the situation,” he said
'Ask questions, what they want, what they don't want.
“When you think about where to take them, try to take the situation into account.”
'People with disabilities can also be loved and can be a lot of fun to be around.'