What do I have to do? Why is trying to date so damn hard?

Post Reply New Topic

Maybe the lesson really is to beware of whores/sl*ts. No offense, but I've noticed that as Aspies sometimes it takes someone a little too forward to get us out of our shells or to make the first move to reel us in. My first GF was also a borderline sl*t, though she never cheated. Since I've cheated before, I guess I might be a bit of a slut too (can guys be sl*ts?), but we know the measuring stick is different for women.

Last edited by billsmithglendale on 18 May 2009, 11:46 am, edited 1 time in total.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I am physically attracted to young women, but mentally im attracted to....anyone!

Despite being hetrosexual I would rather have a lifelong good, loyal, trustworthy friend who is on my wavelength even if the same sex, than someone who is controlling, and horrid. I would just have to accept a life of celibacy!

I am 26 never had a g/f, despite having several chances to 'get laid' I failed to pick up on the subtle cues. hmmm why is she moving her face around in that way? Do I smell bad or something?! ! It is even worse now, im less outgoing, more bitter and just an angry so and so.

Im too busy thinking about world affairs and my interests tbh.

Wow, my post above got edited like crazy. All of the "different than me" stuff above was sl*ts before. Did a moderator do that, or is that some form of censorship on this site? It really makes me end up looking like a complete tool who can't write -- I don't appreciate it, moderator. Warn me if you must, but don't edit what I say without adding in a note -- it's bad form.

Wrongplanet just lost a member (me), for that censorship.

To the OP: great post. Very expressive and poignant. Could have been written by me, for the most part. I have noticed the same thing. Any half-way decent looking woman with a half-way decent personality will have a relationship of some kind going at any given time, if they have the slightest desire to be with someone. The ones that don't... the ones that say they love being single, or have no interest in dating, are generally off-limits or to be avoided, with very rare exception.

Where does that leave you?

As much as this annoys me, I'd have to agree with this statement as being true-to-life. Available girls don't go through long periods of singledom for no reason; they have relationships until they find someone better, get bored, or are forced to find a new partner for whatever reason. The concept of "getting in line" seems ridiculous to me. This isn't McDonalds or an amusement park, this is life. I have no desire to 'wait in the wings' for some woman to hit the skids in her current relationship before she decides to turn my way. To me, it seems like there's a stench of desperation and low self-esteem in both parties in such a scenario. I don't know about you, but I don't feel I could handle being with the type of person who felt they always had to be in a relationship and just felt lost or without direction in a period of being without a significant other. People who end up like that tend to base their entire life and sense of self off "a relationship". I don't think that is healthy. Everyone should have a deep inner purpose to their life, something that relies on no one, and no one can take it away from you.

A relationship only adds to what you already have. What do you have now?

This is not to say you can't occasionally feel "down in the dumps" over being single or lonely. We all feel disappointed, depressed, unhappy, or unsatisfied sometimes... we can't deny our basic emotions. Heck, I'd even go so far as to say it's okay to feel very depressed/unhappy/frustrated over being lonely if you've been single a long time. Maybe 5-10 years? People reaching age 30 without ever having a real relationship? Seems like a perfectly legit reason to feel a lingering air of concern or sadness that you cannot shake.

I despise it when NT friends lecture you about the virtues or being single, about loving yourself, telling you that a relationship won't change your life or turn an ultimately unhappy life into a fulfilling one. Let's consider the source, shall we? Most people who say this probably haven't been truly single for more than a few months since they were teenagers. Who are they kidding?

Show me someone who's been single (no intimate relationships) their entire life and is very happy/satisfied and holds high self-esteem, and I'll show you someone who is: a.) asexual, b.) a very strange individual (even by AS standards), or c.) Buddha. I don't believe such an animal exists, and if one does, we mere mortals cannot be expected to rise to this level.



If you can lower your standards and still feel self-respect and satisfaction with your lot in life, I'd say go for it. I wish it were that easy for me. I don't have an "anybody is better than nobody" mindset. Some people do. Maybe you've heard this line before, but being alone is usually better than being with the wrong person. I have first-hand experience with that at least a couple times. Most of those times, I lowered my standards, and sometimes denied instinct and even common sense, all in the name of "finding someone".

I want an attractive partner who has her wits about her. This doesn't mean I will only settle for a supermodel with a high IQ. I like quirkiness, weird habits, and flawed human qualities. A lot of what I consider to be "cute" is generally not considered cute by popular opinion. And vice versa. I don't follow the mainstream very well... never have. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I guess.



