Tomorrow is St V,s day. I find romantic relationships almost impossible. I have had 2 romantic relationships in my life. Mary I met in group therapy and it evolved to closeness and lasted a very long time. Faith I met in the pre-internet age when I joined a postal listings group. I was busy studying for a degree, but a woman matched her interests to mine, wrote to me, rang, we met, got on well and that lasted quite a few years. But now I am lost. How can I get in another romantic relationship? Internet sites are expensive and frustrating and lay me open to the violent and the deadly. I find I have no strategy for finding a new romantic relationship. Maybe I live too much in a fantasy world of Bach pipe organ music, science fiction, fantasy art, visual arts, and seem too sunk in political conversations. I just find it too difficult to meet people, don,t know what to say and so on. Does anybody else have similar difficulties or strategies to find a way out of the isolation.
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higher functioning autism and problems with romantic relationships
- Thread starter Tara Gwen
- Start date
BlueCobra
New Member
I feel the same way, and nowadays I am reclusive and wouldn't have a clue how to meet people, social media and me never seen eye to eye,
Connor Malone
Well-Known Member
My advice may not be very helpful but I've always wanted to socialise but at the same time some social situations make me uncomfortable. However I am half aspie half NT. Anyway what I used to do to build confidence was go out and throw myself into social situations. Good god it was scary but it helped me build confidence. If I were you I'd start small. Just go out to the store or something and say hi to the clerk, maybe attempt to make small talk. Then once you get better at that try seeing if you can get some friends to go to a bar with you and try talking there. (this isnt meant to sound mean but if you don't have any friends just subtely find out what there interests are, find out about them and have a chat with them. Then talk about your interests but not too much. A good tip would be if you speak more than 10 sentences on the one subject and no one speaks back. You should probably stop) I hope that I helped and yes this does work as no one knows im an aspie and without blowing my own trumpet I'm relatively popular among my peers at uni
Lord Riot
Member
Plenty of Fish?
I've used it and it's good for sussing out characters before committing to a meet up. Plus with online dating I think it's an accepted rule you can just meet for one coffee and if one or both of you decide you don't want to see each other again you can just say "I'll text you/email you", then don't bother. Few chase that up. In my experience anyway!
I guess from the other person's point of view they might be able to tell if we're aspies from our profile in some cases. I don't know. Having said that, no-one I met through online dating ever suspected until they'd been with me for a few months. Or maybe those I only saw once or twice did but never said!
I think I need someone more like me, now that is difficult!
I've used it and it's good for sussing out characters before committing to a meet up. Plus with online dating I think it's an accepted rule you can just meet for one coffee and if one or both of you decide you don't want to see each other again you can just say "I'll text you/email you", then don't bother. Few chase that up. In my experience anyway!
I guess from the other person's point of view they might be able to tell if we're aspies from our profile in some cases. I don't know. Having said that, no-one I met through online dating ever suspected until they'd been with me for a few months. Or maybe those I only saw once or twice did but never said!
I think I need someone more like me, now that is difficult!
I seem to mess with people's heads and hearts. That hurts them. I don't want to hurt people.
That said, I have a sort of magnetic pull to me.
Making eye contact has something to do with it.
Maybe it's morbid fascination. Fear. Lust. Pain... idk.
Socializing is hard. Connecting is easy.
Look them in the eye. Open yourself up inside. Smile to show you can accept their answer. Invite them to choose....
Saying they have pretty eyes is generic because the human eye is like a flower of tinted muscle floating in a black fluid. Like an octopus... fascinating. But almost everyone has pretty eyes. Don't talk to the ones that don't have pretty eyes.
Mary and Faith.... seems like the world is smiling on you. Smile back. It's okay. Practice a little each day?
Welcome home. Hope you find answers and peace.
That said, I have a sort of magnetic pull to me.
Making eye contact has something to do with it.
Maybe it's morbid fascination. Fear. Lust. Pain... idk.
Socializing is hard. Connecting is easy.
Look them in the eye. Open yourself up inside. Smile to show you can accept their answer. Invite them to choose....
Saying they have pretty eyes is generic because the human eye is like a flower of tinted muscle floating in a black fluid. Like an octopus... fascinating. But almost everyone has pretty eyes. Don't talk to the ones that don't have pretty eyes.
Mary and Faith.... seems like the world is smiling on you. Smile back. It's okay. Practice a little each day?
Welcome home. Hope you find answers and peace.
Difficulties? Absolutely.
Strategies? Only one, but I'm never sure about it being "exported" to others.
To focus only on making friends. If the friendship blossoms into something more that that, so be it.
But the whole process of dating- ritualized socialization is just too much for me. A friendship shouldn't fundamentally require subterfuge while it seems rife with the institution of courtship.
If I really like someone it shouldn't require me to conform to any particular standard of behavior but my own.
Strategies? Only one, but I'm never sure about it being "exported" to others.
To focus only on making friends. If the friendship blossoms into something more that that, so be it.
But the whole process of dating- ritualized socialization is just too much for me. A friendship shouldn't fundamentally require subterfuge while it seems rife with the institution of courtship.
