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Dating: How can I get a girlfriend?

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Markness

Young God
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I am 33 years old, I work part time, I still live with my mother for a myriad of reasons, I’ve graduated high school with only some college as extra education but I don’t have a degree, and I am generally socially isolated because most of the socialization that happens in my area is at bars. I am really just tired of going to my room alone after a daily slog and not have someone to be there for me as well as I for her.

I’ve tried different avenues to break out of my rut but they don’t ever succeed for me. I fear that I’ve either fallen too far behind socially to even get a coffee date or that there is a cutoff age to dating and I had it happen to me a long time ago.

Just how can I get a date despite my situation if it’s still possible?
 
Yes. Never say never. You are changeless and expect different results. The truth is, you have to change. You need to convince women your age that you are capable of living independently, are financially stable, and have prospects to communicate, share, and manage a household together. Every element that you have to change you have already listed. Do nothing and you could cut and paste this lament every year, only incrementing the age. Where are the women who may be shy yet are working to change, maybe hoping to meet somebody? They are not lounging around bars: they are taking cooking lessons (lemmee tell ya, a man with good knife skills and who knows his way around flavors gets womens' attention. Spatchcock a chicken and they will swoon.) They are practicing Tai Chi. They belong to bicycling clubs. And, they like getting out to entertainments. How are you selling yourself now? Work up a plan to change. Lemmee see it.
 
Doing a cooking class is a great idea. @Markness , I have ordered the book you've been studying, but it hasn't yet turned up, unfortunately. I may have to try again, as it's so slow or got lost in the ether. Surprised, because there seem to be lots of copies out there. Hope you are getting along with it ok.

I posted about being the protagonist in your own story on another of your threads, hope you are thinking about that. The protagonist does have to answer the Call to Adventure with a yes, even if he or she refuses it or can't agree to it at first. Act 2 starts when the central character in the story agrees to go on the adventure.

Yes, he may physically stay in his mother's house, but meanwhile he's adventuring. He's doing new stuff, bit by bit. If he isn't, there's no story, and he will have big trouble meeting and getting the girl, because he is sitting in his room. He's tired and discouraged and he wants her to come and rescue him. But she's got no idea where he is, or who he is. He's got a few adventures he needs to go on before he comes across her.
 
Have you tried online dating? I've found that you can be super direct with people this way and just say so if you're not up for grabbing coffee or whatever. Plus, sometimes you can really get comfortable with the person before you even meet IRL, which takes that in-person tension and awkwardness away.

That's kind of been my route 100% of the time, and I've dodged a lot of 'traditional' types of dates this way.
 
There is no amount of thinking our way out a problem that requires doing.

Women require physical and emotional security. The need to know they’re relatively safe with you and absolutely safe from you. They need to know that even if you disagree, you will listen and take their counsel seriously.

They can deal with many faults, but not having those as traits, are generally deal breakers for most women because they have all manner of men throwing themselves at them all the time and they can sniff it out relatively quickly. Make those a part of you, and women will find you.
 
Have you tried online dating? I've found that you can be super direct with people this way and just say so if you're not up for grabbing coffee or whatever. Plus, sometimes you can really get comfortable with the person before you even meet IRL, which takes that in-person tension and awkwardness away.

That's kind of been my route 100% of the time, and I've dodged a lot of 'traditional' types of dates this way.
Meeting my spouse was anything but traditional. I called her to car pool to a Sierra Club trip and we talked weekly about gear, training, and the schedule to get down to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It was several months before we met IRL and everything unfolded to be as far from a traditional date as possible. We were tested by the exigencies of travel, got to know each other very well and recognized our compatibilities. It was an intensity of experience that traditional dates cannot match.
 
Put yourself out there. Make it a point to walk up to one lady a day and say hi. Then next week, walk up to one lady a day and say a compliment. Week 3, walk up and ask what they do for a living. Week 4, walk up and ask if they have any single friends? Less pressure.

