Forming relationships with members of the opposite sex is hard enough for many fluent people. Just think for a few moments about how difficult it is for people who suffer with the speech impediment known as stuttering!
I continued to stutter right up until I was aged 22 – this is when I learned how to achieve total fluency. For many years I wondered if I would ever meet a girl who would be willing to be my girlfriend. I was very much a negative thinker and I would often dount myself by saying in my mind certain questions such as, why would a girl want to date a person like me? What kind of girl is going to want to date somebody who has a lack of confidence and a stutter?
If I meet a young lady I will then probably have to meet various members of her family as well as her friends and work colleagues. I used to dread meeting new people as they always seemed to ask so many direct questions such as where do you work? I wanted to have a shirt printed with all of the answers to the most popular questions as I would normally stammer under the pressure. To point to the particular answer or to say the number would be just far simpler.
I met my first ever girlfriend when I was eighteen, what a stud! I have to say she was superb and did not seem to care that I had a stammer. She was even happy to order my drinks and food for me and was basically a very nice girl. For whatever reason I did not believe that I was good enough for her and constantly worried that she would dump me. As you can see I was a very positive person. How would I cope if she left me? How long would it take me to meet somebody else who would be willing to date somebody with a stammer?
This girl did leave me but I did date her for fourteen months. I did cope despite my reservations and was surprised to find that most girls/women that I met after this did not care that I had a stammer. I still found the whole dating process very difficult especially at the outset.
I am now a web promotion specialist from the UK; I now have a wife and two beautiful children – I am also able to speak free from the fear of stuttering.
