aspie men miss signs of interest

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^^ This (with different phrasing) has happened to me on occasion... but I can never tell whether they mean it unless they get even more direct. Actually I think that's how almost every relationship/fling I've had started.

And I'm blissfully happy about that. I don't think that's a really big problem as we're so obviously "weird" that women ignore us.

This.

Being told to be direct is like saying you should get in the car and drive. That's great if that person already knows how to drive. People need more, to understand it properly. As people on this forum, who seem to have a social learning disability in common, will not be learning quicker that way. Only that you pointed out the direction. If you are going to get annoyed at least understand that your input is not enough. If they make a mistake, nobody is telling them exactly where it went all wrong. Thus everybody sits here and over analyse everything to see if it can be logically analysed, when for example body language, reading between the lines clues, were missed.

I WIN THIS ONE! I missed this for 28 years! I'm now married to her, but I missed everything for nearly three decades.

It's not just Aspie men with this problem One of my closest friends (NT, male, and knows about my AS) finds my obliviousness hilarious.

We'll be out at a club/pub/bar and I'll chat with some guy, and afterwards my friend will laugh and tell me the guy was hitting on me. He'll then list all the things the guy did that made it obvious, none of which I would have noticed because I was too busy (a) trying to keep up with the conversation, (b) trying to stop my mind racing ahead or wandering off, and (c) trying to block out the background noise.

Once I complained that this guy at work kept asking me questions he surely already knew the answers to (he's been with the company longer and is much higher ranked role), and asking me to help him acquit his expenses (which he's meant to do himself).

Me: Why does he keep bugging me with stupid things? I'm trying to do my work!
Friend: He likes you, idiot. He's trying to find excuses to get close to you.
Me: ... Oh. Right.

Right now I have the nightmare of having a crush on a guy I suspect is a fellow Aspie. He's acknowledged during a chat about our mutual awkwardness that he struggles with social cues and "reading people's intentions". Mutual friends seem to think he likes me, too, but with both of us being shy, awkward, and easily distracted by our special interests, the whole thing's a bit of a train wreck at the minute

So yeah, this is an equal opportunities Aspie problem

No one has ever been interested in me, that I know about. Then, I don't go out much

Missing signs of interest is a bit of a tricky subject.

You can indeed miss signs of interest and that´s fairly common among aspies but you can also start overthinking about some meaningless acts and think that someone is flirting with you when they were just being friendly/whatever(lets face it we are prone to obsess over things too).

Personally I wait until Im fairly certain that there have been several signs of interest and the girl doesnt treat everyone the way she is treating me

Apparently local culture encourages people of both genders to pretend to be overly enthusiastic in whatever someone has to say and overly nice to someone so I need to take that into account as well. Just so you have an idea how much Im exageratting things this one day I was with some acquaintances and a girl kept telling me that we knew each other and acting like we were close friends. I went along with it because I didnt know that many people at the group.
At the end I politely asked where I knew her from. She said we met once at a group activity about 8 months earlier and we had talked for 30 minutes
As weird as it sounds this is actually standard behaviour here for quite a lot of people so it makes signs and whatnot even harder

Yes what criminal lost opportunities. There are indicators of interest you could train yourself in but the shortcut for a lot of it is to just look for proximity. Especially if you are the guy, as culturally it is the woman's job to come in firing range of cupid's arrow and the man's job to shoot her.

There has to be more to it, otherwise all my women colleages would want to date me. That can't be right.

I miss them every time.

I've had way more of these, than the other way around. At least, that I know of.

There are at least two things that may be contributing here. One is my lack of female platonic friends, which means that any girl who shows interest in being around me will get attention back, for the novelty aspect alone. So either I feel attracted or I don't, and even if I don't, I generally don't reject the girl outright. This gives more time for her to show me she might be attracted, if she is. The other is that I only really become attracted to girls who give off a sort of childlike openness or even naivete, and unfortunately this sort of behavior seems to be a sign of disinterest more than anything else.

I believe this to be true, I think a lot of men in our situation will not pick up on such signs.

What I will say is this, I learn from the missed opportunity to help me with future prospects.

Your profile says you're neurotypical and a lawyer. How can *you* miss opportunities?!

I've only ever had one relationship, and that's how it started for me, as well. The girl met me and we started hanging out often and coming over to my dorm to watch stuff on Youtube, and then one night she came over and we were hanging out, and erm...yeah. On her end, things were a long time coming, apparently. On my end, it was completely out of left field. It ended the same way, which kind of stuck with me for a long time.

It drives me insane how I'm just stuck, unable to do anything. If I find that I like someone, it's impossible for me to do something about it, and if anyone has ever liked me, I'll never know, so the only way it ever works is the one in a million chance that someone decides to just be totally up front and explain it to me.

I find it easier to approach women about those personal things when it is just the two of us, sometimes I would plan ahead what I was going to say which helps.