Out of all this, woman become less of a mystery. You may make friends and you may meet someone.

Hey- you come across a lot more optimistic in this post. You have really changed your mindset. This really is a change. Very impressive.
 
Doing a cooking class is a great idea. @Markness , I have ordered the book you've been studying, but it hasn't yet turned up, unfortunately. I may have to try again, as it's so slow or got lost in the ether. Surprised, because there seem to be lots of copies out there. Hope you are getting along with it ok.

I posted about being the protagonist in your own story on another of your threads, hope you are thinking about that. The protagonist does have to answer the Call to Adventure with a yes, even if he or she refuses it or can't agree to it at first. Act 2 starts when the central character in the story agrees to go on the adventure.

Yes, he may physically stay in his mother's house, but meanwhile he's adventuring. He's doing new stuff, bit by bit. If he isn't, there's no story, and he will have big trouble meeting and getting the girl, because he is sitting in his room. He's tired and discouraged and he wants her to come and rescue him. But she's got no idea where he is, or who he is. He's got a few adventures he needs to go on before he comes across her.
I really like your analogy. I agree. I do not think I was really ready to connect with a woman until I had a few adventures under my belt. Living independently, obtaining my first job, a research position, doing social or related things, and navigated some of dating and my first relationship. Some went well, some poorly, but everything was pushing forward.
 
Doing a cooking class is a great idea. @Markness , I have ordered the book you've been studying, but it hasn't yet turned up, unfortunately. I may have to try again, as it's so slow or got lost in the ether. Surprised, because there seem to be lots of copies out there. Hope you are getting along with it ok.

I posted about being the protagonist in your own story on another of your threads, hope you are thinking about that. The protagonist does have to answer the Call to Adventure with a yes, even if he or she refuses it or can't agree to it at first. Act 2 starts when the central character in the story agrees to go on the adventure.

Yes, he may physically stay in his mother's house, but meanwhile he's adventuring. He's doing new stuff, bit by bit. If he isn't, there's no story, and he will have big trouble meeting and getting the girl, because he is sitting in his room. He's tired and discouraged and he wants her to come and rescue him. But she's got no idea where he is, or who he is. He's got a few adventures he needs to go on before he comes across her.

It's beautiful when they both have the goods or storyline for each other to see. That they both fill the missing gaps.
 
There is no amount of thinking our way out a problem that requires doing.

Women require physical and emotional security. The need to know they’re relatively safe with you and absolutely safe from you. They need to know that even if you disagree, you will listen and take their counsel seriously.

They can deal with many faults, but not having those as traits, are generally deal breakers for most women because they have all manner of men throwing themselves at them all the time and they can sniff it out relatively quickly. Make those a part of you, and women will find you.

@Alaric593, you make some really good points here, but it may be discouraging or even dangerous for OP to think of “women“ as a monolith. OP, keep in mind there are millions of different types of women out there that are needing and wanting different things with different capabilities to be a partner. Everyone has their own version of what a partner, a relationship, or even a date looks like.

No matter how good of a person you make yourself, waiting to be found can be a sad and fruitless endeavor. As @Alaric593 said, this sounds like a problem that one cannot think their way out of. The suggestions to find classes and new hobbies have the added benefit of offering an interesting time while you are also putting yourself out there in a very visible place if you indeed want to be found.

Good luck to you. Love seems like a worthy endeavor even if it is an uneasy one.
 
I fear that I’ve either fallen too far behind socially to even get a coffee date or that there is a cutoff age to dating and I had it happen to me a long time ago.

This line of thinking brings to mind something that just happened a few days ago that I think could help and it is a false line of thinking. I will split them in to two different posts so as not to overwhelm anyone.

There's an App called Stoic on Android and Apple that I believe you should give a try. I've been using it for a about a year and it's been well worth the attention I give it. When I've been having a bad day, it has helped redirect my line of thinking countless times thus far. Below are a few.

