Turned 31 without a girlfriend. Is it time to give up?

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To answer Marknis:

Yes, it's time to give up on obsessing over getting a girlfriend. What you need to do now is focus on yourself and develop interests and hobbies of your own so you're in a much better place to meet women.

No one wants damaged goods. Get yourself into a better place, then chase skirts.

And, before you object, you CAN do it. Heck, you drove into Austin by yourself, which put you head and shoulders above me (personally, I hate going into Little Rock). Trust yourself and do you. I'm rooting for you.

^^^Do what SHE said...

The world is overpopulated by NTs, not NDs. We need to keep the balance between NTs and NDs, otherwise, future NDs will get an even harder time.



You don't need to make the same mistakes as NTs.

Keep the balance? I think it's pretty lopsided. It's an NT world unfortunately and there is less tolerance of the ND person as time passes.
20 years ago working I could say to coworkers, "Hey, I don't do well with pop-ins to my desk because I'm a deep concentration kind of guy. If you need my assistance in a non-emergency situation shoot me an email with a little background and let's chat about it in a meeting." They would respect this and this was before I had a diagnosis.

Now I had to go and get an ASD diagnosis to try and gain the same safe space I had two decades ago and suffer through the reality that being public about my diagnosis hurts my ability for advancement. Two decades ago my coworkers saw me as an eccentric genius who's time was valuable where now I'm just seen as a rigid a**hole.

People used to accept that we're all individuals with our own code for success. Now it's just "I want to do this now regardless of your feelings so you're going to have to deal with my attitude."

I truly feel the leaders of decades past were mostly high functioning ND's who didn't have to sort through a myriad of different rules for different groups of people just to fire a crappy employee. An ND cannot succeed and thrive in the NT world full of people with victim complexes who are using government to protect them based on how they look and are able to avoid anyone ever calling them out for their weaknesses...

Until I can pave a path for myself to earn a living without needing to submit to the corporate nightmare I find it completely irresponsible to bring another human into the world with my brain type.

I suggest looking for job with a suitable corporate culture to your needs. When it gets noisy I can close the door on my office and nobody will bother me unless it is really important. Most people come back later when my boss closes his door to take a phone call.

I saw two cute looking girls talking outside a coffee house while driving around at dark. Should I have tried to talk to them or would I come off as creepy?

Impossible to say dude , there are a lot of factors involved.

I always hear about guys picking up girls from social places at night, especially ones that highly sexual avenues but I’ve even seen guys say they did the same things at anime conventions as well as music shows. I remember going with some co-workers to see another co-workers’s band play at some abandoned building in the woods and there were a lot of punks, Goths, and metal heads there. It really surprised me because my parents always pressured me to be one of the “good kids” and that didn’t translate to social success at all but these people were doing the opposite and they were having fun. I saw lots of guys cuddling and making out with girls all over the place and I am pretty sure some were having sex somewhere as well. Thanks for nothing, redneck father and control freak mother.

I for one could not approach girls in my 30's with the intent to pick them up , I am lacking in this skill. In fact I would say I am the worst person here to ask advice on the opposite sex as I think I fluked my way through relationships.

Yes, cold approaches with strangers out of blue never work, especially at dark. So DON'T do it.

Don't believe the proclaimed stories that they will come after this post.

"Boy cold approaching a stranger girl" is something ret*d that should remain in old novels, it's no more feasible*, it's done for. Period.

*Regardless of the venue, even in a pub it is no more feasible.

I relate to this 100%! My parents (particularly my dad) were super overprotective of me as a kid (I think partially as an instinctive response to the fact I almost died as an infant) even though I got along much better with the troublemakers in school

The “troublemakers” at school were rednecks so it would’ve lead to disaster if I hung out with them.

I'm going to be a broken record: you can't live your life looking for a relationship. They happen when you aren't looking. Live your life for you. Find a way to be content with who you are and what you do without having a partner to do these things with. Learn to be happy with you. Be your best self.

This isn't "giving up." This is being a healthy and complete individual.

The happy side effect will be that healthy and complete individuals are much more likely to meet their life partners (without even looking) and have it stick.

The way you obsess over this issue is literally a turn off. You are shooting yourself in the foot by staying focused on it.

Right. It all comes down to context. If you’re looking to make this happen, then you have to understand that girls will go out with the intention of getting picked up for...whatever. How do you spot these women? Do you know the appropriate way to approach them?

The cold approach does work in different contexts to a varying extent. I recently got back into community theater. It’s been more than 10 years and most everyone I knew is long gone. But there are women there I work closely with, we know each other’s names, send messages back and forth on GroupMe. If it’s never appropriate to cold-approach, and I mean EVER, then nobody would ever form any kind of relationship.

Would I feel comfortable randomly asking these girls out on a cold approach? No. But after talking to them regularly for a week or so, I don’t see why it has to be a problem. At that point it wouldn’t qualify as a cold approach, anyway.

A lot of times it might APPEAR to be a cold approach. More likely it’s two people who already know each other or have interacted before, or maybe have some other connection, like a mutual friend or something.

As to coming off creepy...it’s a problem I have, too. All I can say to that is if you become aware of what it is that makes you seem creepy (IF that’s really the case), you can adopt habits to fix that. Otherwise, people just have to get to know you. Once people think you’re ok and harmless, they’ll pretty much accept you.

There was a disabled guy at my church, and I still think about the poor guy. Somehow he attached himself to me and my family. He kept trying to invite himself over to my place to play video games, to which I kept telling him that I don’t really play games that much. And then he started wearing my wife’s patience thin, getting eerily close to our children and having zero boundaries. We actually do have a Sunday school class for special needs church members, and he absolutely REFUSED to have anything to do with it. Instead, he just kinda aimlessly lurked around the building, which put off a lot people, who in turn would get upset and come up to me and ask what drugs he’s on, like I’m responsible for him or something. Eventually he just vanished.

What I tell people on the outside, or for new people coming in, is that they have a bad xenophobic streak, that they are wary of outsiders who don’t fit in exactly. HOWEVER, and this is the important part, with patience anyone can break into that circle and feel accepted. It just takes time to get there. I’m proof of that. I hung out for a couple years, woke up one day, and suddenly I was a paid, on-staff accompanist. I don’t have any deep dark secrets on how to do that other than to say I was always THERE, so good things happened at the right time. I play piano, direct volunteer instrumentalists, accompany choir practice, and play for weddings and funerals. A few years after that started, my wife started teaching Sunday school. So I know that dealing with some of the wealthiest families in the area isn’t a matter of your own personal wealth, or how you look to someone at first meeting, or your speaking ability, or whether you came from a rich, local family that’s been here since sharecropping was a thing.

And that’s exactly the way it works for cracking ANY new group of people and making new friends. I can honestly say that if I weren’t spoken for, there’s not one single person at my church I’d ever WANT to ask out. The theater is a better prospect. However, over half the people there are underaged. But then there are those who aren’t. And if you get involved with that kind of thing, it usually serves as a gateway for making connections elsewhere. You’re not going to worry about cold approaches when you get there because at that point you already know everyone. Or looking like a creep...you WON’T because they’ll understand that’s just who you are. It might be easy to lose hope because of how much time it takes, but anyone can win at this.

So true.
Amazing how this advice gets ignored time and time again.
People sense desperation. One can't fake their way out of being desperate. The only answer is to focus on and improve self.

Interesting advice.  I wonder how so many other people arrive at the same conclusion and make it work ... ?