Check out G&STC Director Jesse Kahn speaking with Gabrielle Kassel at GQ about How to Date with Crohn’s Disease

TomOkay, so this came up and I couldn't let it go: Check out G&STC Director Jesse Kahn speaking with Gabrielle Kassel at GQ about How to Date with Crohn’s Disease. What do you make of it?

CarolThe part that bothers me is making dating feel like a medical compliance task. For someone managing flare-ups, the real issue isn't finding tips—it's dealing with partners who don't understand why intimacy suddenly becomes unpredictable. That pressure to perform normalcy while juggling bathroom breaks is where people actually struggle.

TomYou’re framing the problem all wrong here. A partner asking "are we okay" shouldn’t trigger a panic response; it should just be a check-in. Making someone hide their symptoms to avoid awkwardness turns a regular relationship into a surveillance state.

CarolWait, you're saying the partner's concern is the problem? The person living with Crohn's is the one navigating sudden urgency and potential embarrassment, not the partner guessing whether things are safe. Blaming the check-in ignores who actually carries the daily unpredictability.

TomI’m not blaming the worry, I’m pointing out the cost of keeping it secret until it explodes. When you treat every date like a covert operation to dodge the restroom, you burn out faster than anyone wants to admit. The goal is shared management, not one person silently failing while the other guesses.

CarolShared management sounds nice on paper, but it assumes the partner has the time and patience to learn the ins and outs of a chronic condition they don't live with. The burden still falls on the person with Crohn’s to explain their body without feeling like they’re over-sharing or apologizing for existing. It’s exhausting enough to manage the disease; adding the labor of teaching someone else how to love you properly is too much to ask.

TomThat “teaching labor” argument cuts both ways because the partner eventually learns to spot the signs anyway. If Jesse Kahn’s advice doesn’t bridge that gap early on, you’re left with two strangers guessing at each other’s limits. The fix isn’t hiding the disease; it’s building a baseline of trust before the first urgent moment hits.

CarolBuilding trust before the first crisis is easy to say when you haven’t felt your stomach twist during a candlelit dinner. The reality is that the person with Crohn’s often has to decide alone whether to risk revealing the truth, knowing that some partners will recoil instantly. That split-second calculation happens constantly, long before any couple can establish a comfortable rhythm together.

TomYou keep focusing on the worst-case scenario, but that fear of rejection is exactly what keeps people isolated longer than necessary. Jesse Kahn pushes back on that hesitation by emphasizing that vulnerability creates connection, not distance, especially when both parties are willing to navigate the unknown together.

CarolVulnerability works great in theory until you realize most people aren't emotionally ready for a partner's digestive system to become a central plot point. Saying it creates connection ignores that many partners simply lack the bandwidth to process that level of biological intrusion right away. The expectation that everyone will instinctively welcome that openness is just another way to make the patient responsible for the partner's readiness.

TomCalling it biological intrusion misses the point entirely; intimacy always involves getting past someone’s physical messiness. Jesse Kahn’s whole pitch is that dating with Crohn’s means accepting the full package, not curating a sterile version of yourself. You’re setting up a test where nobody passes unless the disease disappears.

CarolFull package is a loaded term because Crohn’s isn’t a personality trait you choose to ignore; it’s a medical event that demands immediate logistical support. Expecting a new partner to prioritize bathroom access over romantic atmosphere shifts the entire dynamic into caretaking mode before there’s even real affection involved. That’s not intimacy, that’s outsourcing emergency planning to someone who hasn’t agreed to be on call yet.

TomYou're framing normalcy as a cure, which isn't actually what managing a chronic illness looks like. Most couples figure out logistics after feelings develop, not before, and expecting a perfect plan kills the spontaneity that makes dating worth it. Just talk to them like a human being, not like a case file.

CarolFiguring out logistics after feelings develops sounds idealistic until you realize the "spontaneity" often ends with a cancelled date and mutual embarrassment. Jesse Kahn talks about navigating the unknown, but he skips the part where one person is stuck doing all the mental math while the other wonders why things got complicated. You can't build a relationship on vibes when one partner is actively calculating transit times.

TomThe mental load belongs to whoever has the condition, but pretending the partner should remain oblivious just delays the inevitable awkwardness. Jesse Kahn gets it right when he says these conversations happen as trust builds, not as pre-date interviews. We need to stop asking for perfect timing and start asking for honest ones.

CarolHonest timing still leaves the burden of disclosure squarely on the person with Crohn’s, since the partner hasn’t yet consented to learn anything at all. Jesse Kahn frames this as shared navigation, but the first mile is walked solo by the one hiding symptoms from their own body. Real intimacy starts when neither side has to manage the other’s shame.

TomYou’re treating shame as if it lives in the diagnosis rather than in the silence, which flips the actual problem upside down. If we never settle whether the first disclosure is a burden or a bridge, every couple with Crohn’s stays stuck guessing where they stand.