Increasing popularity of friends-first approach

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I was going to comment exactly this! The “friends first” approach doesn’t work for Autistics a lot if the time because of how much many of us struggle to make friends in the first place!

No, don't "pretend you're interested in things you're not," but maybe join more groups devoted to topics that do interest you (and that also are of interest to significant numbers of women) even if the topics aren't necessarily your main passions.

EDIT: Also, in whatever groups you join, especially the ones that do relate to your passions, find ways to play a more active role in the group than just being a rank-and-file member. Volunteer to help out in some small way, such as by being one of the people who helps to arrange chairs before the meeting and put them away afterward. Eventually you may be trusted with more responsibilities. In any case you'll be taken more seriously than the people who just show up and don't help out at all.

Hence the importance of autistic people learning to make friends in ways that work for us, not necessarily the standard NT ways.

"Friends before partners", is my motto.
You bypass the love-bombing and the fake persona presentation.

And it is easier to be honest when you are a friend.

Don't you think young men tend to go straight for romance rather than friendship?
Young men tend to think with the little head, I thought.

You consider “thinking with the little head” romance?

Isn't this being a little unfair?
40 years ago I went to a communications/socialisation course that advocated getting involved with your friend's interests even if you weren't that interested yourself.
And another tip was to talk about them and not yourself.

Doesn't that simply mean there isn't a "spark" in the relationship and there was never going to be romance?

No kidding. That part's the natural state and it would suffice if we were indeed meat legos.

Finding an escort and finding a life partner are significantly different endeavors.

Well, yes, but that's only meaningful if you can actually respond appropriately. Doesn't matter how much your animal bodily instincts flood your body with "oh god yes" chemicals if your brain locks up, gets trapped in a loop of anxiety and rumination.

At that point it turns a potentially great situation into a very bad one, as you get caught up experiencing a conflict between "this woman is beautiful and appears to be at least somewhat friendly/interested" and "it's a lie, it's a trick, she hates me, she'd never go out with me, she's teasing me, she knows she wouldn't touch me with a 10ft pole, it's too good to be true, what if she's just trying to use me by seducing me into doing and buying stuff for her, oh dear, I'm so useless, why am I only good for being taken advantage of and being strung along..."

Meanwhile, your confident friend who has no such handicap, because he's more than happy to believe he has a chance based on previous successes, invited her out for a drink while you're desperately trying to process the mess of thought spaghetti that's filling up your brain.

If I saw that woman, looking like/dressed like that, I couldn't possibly believe she was actually interested in me, she's far too attractive, and her pose/clothing too much like a photoshoot for reality, the only logical answers to me at that time would be either that she's smiling because she's showing off or just being friendly (but has no intention of talking to me), or that she's going to ask me to buy her drinks and then casually wander off somewhere with somebody infinitely more appropriate for her social status, never to be seen again, probably laughing about how much of a clueless, ugly sucker I was for falling for her feminine charms and believing I had any chance of even befriending her, never mind anything more. Even if, in my own head, I was convinced she wasn't interested in the first place.



Although I agree that pretending is a recipe for disaster in all kinds of ways, as someone who has been largely focussed on computing-related passions and educational/career pathways it's next to impossible to find any women, never mind women who are a) single, b) interested, and c) attractive to me.

Issue c) is a lower priority, because I tend to find that personality and interests can hugely amplify how attractive I find a woman, even if physically she wouldn't attract my attention. But issues a) and b) are rather more crucial.

Interest or loneliness-related Meetup groups tend to be overwhelmingly male-attended, my experience in college was one of being surrounded by 99% men (many of whom were just as/more socially inexperienced than I was), and now at work I find the same situation. I simply don't encounter women at a high enough - or even close to a high enough - rate to stand any reasonable chance of meeting a potential partner. The odds are just astronomical.

So then perhaps I'll go to a pub or a nightclub? I have been, many times, but I end up sitting around people-watching or on my phone, desperately wishing I was involved but having no mechanism or opportunity to do so. I simply can't bring myself to intrude, those people tend to be there with their groups of friends, or they're trying to dance with somebody infinitely more confident and attractive than I am.

I simply don't know where to find the right times, places, and people that would be appropriate for me to engage with in that way. The situation doesn't present itself, almost ever. What I need is an event that's explicitly social, for a mixed gender group (with a decent ratio of men:women), but without the pressure of it being a dating event. That would at least give me a fair shot to get to know people, women in particular, perhaps in a group where there are recurring meetups of the same people so familiarity can grow.