First, there's a few types of thinking you seem to be stuck in which can be destructive to flourishing.

Over generalization--Viewing a single event as series of never-ending pattern of defeat

Mental Filtering--Focusing only on defeat, never on a victory--@Thinx brings up an opportunity in taking a cooking class. It will not only help you become more self reliant, it will give you an opportunity to have a victory. Just talking to a woman can be a victory sometimes even for the most confident men with women. I was beguiled and enamored with my now wife to the point I was making a damn fool out of myself trying to get her to go on a date with me.

The reason I was able to not let the many failures discourage me, is because I broke it down to smaller components rather than viewing the whole as one event. It's not, there's many events within the whole.

It was a victory that I made her laugh for the first time, even though she turned me down.
It was a victory she talked to me after she turned me down and that I made her laugh again, she turned me down again.
It was a victory that she accepted the coffee I brought to her at the library where she worked after she had turned me down now multiple times, she turned me down again.
It was a victory that she smiled when she saw me walk through the door before I even spoke to her this time, she turned me down again.
It was a victory that before I even was able to ask again she said alright fine, since you're clearly not going to give up, I'll go out with you as a friend.

12 years later, she's my wife and has blessed me with two beautiful children. It's still a victory when I make her laugh and smile. It's a victory she's even still with me given the state of my person for a number of years that easily justified leaving me, but she didn't.

You're jumping to the conclusion without enjoying the ride. You're mind-reading people you've not met or know and fortune telling on interactions that haven't taken place yet.

This causes problems for any person. We don't know the minds of others even if there is a pattern. We're complex creatures and are prone to shortcutting and the pattern doesn't always hold True so we must draw out the intentions and meaning of other's words and deeds through dialogue.

We don't need a Normandy Invasion event to claim a victory. Just waking up is a victory over mortality every morning.

Talking to one at this point seems like it will be a victory for you. So go do that. If not a cooking class, think of some other skill you would like to learn, go online to your local community center website and they're likely to have something related and there's likely to be women in it.
 
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I fear that I’ve either fallen too far behind socially to even get a coffee date or that there is a cutoff age to dating and I had it happen to me a long time ago.

Now the story that just happened. During a dark time in my life is when I met my wife. I was dealing with anger at the loss of friends in a War I had a hard time justifying participation in at the time. I was dealing with reoccurring "flashbacks" of watching them die and since I can think in pictures and auditory format, I really was reliving it, over and over and over again, because the mind makes our reality, even if it's a false one, and it felt as if I was reliving it every time it happened because I saw it and heard it. Then I'd pick apart actions that I did and didn't do in what I saw as if I could have controlled the unbridled chaos of war to save their lives, when really, if anything had happened differently, I could have just ended up dead myself. I have worked through this in its entirety and no longer have this issue.

But my wife is not the story here, but that I did meet her in such a time and was able to still get her to date me, is something you should focus on because that's a damn miracle.

It's about a family that I met also in the city where I met my wife. When I moved there there were two guys I met who were best friends in the job I was first hired at that seemed to see something in me that I didn't see in myself at the time. They "adopted" me into their families literally. They constantly were asking me to come have dinner with their parents and siblings for Sunday dinners, which to me and my preoccupation with etiquette around meals, was a huge deal to me. Sunday dinners are strictly for family in my mind so to be invited to the home of a family having Sunday dinner, is an adoption in to their family.

But, I still was in this dark time and despite them continuing to invite me, there were alcohol fueled behaviors that to this day bring the feeling of dishonor upon me. I don't know why they kept inviting me.

My wife and I moved away to North Carolina so I could attend Duke and I haven't seen them since even though we have been to that city many times since. When we were going, I just couldn't bring myself to reach out to either of them because I was so ashamed of my behavior that wasn't all the time, but was bad enough that it shames me today still.

Specifically, one of their fathers. I was always awkward around him but until being a Father became a part of my being, I didn't understand why. But now, I do. In him I saw a man that I knew I should be emulating but at the time couldn't see any of myself and it made me uncomfortable.

