Dating: Tips, Experience, Advice

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Dating must be really difficult with all those expectations and anxiety and stuff

Post any useful tips or anything you have about your dating experience

or (like me) you might have little to no experience but it's still nice to hear from you

So Far What I Know And What I Learned™ Second Edition:
- Don't let hormones / affection drive you at the beginning (It may be fatal for a fresh relationship). Get yourself to know them first
- Never be desperate (It WILL be fatal for ANY relationship)
- Balance your engagement. If you see you're leading conversation all the time, something ain't right
- If you think something you're about to say may be negatively understood, rethink it thrice if not more. Sometimes just one wrong word may bring unforeseen consequences
- It's not always your fault. Some people pretend everything is okay and then one day they write paragraphs to you how horrible you are. Some people pretend everything is okay then trash you out of nowhere. There ain't much help for some people not being people
- Leave past in the past, don't think about your ex. It will only keep you in pain and make dating a new person even harder (and we know it's hard already)
- Don't talk 'bout ex with new date
- Generally avoid ranting. Everyone has to sometimes, but it's not a way to maintain and especially build a relationship, beyond dating as well
- Regardless of how perfect should them seem to be, remember to live for yourself. Ye never know whether it's really "that love" and if they don't abruptly change
- Be yourself, always. Pretending to be someone else is a way to only get yerself into fake relationship and eventual burnout. And it will fail anyway.
(Modified + extended original from viewtopic.php?t=428372#p9722466)

It occurs to me that autistics move very slowly when it comes to relationships.
While fictional, it is likely that Sheldon and Amy's incredibly slow progression is actually accurate!
Autistics don't need constant contact. The opposite is true. They meet up occasionally as work and hobbies allow.
I am arranging outings with a lady that won't be available to go out until her work off season. Until then she is too busy with work to go on day trips to museums. That is fine with me. I'm busy with gardening and golfing and she knows that.

^Some autistics are an exception to that. I take relationships fast & my second ex as well as my current girlfriend are both the the spectrum & took our relationship very fast. Me & my current like lots of contact but my second liked more space & independence which is one of the reasons she broke up with me. My fist relationship was very fast as well & us having to remain mostly long distance for the foreseeable future was one of the reasons I had problems within our relationship.

My personal experience as well as the experience of my current girlfriend contradicts a lot of Hetzer's advice as well.

A lot of my relationship advice is situational. My general advice is that the typical advice that's often given out should be taken with a grain of salt & probably all advice including any of mine should as well. Advice for NTs may not work for non-NTs or even NTs who have some various issues. Some like me are not able to apply the typical advice very well or it might even make things worse. Try outside the box ideas if the typical advice isn't working. Different relationships & people can very different so don't get too hung-up on trying to follow advice or rules.

^ Well, taking my conclusions into effect helped me to recover from first (unsuccessful) crush and generally take dating failures better, while retaining the same satisfaction from them (In April/May (I forgor) I had another short-lived relationship that I found pleasing (as much as with first crush) while it lasted and haven't really felt any special sorrow when it ended). And idk when it happened, but I stopped feeling that I need a date *now* (which is good given my plans for near future)

But generally yes, everyone's a different beast and (,as in general,) what works for one won't for another

I think it may help to talk and establish some ground rules on how one's time is divided up between work, hobbies, and the relationship. Spending all day on the golf course may be perfectly acceptable if that partner is retired and the other feels they need to work for a living. The lady I am interested in wants to work 8 months a year and do activities for four months during the off season. I have hobbies that keep me busy during her work season.

When I first met my partner back in 2014, I was the happiest I'd felt since late childhood. Being so it was actually my first true relationship, I still seemed to know what to do. Maybe because I had spent years having obsessive crushes on men and fantasising about having a relationship with them, so my fantasies must have kinda self-taught me what to do when first dating a man for real. My mum and dad never loved each other, so I got no examples there. This is another reason why I question my diagnosis or that I believe that maybe I found my first ever relationship naturally easy because I'm female, I don't know.

I really fancied him (still do now of course), so obviously I wanted to see him whenever I had time. So often I'd get on a 100-minute bus ride after work to spend a night with him, feeling so uplifted and proud.

Maybe it was because I had went on a few short dates with men before, who I didn't really fancy but wanted to give it a go anyway. So I'd get the bus to see them, not feeling very enthusiastic and just feeling like I had to make an effort to pretend to like them in that way. Those relationships ended before they begun, because I didn't want to lead them on, as that wouldn't be fair on them. Sometimes I'd think I fancied a man then as soon as we kissed I suddenly squirmed and didn't like him any more in that way and just wanted to remain friends. I thought there was something wrong with me, like I was asexual but didn't know it or something.

But I knew I wasn't asexual as soon as I met my partner. I was just looking for the right guy for me. It might just be a woman thing; the guy doesn't have to look a certain way to attract us, but he's got to fit our preferences and be attractive to us as individuals, if that makes sense. A bit like looking for a job that you want; it doesn't have to be the perfect super fun job, it's just got to be the right job for you. So one person could feel comfortable in a cleaning job while another person could feel an office secretary job is more suited to them.

So just because I dumped a man before it doesn't mean he's "ugly". It just means I didn't have romantic feelings for him, for no reason really. Crushes just happen, I don't consciously choose who I fancy and who I don't. But I can't make myself fancy someone.

My girlfriend and I hit it off pretty much from the start. There wasn't a great deal of effort involved, just some misunderstandings which are par for the course when you are on the spectrum, I guess.

If you equate a relationship to being sexually involved with someone (including what might also be called "situationships") then basically every such relationship for me began with a desire for romantic involvement. In some cases it was initiated by the other person (always female in my case). But I've never had a substantial "friend group" from whom to choose a romantic partner, which is not unusual for people on the spectrum.

There was one possible exception, which was my first girlfriend's former school chum who invited me to come visit in another city where she was living. Although she invited me there, I wouldn't have said she was a close friend per se. She definitely had the thought of sex in mind but only because she hadn't had any for a while, not because she saw me as a possible husband. Had Tinder existed back then things would have been different.

Even with my wife, we met at a sort of singles mixer and the whole point of that was for people to find romantic partners, not to find a new group of friends to hang out with. And we were a couple after four dates, in fact she was ready to have full-on sex with me before I expected it.

I think if you tell aspies they can't have a relationship with somebody who's not already part of their friend group, then an even higher percent will remain life-long singles than is already the case.

^Yes, but friendship is the starting point and foundation of ALL romantic relationships!! !

Without being friends first the relationship will collapse!

There are exceptions. Me & my current girlfriend were not friends first. We jumped in to a relationship & became best friends in the process. We've been together for 13 years now & living together for over 12.

The first part you have to do is the most important step and the one that I have always failed at and unfortunately, see no way around it, and that's the step of actually meeting someone you want to date who's also single, available and age appropriate. I have never been able to get past this first step.

^yep that is by FAR the hardest step!! !

I don't think so.
I met my partner at a pub party and we were in bed within 1/2 hour.
She probably didn't become my best friend for a week or two and 37 years later we're still together.
We'll have to see if we survive her sending me to someone else for sex post menopause.

I was never friends with my partner before dating. We were just bus-driver and passenger for a while, until we got talking and he suggested a date. Then we considered ourselves boyfriend and girlfriend ever since. It's 11 years later and it's always been such a strong relationship that we're like family now, soulmates, and (finally) getting married next month.

You guys probably got drunk which led to sexual relations

Is this correct?