Hah, absolutely. You could "simply" pay for an intimate interaction, but it wouldn't mean anything, it would just be an expensive and elaborate alternative to self-pleasure.

Making actual human connections is a very different matter and goes far beyond looking across a golf course and seeing a woman with a highly attractive figure. But that's what many of us want: human connection. Affection, companionship, genuine interest and intimacy, to be wanted and to be appreciated for wanting someone else.

Although I admit I mostly quoted this because "meat legos" made me laugh.

I'm actually looking at two routes right now - lets just call them routes A and B.

Lets say I'm stuck with the possibility that a lot of the red-pill stuff is right, ie. that men and women are too different to be deeply compatible, that some of the needs are even zero-sum in nature, and thus this is a big part of the natural basis for the dating world being a dumpster fire, of which online dating strategies just pour gasoline. If it's really like that most of the Platonic 'shoulds' are looking more like wishful thinking and the limits of personality and neurology are much more physical than one would desire (here also - I've repeatedly found this to be true, to my chagrin and the evidence seems to be much more profound and pervasive than just the relationship sphere - like arguing with people is like arguing with a kind of living geology or stupidity being more like watching a geyser blow than watching a person displaying agency).

My first route then, route A, would be to date a cute traditional girl whose attractive and whose personality makes me feel safe in terms of her good will and desire to love and be loved. I might actually be able to get away with it, meaning I would treat her as well as she's looking to be and her parents would probably love me, it's just that introducing her to who I am and what my interests are is a really uncomfortable proposition - ie. so much of traditionalism is conformity and I'd be leading her way afield on that. I might meet, say, a cute girl whose in her early 20's who isn't jaded, isn't riding on horseback with a cutlass to take heads, and at that time if I introduce her to all of the Jungian and metaphysical stuff I'm into over time, or I give her Michael Pollan's 'How To Change Your Mind', even read or listen to it with her, if she takes to all of it cool! For drum and bass people tend to either love it or hate it (most hate it) and so the most I'd ask for is that she doesn't either a) hate it or b) see it as an obstacle between me and her that must be destroyed. My problem is even there I feel morally icky shaping someone's future in that way who isn't necessarily seeking those things out. I mean if I'm lucky I find out that she had that in her from the start and was rearing to open up that part of her mind and go exploring - awesome! I still don't know what to think though, I find most people are.... well.... most people. The other thing, a girl whose looking for 'excitement' is probably looking for much simpler things - like how half my buddies had sport bikes and she'd want to jump on the back of a Yamaha R1 or something like that.

I mean yeah.... I guess that's a place where I'm ambivalent, and at 43 it's probably more appropriate for me to pick up a naked bike or a cruiser, those are seen as attractive as well, I just don't see myself ever being a stunt rider because I learned a long time ago - my autism hits me in visual processing speed and that had way more to do with my learning difficulty with sports than lack of capacity for coordination, martial arts actually showed me that I could learn pretty much anything if that wasn't an immediate obstacle. That said me picking up a cruiser in the next few years maybe would both help me get out and also maybe enjoy the Zen of cruising around the state and through national parks, maybe meet guys with tangentially similar interests who are heady spiritual introverts but who are gear-headed as well. That added social interaction could possibly open doors again.

What I've really been trying to do for most of my life is look at how my exchanges with women go and what I'm really looking for is a really positive glint of recognition, 'Your hot' doesn't really seem like it's enough, it has to be something more like someone - at long last - seeing someone who reminds them of them. This is where that tends to be rare. To the degree I might have to give up on that since it is that rare, lets just say that I'd call this approach route 0 (zero) since it was my first choice but, seeing that it'll never work, route A would be see the innocent 'girl next door' whose close to half my age, and say sure - that works.

The second route, route B, would be taking the evidence above and saying that instead of leaning into the desire to find a long term partner I should maybe find an escort who I can develop a close friendship with, go sex, drugs, and rock n roll, and enjoy both helping her work through my deeper fantasies and me helping her work through hers. She might be able to expand my reach as well with respect to chemicals. That's a much more Thelemic way to go, ie. a relationship that's for adult development and pleasure rather than making a family but... it's sounding less and less insane as time goes on and really it would be a matter of taking care of my needs in terms of finding things that are actually 'interesting' to me. Route B might actually be the smartest decision I could make, it's just completely counter to any narrative that I've been raised with and I also really don't trust idealized visions in my head - reality and natural entropy of things have a way of interjecting immediate problems.