I'm very leery of this line of thinking. I've been single, enjoying my solitude for nearly 28 years, with few (if any) thoughts of wanting to find love or even a short-term girlfriend -- guess what happened in those 28 years? Nothing. Two years ago, I started making it a priority to be more social and seek out friends, and ultimately, a relationship. My life has gotten more busy, I am getting out and doing things, and I've even gone on a few dates (although nothing worked out for more than a couple months tops). I still haven't met anyone worth my time. I've pretty much always had to lower my standards to end up with these dates, as well as making a mindful and devoted effort to finding someone to date. So 30 years of experience tells me: not looking = not finding.

I probably still have a lot of life left in me even at 30 years of age, but it would be nice to share my life with someone while I still have a little bit of youth left in me -- otherwise I would feel robbed. If I make it to middle-age (40-ish) as a bachelor, I think I will be single for life (and statistics overwhelmingly bear this out too).



Good on you for trying to find a silver lining. At times, I have tried comforting myself with similar thoughts. Unfortunately, your level of "devotion" would probably not be an attractive quality to potential mates. People don't want ultimate devotion (even if they think they do), they want challenge and unpredictability... especially women. What you have, at best, is a recipe to be walked over and taken advantage of. Sorry.

At this stage in my life, I've beat myself down enough. I can't handle waking up and having to face another day against what seems like this endless struggle of futility. All I can do is work to improve myself every day. All else is madness. There's already so much unhappiness in the world -- why add more to it? Most people don't even face the same problems that we do here, yet they are still deeply unhappy. Just goes to show you, the mind will invent or find reasons to create misery if it wants to. Just as you can create misery, you can create happiness. The mind always takes the path of least resistance, which in this case, is playing the victim.

I can only speak for myself, but I am taking some positive actions. I've suffered chronic insomnia most of my life and it has caused me to develop a peculiar schedule. Sometimes I don't get to bed until nearly dawn, and sleep into the afternoon. Having a retail job with quirky days/hours doesn't help with developing good habits. I am working on getting up early in the morning and getting to bed before it gets late.

Along with getting up earlier, I am starting to get more exercise. Taking a jog, going to the gym, going for a walk, etc. All these activities get me out of the house and usually in situations where I come into contact with other people.

I've also started to reconnect with old friends and relatives, with the hope of rebuilding relationships and social networks.

Most importantly, I'm spending more time doing things that bring me joy, instead of wallowing in those thoughts that create misery. In the throes of clinical depression, it can be difficult to enjoy anything or even see that a path exists through it. But, there is always light at the end of the tunnel, even if you cannot see it right now.

The difference between this and McDonalds/an Amusement park is that unlike those, you can stand in multiple lines simultaneously when it comes to women. Hell, it's not even standing in line, because a line guarantees you service -- it's more like running for office, or being in a beauty pageant. You're up against other candidates, and if you play your part right, you might win -- otherwise, you can probably "run for office" again later, and for multiple "offices". Life's one big ongoing election.

But it also works both ways -- if you're attractive to the opposite sex, they are also competing for you. And if you answer "Well, I'm not attractive to the opposite sex," you might as well stop playing now, because you're never going to win that way, at least not with the women you want. One way or another, you need to be able to compete and have women compete for you. And that means dressing decently, being financially self-sufficient and responsible, and having some kind of positive personality that can interact in some decent social way and communicate. It can be done, even (and especially) by Aspies.

I think you're right about having a purpose in life to focus on (or at least a good hobby), but I think you are way too hard on women for finding a partner on an ongoing basis. You're ignoring biology and the fact that we are wired to find a mate and reproduce -- abstaining from that flies in the face of nature. Even having a deep purpose is more of a philosophical pursuit than a realistic life pursuit -- we can't all be Jesus, Moses, Mohammed, Kant, Nietzsche, etc (all of whom had fairly difficult lives). Your average cave man, dog, or cat had no other purpose other than to live long enough to pass on its genes and maybe raise its young long enough for them to hit sexual maturity. Let's not confuse high-minded ideals (yours) with biological reality.

Which brings me back to my premise -- if you want to get the high quality "candidates," you have to play the game. It's very egocentric to think the world will bend to your will -- you in fact will need to bend instead. And when the game starts working in your favor, once you play by the rules, you'll be very happy for it. Nothing beats having two women compete for your affection, or better yet, having two girlfriends at once

You make polygamy and/or polyamory sound like it's normal...


What is it with the competition? I'm not one who enjoys competing (I'm more of a "live and get along" person)... It's one thing to be a desirable person (as in dressing decently and being financially self-sufficient), but I want to find a girlfriend without fighting off some other guy (or, conversely, having some crazy ex-bf send me death threats for getting with "his" gf)... while I certainly have the ability to come out on top in a fight, I got into enough fights in high school, and I don't want to fight anymore...

The problem with that way women do things is that by them only getting with us after they break up with someone else means that we're effectively always going to be second fiddle to someone else...


