What It's Like to Date Amid a New Diagnosis

It was as cute a meet-cute as could be. Megan Nicklay, 29 years old at the time, had made it from New York City to Santiago, Chile, where she'd spend the next few weeks completing a summer internship she planned over a year ago. Luck would have it that the man who owned the apartment she was staying at had a son — a son who was flirtatious, handsome, and had blue-green eyes that didn't decide on one color or the other. It was May 2025 and on this particular day, the two spent hours strolling and chatting in the crisp air, finally making their way back to the apartment that brought them together. They sat in the back patio and string lights above watched on as Nicklay's newfound crush inched closer to her. "Can I kiss you?" he asked. Nicklay was gleeful, but as he placed his hand on her neck she flinched. One touch closer and he might have known right then: known that she was wearing a synthetic wig and had been diagnosed with cancer three months prior. "It was all in the span of a few months," Nicklay tells Popsugar. "I first felt a lump on my body in January 2025. I got a biopsy and then I was diagnosed on February 25. I had sarcoma. I started chemo right away, first round in March . . . Two weeks later, all my hair fell out and I started radiation. In April, I had finals. I had my cousin's wedding and was feeling healthy and I thought, 'Perfect, I can go to Chile for a few weeks and do my scans when I get back.'" Nicklay says she spent many weeks in denial after receiving her diagnosis. She was at the tail end of nursing school and attempted to proceed with her life as it had been, as a single woman in her 20s who enjoyed dates, love affairs, crushes. But after chemo, her body was different, and she asked herself, "Is anyone going to love me? Is anyone going to want me?" Stories about illness and romance often portray couples who've already built a life together that's then tested by diagnoses, as seen in "The Notebook" or "Still Alice." But a growing number of narratives, from "Dying for Sex" to "The Big Sick," ask a different question: What happens when illness enters the conversation before love has had time to take shape? For those dating in the early stages of a diagnosis, romance can become a negotiation between disclosure and desire, vulnerability and self-protection, one that plays out before the relationship feels secure. For Nicklay, those questions weren't theoretical, they followed her to Santiago, to the night she kissed her new crush under patio lights, and she relished it: yes, this feeling is still there, yes, it is still possible, yes she knew it, but . . . did he need to know? Over the course of their two month relationship, Nicklay never told him about the diagnosis. To this day, she still hasn't. "There was one moment I did almost say it," Nicklay says. "We were with a lot of people who were smoking cigarettes and he was going on about how he knew people who got cancer from smoking and people who would still smoke once they had cancer, like his aunt. Then he asked me, directly, did anyone in my family have cancer?" Nicklay laughs telling this story, pointing out that she did answer his question as asked. "I said no," she says. "The truth is that there's no cancer in my family. I did not lie. It felt like a lot to drop in that moment." Their relationship lasted the length of her time in Chile, and when she returned to New York, Nicklay decided that she wouldn't keep her diagnosis a secret with future suitors. "I was kind of a catfish on the dating apps for a little bit," she says. Nicklay took a sort of "revenge mode" approach to romance after feeling "invigorated and inspired" by her body's response to treatment, going on as many dates as she could and maximizing romantic experiences to prove to herself she still had her past self within her. Yet that too felt off, muddying the waters of how she wanted to approach love and how she wanted to approach her diagnosis. Crush after crush and date after date, Nicklay continued to test how cancer — disclosing it or not disclosing it — impacted a relationship's trajectory. Was there a way for her to bring that aspect of her life into a relationship without it becoming a secret she carried or a challenge she was trying to outrun? For many, dating amid diagnoses raises questions about the conditionality of love and what's worth investing in, compared to diagnoses received during long-term partnerships, where existing bonds and the strengths of lived-in relationships are tested. Jesse Cole, a 30-year-old healthcare worker, witnessed the latter firsthand. "My dad had brain cancer when I was pretty young and was entirely bedbound for the better part of a couple of years," he says. "He had 11 brain surgeries and was quite sick, and then my mom dealt with ovarian cancer for six and a half years before passing away a couple years ago. I saw the way each one supported the other through both of their journeys and it was truly the most beautiful testament of unconditional love and support I have ever seen in any facet of life." Having grown up with this model of love, Cole was stunned when his own medical diagnosis accelerated the demise of a new romantic relationship. In October 2024, he started to notice "crazy-looking rashes," all over his body, later combined with "electric shocks of pain." At the time, he had been on a few dates with Ryan* after being introduced by mutual friends. The two hit it off, but ultimately decided against a relationship right then. Jesse's symptoms persisted and doctors attributed them to an unspecified autoimmune disease. In early 2025, Ryan came back around, telling Cole, who was adjusting to his new normal, that he was ready for a committed relationship with him. "Through the first couple months of the relationship, I really felt cared for and supported," Cole says. "This condition impacts virtually every aspect of my life . . . and it's really hard to be present, to go out, to enjoy things, to do anything that resembles normal life." Cole adds, "There were times where he was attentive to that. He would ask how he could help and adjust his schedule to be more in line with what I could and couldn't do, all of the things that I would want from a supportive partner." But, in July 2025, when the two traveled to Europe for a birthday trip, Cole says the nature of the relationship started to change. Traveling between cities was difficult for him. Plans had to shift to accommodate his wellbeing, and in the moment, Cole apologized to Ryan for a "less-than-ideal