I'd say as time goes on I'm increasingly looking at route A as, while not impossible, mostly wishful thinking and I'd need someone like that thrust into my life in such a way where we both feel like the 'universe' is telling us its right (women generally need that, I also feel better when that's there). Route B seems like it's the most achievable perhaps but I'd have to think carefully about all the check-sums that I'd want to put in place so I'm not either getting scraped off the pavement by EMS or forensics and I also don't want to lose my grounding with reality and moral responsibility even if I do give the tether a lot of play.

Oh yeah, and from the post above - if anyone has a crush on me here and just isn't sure how to articulate it or bridge the gaps - I have a fifty-something page Drum and Bass thread in Art, Writing, and Music to see if it's relatable. TBH any women who enjoyed what they heard and wanted to add to it would impress the heck out of me. The other piece, the spirituality, if you can think in open dimensions and abstract spaces (like if you're interested in things like kabbalah or meditational modes of the tarot then also a huge plus). AFAICT it wouldn't be that hard for someone to impress me, the question is - would anyone want to.

My guess from what I've seen over the last few decades of my life is that there's something really dismal about how human beings fundamentally relate to each other and that everyone's playing attention keep-away these days in a reactionary manner because they've come to the viewpoint that giving a person attention is giving them status and to give them status is to give 'of' your status which is to promote them and demote yourself - thus everyone's playing by themselves in parallel and that it's hutzpah on my part to even dare suggest that I deserve any attention. That kind of hutzpah seems to be somewhat common but it also seems like the people without it don't do well and even the people who have it get ignored too.

Sadder still, if you try to show people that you're alive and present or wanting to engage in a positive-sum way with others it gets perceived as preening and Darwinian in some way, ie. the possibility that you just want to connect is a ploy because no one just 'wants to connect' by this way of thinking, all needs and desires are ultimately sociopathic, and any other possibility either doesn't exist or people who seem to want it are seen as stupid, wrong, and having some weakness in themselves that needs to be fixed because they either want something that doesn't exist or they're either pretending to be, or even lying to themselves about being, something that's not allowed to exist (because it can't exist because it doesn't exist). I feel like one of the biggest challenges in my life is not letting myself get erased by constant encounter with that kind of algorithmic thinking and it's another reason that I'm a shut in - ie. I feel 'that' every time I'm in public, around other people, and it's like fighting off a poison. The only places I don't feel that... when I think about it... is around some types of high-performing people where what they excel at is an act of love (like mountain bikers and extreme sports types) rather than status-seeking at it's fundamental nature. Maybe that's another tip to me - get a nice cruiser and also spend more time with people who take their competences with athletics, art, music, and finance as contact with the transcendent rather than just a social climbing tool.

Also, TBH, life is hard. It's hard on everyone. To have a relationship that actually makes you happier and makes you a better person in the world it has to be something that adds to and fortifies you as an individual as well as a reciprocal relationship between individuals. If it doesn't do that, or - worst of all worlds - it's a heavy burden in exchange for sex - it subtracts from life and you're better off trying to take care of your needs on your own rather than seeking reciprocity if such isn't available.

Seems like I'm having really good luck in answering my own questions today. Two really good bits of advice for myself:

1) Keep investing so I can easily afford a nice cruiser (Gold Wing, Honda V-Twin, something like that).

2) Get out of the bucket of crabs. If I'm trying to navigate a cluster B personality disorder and avoidant attachment epidemic that might be the lion's share of my problems. This might be why a lot of guys do sprint even maniacally at excellence - not just to get status (though some do) but to get the people who need to pull them down to their own level as far in the rearview as possible because they don't want to be eaten.

Do any of these studies find an optimal level of time to be friends before dating? I kind of worry that if you are friends for too long, the other one might become so familiar with you in that role that they couldn't see you as a potential partner. I do know 2 couples, though, who were friends for a very long time before they started dating and both couples ended up marrying.

Yes, one needs something to light the spark....

Sorry dude, that wasn't my intention in posting that pic. I just wanted to illustrate that intelligence is not the biggest motivating factor in creating a spark of attraction between two people.