Is it easy to control than out of your control with dating?

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I sometimes feel as though for other people now in relationships, it was "easy" when they found each other even though I clearly don't know other people's circumstances.

I feel bad at myself because I didn't spend a lot of time frequenting places like bars in the hope of meeting someone new as though that's where "everyone meets someone" and that's why it seems like everyone is in a relationship, despite knowing that is ridiculous because meet people in different places.

It's as though I feel bad for enjoying doing other things in my own time rather than prioritising finding a date. Its as though I'm not interested but a part of me does still would like a friendship or relationship with someone at some point but I get sick of these thoughts as they are telling me to rush it because I spent too long being single.

To be fair I have spent a ton of time at clubs and bars and places like that. Still nothing even close to a relationship for me despite about twenty years of trying. I am still trying though

I guess my point is I don't think it is ever easy for neurodivergent people no matter what environments they are in. And trust me a good relationship never arrives too early or too soon, it only arrives on time.

I do not know of anyone in my family meeting their long-term relationship partners at bars or clubs. A lot of them met their partners by random chance while doing various things. Going to school together, sitting next to each other on a plane while traveling for buisness trips, shopping at the same store at the same time, talking to each other at a festival after they had both moved out of state, & my parents were set up by a mutual friend while they were in college.

A problem lots of us Aspies have is that we tend to be homebodies & our social skills are not great when first meeting random people. This is def the case with me. I think it's better for people with social issues like us to focus on environments that are more suited for us; like perhaps our hobbies/interests or support type groups. I first met the three girlfriends I've had on online forums.; first was a common interest & the other two were this one. I tried LOTS of dating sites as well as being more outgoing & social but I never gotten so much as a single date that way. I never tried bars/clubs but I imagine that would be one of the worst places for me to try. It's better to know our niches so too speak.

Not for guys like us. Dating sites are the answer. But don't choose the wrong dating site (especially not eHarmony, those guys suck)

I met my ex in a crowded bar.
We crawled under a pool table and yelled for 10 minutes and we're back at mine and in bed in 30.
That lasted 37 years.
I've been on dating apps for a year to get a solitary ongoing conversation.

I wish the old way still worked.

I met my husband on the bus. If I fancy a man I don't find it hard to chat them up at all.

I tried dating sites when I was single but I just couldn't get on with them.

Can confirm. I met my partners playing Vampire: The Masquerade LOL

Women are more likely to be fussy, sorry to say, and male autism can be unappealing in romantic relationships, especially the flat-effect types and constant hand-flapping and explosive meltdowns. I find NT men so much easier, though I do know a guy at work who thinks he might be on the spectrum, but he's fun, goofy, social, popular, and just doesn't display the stereotypical nerdy autistic behaviours. I don't know what he's like at home but according to his lifestyle he seems pretty functioning and busy (he has kids and a wife).

It isn't just male autism.

Some of the traits typical to autism make it harder to form connections with the people who display them significantly, even if hand-flapping and meltdowns never enter the equation.

Traits like aloofness, inflexibility, flat-affect, lack of personality, etc usually get noticed pretty early on.

Sounds like an unusual set of circumstances, not a typical way of meeting someone at a bar. What impelled the two of you to crawl under a pool table together?

IMO "prioritising finding a date" is self-defeating. What you should prioritise, instead, is building up a network of acquaintances with whom you have things in common that you can talk about.

As I see it, the big problem is that many of us grow up without ever having made any real friends before adolescence.

Then, in adolescence, the hormones kick in, causing many of us to want an erotic and/or romantic relationship without yet having experienced even a platonic friendship.

And that's like trying to learn calculus without having learned algebra. A romantic relationship is, in many ways, an advanced form of friendship.

For some reason I've always found dating men much easier than making friends, and it's not because of naivety. I first met my husband on the bus and it didn't feel difficult at all. Plus I had short-lived dates with men before that, and they were only short-lived because I was the one to finish the relationships (gently), as I found I didn't fancy them. Yet my social life wasn't very active. I only had about two or three friends, and some short-lived friendships that died off for reasons unknown to me (maybe I was too annoying or something, I don't really know). But I've never seemed to have difficulties getting to know potential partners. I've been with my husband for 12 years and it has always felt so natural. But during my teens I was lonely as f**k, had no luck with friends, and even grew up in a household with parents that resented each other and finally divorced when I was a teenager, and they never met new partners. Well, my mother did try looking for a new man, but the first thing she would tell them was of me and my stupid f*****g diagnosis, so that probably frightened them off lol. Usually guys back away from women with a 'problem child', and they probably thought ''her kid is probably severely problematic if that is the first thing the mother has told me upon meeting me''.

So I don't know where I get my good romantic skills from. But for an Aspie I have always been very socially skilled cognitively, even though I still can be socially awkward. But I think making friends is easier when people aren't told about your diagnosis before they've even met you, like what happened when I was at school. This diagnosis had ruined my social life during the most sensitive years (your teenage years), and people wonder why I hate people knowing about my diagnosis, it's a type of social trauma that some people who get all offend-y about my feelings don't understand.

Lemme guess: You're physically very attractive. If so, then the traditional social expectation that the man makes the first move works in your favor.

Things are more difficult (though not impossible!) for both men and women who aren't super-attractive.


Probably from experience with lots of men being attracted to you?


... yes, UNLESS you're trying to make friends in an autistic support group, or in some other venue where your diagnosis is actually relevant.


Yes, you certainly should have had a right to privacy in this regard.

Thank you, but no I'm not that physically attractive. I don't really wear makeup or dye/style my hair (which is unusual for a woman), and I never wore short skirts. In fact I didn't wear skirts or dresses at all (still don't now). I dress in a sort of chav style (hoodies and trainers), though in summer I wear short shorts.

I don't think I'm very attractive. My eyes are close together and I look too much like my dad. He is attractive for a man, but for someone to look identical in facial features looks a bit out of place on a girl.

Thank you for understanding. It was because my mother befriended the mother of a friend in my class who had a severely autistic younger brother, and being so all my mother's brothers and sisters children were all NTs* I think my mother felt isolated and so tried branching out to befriend mothers with children on the spectrum (although I was nowhere near like the severely autistic boy). So my friend knew about my diagnosis and one day during a bitchy row in the school playground when we were 10 she gathered all the girls in the class up and told them all about my diagnosis, and from that moment on their attitudes towards me changed and I found myself very socially isolated. It's like they thought Asperger's was a contagious disease and also something that made me "backward", even though I was still the same girl they knew before my s**t was revealed like that.

It's why I'm awfully insecure about my diagnosis and having been diagnosed in childhood and all the problems it brought me. I probably need therapy really, like intense therapy (rather than lectures online telling me how offensive I am being for how I feel by my experiences with Asperger's, though I'm not talking about anyone here, it mostly happened on another autism site), but therapists give you homework and I am no good at homework.

*Another reason I've always resented being on the spectrum and how isolated it made my mother feel