If I really like someone it shouldn't require me to conform to any particular standard of behavior but my own.
MrSpock
Live long and prosper
I too find romance nearly impossible. I am reluctant to try because it hurts myself and the other more often than not, and I cannot prevent it. I agree that POF seems an okay dating site, it's free and has a lot of people on it, but I've had no success there - that doesn't mean much.
I play pool, that gets me out talking to people a bit, unfortunately mostly guys. But girls too... a few years ago I met one playing pool, I've never wanted anyone so badly and instantly. She was seeing someone at the time, but in the last year and a bit I've been seeing her off and on, unfortunately off at the moment.
She has ADD, not sure if that's good or bad. For sure we have things in common because of it, we can both appreciate that a different way of thinking leads to social problems and can empathize with each other in many ways that NTs might not be able to. She is the one who clued me in to my Asperger's a couple of months ago. I've always known that I was really different, but then I'm very smart and had a dysfunctional childhood and have always put my social differences down to that combination.
I've tried telling her many times that my facial expressions and body language are unreliable sources of information, she's a poker player and insists that she reads people well. She does read me well much of the time, but when she screws up it really makes communication very difficult, especially because she does insist on communicating with hints which I don't pick up on. Lately she thought she'd offended me when she hadn't, then repeatedly hinted that she wanted to know how she'd offended me. She got very upset "how blunt do I have to be?" but still didn't pose the question directly, only after another conversation and hours of puzzling it out over several days did I figure it out. That kind of thing happens a lot, it's scary to think that I might never be able to find someone who will learn to communicate with me.
I find human females fascinating, attractive, very illogical. I see myself as being so very easy to communicate with, just say what you mean and I will respond very accurately. Women seem to do the opposite, always hinting, then getting upset when I fail to respond to something that's gone over my head.
Looking for aspie women might sound a good strategy, but my impression is that male aspies outnumber females by 10 to 1. So possible, and perhaps a near guarantee that you won't hurt someone uncontrollably through lacking the social wiring that most people seem programmed with. But doesn't seem a good basket in which to put all of one's sperm. If you're equipped with eggs then an aspie dating site is probably a very good strategy, 10 to 1 in favour.
I'm still trying. And if this one fails I'll try again, and again. But I don't seem to learn so very much compared to what I am obviously missing in the way of social skills. There seems to be a rule that if something can be communicated through non-verbal means then you don't talk about it, so for those of us who rely on words there is no opportunity to learn about it. No woman has ever approached me after the fact and told me either what I did right or what I did wrong, what signals I missed or failed to send. If I've managed to get into bed with a woman it's been a fluke, so many times it seemed it would happen but then didn't, and I don't know what I've done differently that makes me pass or fail. So maybe you should ignore everything I've said.
Good luck.
I play pool, that gets me out talking to people a bit, unfortunately mostly guys. But girls too... a few years ago I met one playing pool, I've never wanted anyone so badly and instantly. She was seeing someone at the time, but in the last year and a bit I've been seeing her off and on, unfortunately off at the moment.
She has ADD, not sure if that's good or bad. For sure we have things in common because of it, we can both appreciate that a different way of thinking leads to social problems and can empathize with each other in many ways that NTs might not be able to. She is the one who clued me in to my Asperger's a couple of months ago. I've always known that I was really different, but then I'm very smart and had a dysfunctional childhood and have always put my social differences down to that combination.
I've tried telling her many times that my facial expressions and body language are unreliable sources of information, she's a poker player and insists that she reads people well. She does read me well much of the time, but when she screws up it really makes communication very difficult, especially because she does insist on communicating with hints which I don't pick up on. Lately she thought she'd offended me when she hadn't, then repeatedly hinted that she wanted to know how she'd offended me. She got very upset "how blunt do I have to be?" but still didn't pose the question directly, only after another conversation and hours of puzzling it out over several days did I figure it out. That kind of thing happens a lot, it's scary to think that I might never be able to find someone who will learn to communicate with me.
I find human females fascinating, attractive, very illogical. I see myself as being so very easy to communicate with, just say what you mean and I will respond very accurately. Women seem to do the opposite, always hinting, then getting upset when I fail to respond to something that's gone over my head.
Looking for aspie women might sound a good strategy, but my impression is that male aspies outnumber females by 10 to 1. So possible, and perhaps a near guarantee that you won't hurt someone uncontrollably through lacking the social wiring that most people seem programmed with. But doesn't seem a good basket in which to put all of one's sperm. If you're equipped with eggs then an aspie dating site is probably a very good strategy, 10 to 1 in favour.
I'm still trying. And if this one fails I'll try again, and again. But I don't seem to learn so very much compared to what I am obviously missing in the way of social skills. There seems to be a rule that if something can be communicated through non-verbal means then you don't talk about it, so for those of us who rely on words there is no opportunity to learn about it. No woman has ever approached me after the fact and told me either what I did right or what I did wrong, what signals I missed or failed to send. If I've managed to get into bed with a woman it's been a fluke, so many times it seemed it would happen but then didn't, and I don't know what I've done differently that makes me pass or fail. So maybe you should ignore everything I've said.
Good luck.
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