I've had two women fight for my attention before (literally... I was the rope in a tug-of-war), but that feeling only made me feel even more used in the end...

I'm not proposing polygamy/polyamory (though not a bad idea from my POV, I would have loved it), but I'm saying that you need to have more than one poker in the fire, eggs in multiple baskets. If something falls through with one, you have others still in progress. Once you land one, you can be monogamous, but still maintain platonic friendships in case something doesn't work out. It's just managing the risks the smart way.

Sadly, life is competition. All forms of life compete for resources -- a mate being one of them. You don't need to fight anyone, I've never been in a fight (knock on wood), even when I banged some guys GF behind his back and he found out about it. If you don't live in the ghetto or an honor-based culture (like the deep American South or the Mideast), you probably are never going to have to fight another guy over a girl. I'm really not sure why you ended up in so many fights in HS, because if anything, I saw less fights there than any other grade level I was in. As an adult, there are laws and strict consequences relating to assault that should in theory deter violence against you.

It's unrealistic to think that you'll ever be the first one to have someone, unless of course you find a virgin (which begs the question, why is she still one?). You're not playing second fiddle so much as coming in another phase of someone's life, catching them when they are more mature and have a better idea of what they want in life. Sexually, it's a bonus, because, assuming they don't have any STDs, they are likely to be far more adventurous and skilled.

Don't be the rope in a tug of war -- jerk them around. Make them work for you, not the other way around. My life philosophy is that whatever happens, I should not end up on the losing end of any transaction. Win-Win is fine for me, but I will not accept Win-Lose (I lose) or Lose-Lose (we both lose).

Maintaining platonic friendships with multiple women is easy... but I feel like if I get romantic feelings for more than one at the same time, I am, in essence, cheating on both (not literally, but I still feel like I betrayed both of them)...

The fights in high school (and even more in middle school) were mostly because of my primal natore: If I get competitive, I get overly obsessed with winning that I disregard the feelings of pretty much everyone around me... and then the megalomania sets in...


I'll agree on the first statement, but that's not what I was trying to get at... what I meant by my remarks there was that I want to find a woman that has, at the very least, spent some time being single after breaking up with her previous bf... I want a woman to pick me out because she sees something attractive about me, not because she's just desperately looking for a bf after her breakup that happened 5 minutes ago...


That's a rather self-centered outlook, don't you think?

Yes. You have to look out for number 1, and women will not respect you if you don't. They use the guys who cater to everyone else, but never take them seriously as boyfriend/husband material -- after all, who wants a guy who everyone else walks all over? What kind of provider would he be for his children?

I don't let people walk all over me, but I don't consider myself a superior lifeform to all around me like every other man on the planet does... and narcissists would make even worse providers for children, since they would place their own life and well-being over that of their kids...

Forget Girls. Quit Trippin'

I don't like the idea of waiting in line, or competing against other guys for a womans attention either. I don't play those games. Has this hurt my chances of finding a nice girl, probably, but I still have my self respect, and the satifaction of knowing I'm not feeding their egos. This is one of the reasons why woman have the upper hand in the dating game...because guys give them the "power".

If you don't love or value yourself, no one else will. Things got a lot better for me once I realized this. True narcissism is actually pretty rare, and it is normal to have some instincts for self-preservation.

Case in point, and an unromantic one -- At work, I had a "friend" from a previous job, 9 years younger, who it was clear to me was not respecting me anymore, if he ever did. Since he came to the new job, he had been spending less and less time talking to me, and at one point we were mutually ignoring each other (me in reaction to him) for about 6 months. He also pretty much never invited me out to lunch anymore, yet still thought he could pal around with me and call me derisive names while "pal-ing around."

As of Friday, I had had enough. I sent him a quite blunt e-mail saying that this pal-ing around was over, and expressed my feelings about the relationship. Not in a bitchy way, but a "keep me out of it and lets only be professional" way. He was shocked -- he was used to being able to treat me as he liked. Now he's scared, and he should be. I think I'm often too nice and put up with abuse too long with the hope that it will end, when really I should have bared my teeth or bit early on. It didn't help that I was going through a lot of emotional turmoil when I met this person, so I was vulnerable, but I cleaned house as of Friday. I refuse to have anyone treat me like that and consider me a "friend." There's nothing I get from this person that justifies the friendliness and effort I put into the relationship.

It sounds like you have a similar viewpoint with your female relationships, which is good. What is weird is that for a lot of women, they actually semi-enjoy being jerked around a bit. Maybe it's just something more natural for women -- maybe they like having a challenge. All I know is that Mr. Nice Guy only gets me so far, and then I need to turn up the Nasty, or I don't get respect. And if there's one thing I despise in life, it's not getting the respect I deserve. I won't be the Omega Wolf. It's Alpha or something close to it.