vacation," and Ryan was understanding then, but his attitude shifted when they returned to the States. He confessed to Cole that he didn't "believe in unconditional love." After telling Cole he felt "burnt out," of taking care of him, Ryan told Cole that even if they were together and married for 30 years, if Cole were to, for example, get a cancer diagnosis, Ryan would leave him. "He told me if I was hit by a car and couldn't walk — and thus go out and party anymore — he would leave me. He told me he would leave me if I gained a certain amount of weight," Cole recalls. "Suddenly all these beliefs that I guess he had the whole time were presented to me as like, of course, this is just what people think, right? And I was like, no, that's psychopathic. That's really terrible to say." Cole says that a confluence of circumstances led to the end of the relationship, but discovering Ryan's attitudes towards him and potential romance with people who are living with chronic conditions forever changed the way he saw him. "I was angry at first," Cole says, "but now I mostly feel sad for him." He adds, "There's a life you have where you're young, hot, and your body works, but that's not always going to be the case." Julie Stamm was 27 years old when she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2007. She had just moved to London and was a few months into a budding romance with a coworker, who she would go on to marry. She's "not proud to say" it, but looking back, Stamm realizes her MS diagnosis kicked her into "lockdown mode." "I think I married him because I thought, no one's going to love me with all of this going on," she says. "I didn't know what this was going to turn into . . . After seven years of marriage, I ended up realizing that even with this chronic illness, I still deserve to have excitement." Once separated, Stamm was "really nervous" to reenter the dating world. "I didn't know what it would look like to walk into a bar, pick someone up, and have to say, 'Oh, hey, I'm gonna run to the bathroom a couple of times because I don't feel great,' or 'I can't feel my left leg, I need to leave,' or what I would do if I walked into a bar in high heels and then be unable to walk out." "I'm going to find the hottest guy at the bar. He's not going to know I have MS and I'm just going to do it." Still, in the months following her divorce, Stamm set out a goal. "I'm going to have a one-night stand," she says. "I'm going to find the hottest guy at the bar. He's not going to know I have MS and I'm just going to do it." The plan never came to fruition: On her first single night out, she met her now husband and shared her MS diagnosis within five minutes of meeting him. He told her he didn't know what MS was, and Stamm replied, "Just don't Google it." But over the course of weeks that became months that became years, Stamm found their relationship could grow around her MS, not in spite of it. "We haven't spent a week apart since that night." A year into their relationship, Stamm's husband was diagnosed with epilepsy, a condition she was able to quickly spot because of her own medical experiences. She says showing up to support him allowed her to understand how he had shown up to support her. For people living with chronic conditions, "disclosure can be one of the worst parts of dating," Jacqueline Child says. Jacqueline was diagnosed with a chronic condition when she was 14, eventually leading to requiring a feeding tube in 2021. She had been putting off the feeding tube for years because of feelings around shame and stress — and dating. "I experienced so much ableism and discrimination on mainstream dating apps — people running as far and as fast as they can at any mention of a diagnosis, or assuming that dating me would be burdensome or too stressful," Jacqueline says. "And it wasn't really what people wanted to deal with in their 20s." Her experience, however, eventually inspired her and her sister, Alexa Child, to start a dating app tailored for people living with chronic conditions, Dateability. "Something that I struggled with when realizing that I wanted to meet people with chronic illness or disabilities is that everything that was built for my community was super clinical," Jacqueline says. "I would either have to meet someone at a doctor's appointment or a support group, and that's really not that fun for me. So I was like, let's make this normal and just have it be so that there's no shame attached." The sisters launched Dateability four years ago and recently celebrated their first known wedding between two people who met on the app. They've prioritized giving the agency of disclosure to their users, allowing individuals to select from broad terms like "immunocompromised," "chronic illness," "permanent medical device," and these tags show up on a user's profile like religion, political views, or similar attributes would on traditional dating apps. Jacqueline and Alexa shared the story of Rachel, who met her partner on the app. Rachel was born with a disability, while her match was, at the time, recently paralyzed due to a spinal cord injury. "Her partner didn't know how to navigate his new reality and she taught him that there is so much joy even in being disabled and there are so many things they can do. She changed his life forever," Alexa says. Rachel recently passed away due to complications of her illness. And though Alexa acknowledges anxieties around timelines and life expectancy, she shares Rachel's story to say, "Life doesn't end when there's a diagnosis." No human is immortal ("we are all going to die," she says) and time doesn't inhibit the magnitude of one's love, nor do chronic conditions. Instead, they can be catalysts for the fullest of love to be felt. "None of us know our time," Stamm says. "You take away the disease and realize this is just life . . . If you try to give control to the condition or the illness, you're giving it too much credit. I ask myself, what can I control? I can control my happiness. I can have three slices of pizza. I can drink that beer. I can walk into a bar and within minutes, find the man who is my entire universe." Google it later. Cheers to now. 49343775 Shahamat Uddin is a freelance writer largely covering queer and South Asian issues, but also related lifestyle topics and entertainment. His family hails from Sylhet, Bangladesh, but after growing up in Roswell, GA, he now lives in Brooklyn with his cat, Butter. Outside of PS, he also has bylines in Teen Vogue, Vogue, Vogue India, New York Magazine, Them, The Nation, and more.