I believed that it was just too far gone and too much bad behavior to recover from. Not but three days ago, something told to reach out to both of them and I did, and it was as if nothing had ever happened. They want me to come visit them when I am able.

I spoke to the one with the Father aforementioned more in depth because we always had a deeper intellectual connection and spoke with him about my behavior around his family and how ashamed I was of it and he gave me Grace that I don't deserve and explained that they all could see what kind of a man I was through the false-face of alcohol and knew I was just a Good man struggling hard with demons they knew were there but couldn't comprehend because they had never been in War. He said his Father always liked me and was just frustrated with me that I wasn't being the man he saw through the falsity of drunkenness, as he would with his own sons.

He and his wife are going to be having their first a daughter in 9 days and he invited me to visit any time I am in the area because he views me as a brother and has missed my company and wants his daughter to know me and to know my children.

It is never too late in reality Markness; only in our minds when we're pretending to know the intentions and the future.

But it does require actions, not thinking and words to change trajectory
 
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But it does require actions, not thinking and words to change trajectory
Exactly. Being where Markness is, I learned that I had to act to put myself out as interesting and available. I still think now, as then, the person desiring a connection is the person that needs to act.
 
As one on the spectrum of autism, I can never emphasize enough the ease of making a friend of the opposite sex as opposed to suffering through the social rituals of a date. Of course the process may or may not lead to something more than friendship, but at a much slower- and manageable pace compared to all the unwritten convoluted rules, rituals and hypocrisies of dating.

Always an option for us. No shame in it, either. I'm living proof of an adult who pretty much dodged the entire social institution of dating. Something I just couldn't get past given so many pressures and expectations. Yet I made up for it through establishing a few friendships that somehow blossomed into something more. Hey...it happens. ;)

There's a lot of very nice women on this website. But had I chosen to meet them within the guise of a conventional "first date", I'm pretty sure I would "crashed and burned" on all of them. Sad, but probably true. :oops:

But in simply making friends with them....well....who knows? Sometimes knowing one's limitations isn't a bad thing. What's that saying? - "Making lemonade with life's lemons." Instead of coming here to moan and groan about your limitations, why not use them to your advantage socially in the real world ? :)
 
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Touching on what @Thinx said about being one's own protagonist in life is highly relevant, but something brought up on Netflix's The Mind Explained series was the fact that we are also our own narrators, too.

We do the commentary and our own play by play. What we say to ourselves, how we say it...matters. It has more direct impact on one's life than any outside opinion. Don't like where you're at address the source, the narrator (internal monologue). Rewrite the unspoken thoughts and take control of the story.
 
@Darkin: "Rewrite the unspoken thoughts and take control of the story. "

That's what I've been trying to get across,
with the REBT/rational emotive concept of
not succumbing to telling oneself the non-
rational/misery-making stores.
 
Internal gaslighting is a very real thing and can be a really tough habit to change because it takes so much conscious effort. Our narrator has been doing things in the exact same way for so long, too long. Having a friend or family member to reach out to either online or IRL can make a huge difference. (And there are many here who do reach out...)

If I get stuck in what I call 'stupid' mode I call my mom. No holds barred, she will straight up tell me I'm being an idiot, even when logically I know I am, but my brain is still wigging out. Hearing it from a trusted source verifies the fact that, yes, indeed I am being an idiot and it will kick my brain back on line.

If I can cross check and authenticate something with my brain, I can shutdown the doubt monologues. Just like with proofreading, I always read aloud to bypass my brain's autocorrect feature.

See it, say it, hear it. Three point verification. It is one of the best editing tools there is no matter what one is editing, be it a creative work or an internal script.
 
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I am turning 34 this August and despite my best efforts to bring romance into my life, I have failed to even get a coffee date. I really wish I knew the reason or reasons why and if it’s possible for me to make up for lost time for almost 16 years now.
 
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