Dating = Secret Handshake?

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Does anyone feel like getting into a relationship has some similarities to a "secret handshake"? I feel like there are quite a few things that you are expected to do while dating (and even before dating) to progress things towards a relationship, but they are often unspoken and not necessarily obvious. A few include better-known things like the guy paying for dinner, opening the door, or walking his date home. There are also the more nebulous things that can be particularly difficult for someone with Aspergers, such as managing the appropriate amount of physical contact and eye contact, or judging when/how to go for the first kiss. Too much and you may come across as a creep, and too little and you may come across as lacking confidence or attraction. I think that most of these are fairly easy to grasp once you learn them firsthand and put them into practice, but there's really no way to learn them other than through experience and trial/error.

I have been working on figuring these things out a lot, and the difference has been like night and day. When I first started dating I didn't really know about or pay attention to a lot of that stuff, and had suffered from rejections that were almost as routine as clockwork, and all with the same reason (lack of chemistry). Since I've figured out how to handle some of it, I seem to attract infinitely more interest, and it feels almost like I've broken through some magical barrier that used to hold me back. I wonder if this may be one of the main things holding back many of the people on this forum, since most of the unspoken rules of dating are effectively aspects of socialization that most Aspies inherently struggle with.

Yeah that makes sense to me. People tend to be put off if you don't follow protocol in any situation really. They get the feeling that you're a bit off. They may think "well that was a bit weird" when you don't do or do something they expected, something that other people just do instinctively.

Glad to hear you are getting along with the process a bit better now.

It does feel like that sometimes.

That other people are members of some "lodge," and that they are successful because they are members of the Water Buffaloes, or whatever.

I'm not a member of any "lodge," and I feel out of the loop.

So I have to make my own loop.