Ideal dating/courtship rules in autistic-friendly community?

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If you were in a position to re-make the cultural rules of dating/courtship from the ground up, what would the rules be? How would they be similar to, and different from, the current cultural rules of your home country?

If enough of us are in agreement, we might be able to change the rules within a hopefully forthcoming autistic-friendly subculture.

By autistic-friendly subculture, I mean a subculture of autistic, autistic-like, and autistic-friendly people (hopefully including but not limited to the families of autistic people). In order for such a subculture to exist, the current autistic community would need to grow and become much better organized that it is now and would need to become more listened to and more central within what is now the NT-dominated "autism community."

The forthcoming subculture, as I envision it, would consist of many in-person local support groups plus many other kinds of groups too, both in-person and virtual, for people with various common interests, including common career goals and common hobbies,, making it easier for autistic and autistic-like people to find friends. Eventually it would also include clusters of small businesses, making it easier for autistic people to find jobs too, in an autistic-friendly work environment.

It would, of course, be a challenge for autistic people to organize all of this, so some help from sympathetic NT's would probably be needed.

I recently began a thread Social rules of autistic-friendly social spaces?, in the "Social Skills and Making Friends" sub-forum, regarding what the general social rules should be within such a subculture.

I'd like to discuss the more specific topic of dating and courtship rules here.

This is of course a very important issue, but unfortunately one that doesn't have a simple solution. Naturally, there is a neurodiverse courtship behaviour, but unfortunately, several components of it are considered as morally wrong and even criminal behaviour in some parts of the world. I don't think it actually helps much to keep NTs out of it as NT traits are part of NDs too.

Some key issues are that NDs have stronger infatuations, can put down a huge amount of effort on a love interest and that the process to get to know each other can take several years. Ideally, NDs should build a mind-to-mind communication link. Unfortunately, many NDs don't even believe these exist, and even if they do, will not put down the effort required to create one.

As for friends, NDs do not naturally form friendships, and even when they do, these often doesn't become relationships. The reverse is more natural: A relationship that becomes a friendship too. The natural courtship starts with a crush.

There are important differences in the sexual area that drive asexuality. For instance, NTs will attach with sex and sexual activity is private. For NDs, sex is not private, and to fully enjoy it require a mind-to-mind connection. NDs attach with obsessive thoughts and not with sexual intercourse.

To clarify: I never said that NT's should be kept out of it. An "autistic-friendly subculture" would include sympathetic NT's too (e.g. friends and family of autistic people).


Given how long it takes to get to know people (longer for ND's than for NT's), allowing oneself to get infatuated with a person whom one does not yet know well is, obviously, extremely dangerous -- much MORE dangerous for ND's than for NT's. I'm grateful that my upbringing included very strong warnings against the dangers of infatuation.

It is MUCH, MUCH safer to have a special interest in a topic or activity than to have a special interest in a person. A special interest in a topic or activity can, moreover, be used as a bridge to friendship (or more) with others who share that interest.


Have you discussed mind-to-mind communication links here on Wrong Planet before? If so, could you please post a link to a relevant thread or two? Or, if not, could you please start a separate thread? I would be very interested to hear more about this, but preferably somewhere other than this thread (to avoid derailing this thread).


Depends how you go about trying to form friendships? I think there are natural ways that ND's can form friendships, which may be somewhat different from the ways NT's tend to form friendships.

For me, the sine qua non of friendship is having enough in common that we can enjoy listening to each other talk about our interests. From that, mutual caring and emotional attachment can gradually grow.

This means I can become close friends only with people who enjoy intense, focused, in-depth conversation -- whereas most other people, or at least most NT's, seem to prefer unfocused chit chat.

When I was in my twenties, a friend of mine observed that I need to connect with people on an intellectual level before I can connect on any other level. She thought that was odd but okay.


A crush is also the most dangerous way to start -- even more dangerous for ND's than for NT's (many of whom do have crushes too). My current relationship did NOT start with a crush, and I think it's for the best that it did not.


I think the above are overgeneralizations about both ND's and NT's.

Might be so, but both a crush and infatuation has important roles in the ND attachment process.

Reference: https://psyarxiv.com/dw4u2/
Abstract:

IOW, neurodiverse people primarily attach at a distance, and infatuation has an important role in this process.

So, if you want to create an ND friendly "dating scene", I think you need to tap into those in some way. One way would be to pre-match people and then trigger a crush. I think that is pretty possibly as male NDs only get crushes under very specific conditions, and it is possible to setup those.



I've done a friendship survey too, but I've not yet completed an article about it. However, what comes out of it is that NDs are far less likely to have friends, and many of their friendships are with the opposite gender, often with a hope for romance rather than a friendship. So, at least some NDs form friendships when they really want a relationship. Something that can go very wrong if they also have or develop a one-sided crush.



In theory, certainly, but in practice, this way of doing things will create shallow attachments.



I agree that there is a need to connect on an intellectual level, but that doesn't need to be based on conversations. There are other ways to do that which are "at a distance".



Maybe there should be a specific thread about it, but I'm afraid my posts about this are scattered in many different threads.

I would have arranged marriages. It'll be a hell of aLOT easier than it was for me to find anyone willing to give me half a chance. I really believe most any woman would of liked me if she was willing to give me half a chance & actually try to make the realtionship work.

I'm a bit on your side here, provided it is ND-ND relationships. However, I think it would possible to help the process so it gets more natural and thus works better.

I've started a relevant thread: Mind-to-mind communication links?

I'll reply to you on other matters later.