The Next Time Around
Dating can be daunting for survivors, but as many learn, intimacy is not impossible.

By Paul J. Weber

“Who wants to date a cancer patient?!” is the headline that invites browsing bachelors to the homepage of CAsurvivor—known offline as Wendy Dixon of Portland, Oregon–whose profile teaser returns with 499 others after the key word search “cancer” on Internet romance broker Match.com.

Dixon, 26, is pretty, athletic, sings loudly while driving and is a sucker for pancakes made from scratch. She also has an inoperable brain tumor she fears will best her within the next 10 years. For now, it’s simply besting her efforts to land a stable relationship. After all, when Dixon first disguised herself on Match.com as CAsurvivor, her profile didn’t include a peep about cancer and she received about a dozen responses a week.

Now she gets one. Maybe.

“I hear a lot of, ‘It doesn’t matter if you have cancer—people will love you just the same,’” says Dixon, who founded and operates a small nonprofit cancer resource center in her hometown. “Truth be told, it shouldn’t matter that I have cancer. But it does matter. And whoever says otherwise has never been in these shoes.”

Early results from an ongoing study of survivors by the American Cancer Society (ACS) reveal that nearly 75 percent of survivors are either married or in a committed relationship, leaving about one-fourth divorced, widowed or single. And with 10 million estimated survivors, 25 percent translates into two and a half million who might be in the market for love.

Marilyn Lesher, a 49-year-old survivor from Kentucky, is among them. Like many who wear their survivorship on their sleeve, Lesher hardly tiptoes around the fact she overcame breast cancer. And unlike Dixon, she doesn’t have the problem of men using her medical history as a screening criteria—although once, the fact that she was a breast cancer survivor did stall a relationship for a different reason. “I got into correspondence with someone whose wife died of breast cancer,” Lesher says. “That relationship ended quickly, because it was clear he wasn’t past it yet.”

For a number of reasons, finding a partner and developing a relationship can be a challenge for survivors. Beating cancer may be empowering and telling the tale inspiring, but that confidence is oft-overridden by insecurity when it comes to dating. Because once the word cancer is put on the table, some survivors fear their crushes won’t be willing to get more intimate than a handshake or a hug.

The list of doubts can be as long as the worries survivors cogitated when first diagnosed: Who would want to gamble on someone with a risk of recurrence? How attractive is this bald head from chemo or these scars from surgery? And how do I even broach the subject of cancer without scaring them away?

“Here I was, 24 years old and going through menopause, having hot flashes with my mom,” says Jillian Koluder of Cleveland, who entered menopause early after being treated for synovial cell sarcoma. “It’s not your normal topic with a boyfriend.”

Koluder’s promising relationship that began two months before her diagnosis ended, she says, because her partner couldn’t deal with her disease. As for Dixon, she invested four years with a man who promised a wedding ring and children only to watch him drift away as her new outlook on life clashed with his need to return things to normal.

Because rejection is a possibility, most survivors agree honesty up front is a good idea, which is why many spill their cancer experience on first dates. But the nation’s best-selling relationship author plainly chalks that up as an error.

John Gray, PhD, whose book Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus has sold 30 million copies, equates dating to a job interview—putting forth your best foot. With the goal of “positive dating experiences” in mind, Dr. Gray encourages survivors to bare their personalities but not their medical histories in the infant stages of dating. That way, when the subject of cancer later surfaces, the other person can weigh that revelation against many other qualities and not make the stay-or-stray decision based on one, albeit important, disclosure.

“It’s not a betrayal to reveal to someone you’re a cancer survivor,” Dr. Gray says. “These are personal issues. These are not things you should be saying on your first or second date. Don’t sabotage yourself by thinking you’re damaged goods and putting information out there inappropriately, which would be in the beginning of a relationship. The experience of being a cancer survivor is a very personal experience.”

It’s an approach not everyone shares. Ann Partridge, MD, a medical oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, counsels her patients on a case-by-case basis. She mostly works with breast cancer survivors, who often deal with relationship issues and sexual dysfunction. Treatments are available to help women once they get a partner, but in terms of finding that partner, Dr. Partridge says there’s no one-size-fits-all advice.

“My personal feeling is, ‘Here I am, take me or leave me,’ but that’s easy for me to say. And with the take-me-as-I-am approach, unfortunately, someone might not be in a place where they’re going to take me.

“My main point of advice is that you have to be in it to win it,” Dr. Partridge continues. “The first step is getting out there. Yes, it makes you more vulnerable than the average person, but you also may be stronger because you’ve had cancer and see life a little clearer.”

Jason Midkiff, a high school basketball coach in Oklahoma, was single when he was diagnosed with testicular cancer at 26. His biggest concern after treatment was his ability to father children. He ended up marrying a friend’s daughter who visited him in the hospital during chemotherapy. Midkiff says having his wife see him in such a state before they began dating eliminated any insecurities. “When they’ve seen you bald and throwing up, you know there’s a special reason why they keep coming back.”

On the Cancer Survivors Network (www.acscsn.org), an Internet hub of chat rooms and message boards launched by the ACS, threads about how to deal with dating have become so prevalent that it’s caught the attention of ACS staff. With more than 40,000 registered members, CSN is now looking at ways to expand its relationship resources. And one resource many members have expressed interest in is a Match.com-style area for relationship-seeking survivors.

“We’re noticing that there seems to be a growing number, a visible group of people that come on the site that seem to be finding other people to date,” says Greta Greer, director of survivorship for the ACS.

But as for CSN launching a dating area, Greer says, “I don’t think we’re quite ready to go there,” even though she does acknowledge the need seems to exist.

Some cancer centers are even tinkering with the idea of launching their own programs to help single survivors meet, or at the very least, talk about the issues that surface when it comes to dating after treatment. At Benedictine Hospital in Kingston, New York, director of oncology support Barbara Sarah is taking the pulse of women in the hospital’s many support groups to see how many might be interested in a group catering to single survivors.

Of course, when a romance blooms between two survivors, the commonality of cancer is what sometimes sparks—and often accelerates—a relationship. That’s what happened to Koluder, who is now engaged to Hodgkin’s disease survivor Dan Sprenger.

The two met after a mutual friend suggested Koluder speak to Sprenger before chemotherapy so she would know what to expect. Months of phone calls eventually baited the two to try a date at a Cleveland comedy club, where Koluder wore a bandana (“It was cool to get a date even though I was wearing that”) to hide her hair loss and felt an instant bond with Sprenger. It wasn’t long before the girl who once spent an entire day crying on the couch, bemoaning to her mother about her undesirability, had found the person who overlooked everything she was insecure about.

“In a lot of relationships, my treatment would be a lot of baggage to deal with,” Koluder says. “But he’s been there before and accepts all of it.”

Still, even though Koluder is smitten with Sprenger, she admittedly worries about recurrence and putting her fiancé through the worst-case scenario.

“That’s my biggest fear. I don’t want him to go through that, watching me get sick and not make it. He said he’s going to marry me even if I have two months to live, but it’s still a hard situation.”

But not so, says Sprenger.

“I told my family I’m going to marry that girl,” says Sprenger, who was diagnosed in 1999. “If they came back and said she had a year to live, I’m still going to marry her.”

It’s the happy ending Dixon hopes will happen to her too. Of course, her candid Match.com profile makes it clear she doesn’t agree with Dr. Gray’s dating philosophy. “I’m really open about it,” she says. “And if they have a problem and are scared off, I don’t want to hear from them anyway.”

Instead, she wants to hear from someone who will support her. Someone who can laugh at her not-so-subtle headline on Match.com. Someone who, as she so simply put in her profile, wants to date a cancer patient.