How do you keep dating from wrecking everything else?

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This is a question for those aspies who have a record of at least some stable dating.

I've been trying to do regular dating the last couple months. I'm on the big two dating sites, OKC and PoF, and I'm getting dates without too much trouble. No real surprise to me, because the last few years I've gotten very good at basic hookup. Dating is just hookup dialed way back and done way slower.

I'm 34 and I've turned a lot of my basic social and financial s**t around in the last couple years. The problem I'm running into is that all the relentless conversation, texting, messaging and general emotional maintenance required is taking a toll on everything else in my life. My work requires extended mental engagement. And that's hard to do when not messaging a chick back sets off a whole series of emotional landmines.

I've tried actually stating that I need s**t dialed down. All that does is lead to snotty messages to the effect, "Well, I see you're losing interest. Sorry." It's like, holy f**k, how the f**k do people actually do this?! You can't politely limit attention without being accused of aloofness or withdrawing or disinterest or whatever. It's nuts.

How the hell do I date people and still function?

I'm about at the point where I'm gonna give up on the dating thing and just go back to hookup. That s**t at least wasn't wrecking my work. Dating is so exhausting it's unreal.

Maybe instead of dedicating all of this time to messaging back and forth you could focus your energy on the dates themselves and face to face conversations? Just explain that you're super busy (maybe even explain what you are doing if you think it would be of any interest) but would love to meet up for a drink or something on Saturday night, or whenever you are available. Many people are more attracted to other's who seemingly have busy, fulfilling lives, and those the don't respect that may be a little more needy than what you're willing to deal with anyway.

I'm having no trouble getting face-to-face dates,

The problem is filling the spaces between dates. Women like the constant texting. They never frickin stop. Last night I went to a show and told this one chick I'd be out of communication for a while. Her response? More texts and a sexy photo while I'm sitting there with my phone off.

It's annoying because I don't understand how a hint like that could go misunderstood.

It sounds like these women are failing to understand your needs. Maybe you they're just not right for you and you need somebody a little more independent? Sorry, I don't know what else to say as it sounds like you've been as clear as you could possibly be about your schedule and they are simply not listening to you and taking it personally.

Last edited by ruckus on 24 Jan 2013, 8:39 am, edited 2 times in total.

I think this is good advice.

how many texts a day are you talking about?

there may be a disconnect between the personality of the type of girls you like to date and what they are going to be like with you most of the time. ruckus is right - you might want to go for more independent (or low key) women. if you are dating fun and flirty girls that are in non-stop party mode on the weekend, then they may expect the weekdays to be like that as well.

you might also consider an older demographic if you are tending to go for women who are fairly young, as it seems they might have more of a culture of steady communication. i could be wrong about that though. it just seems that younger people seem to have more communication with friends and dates as part of their regular day, but i could be mistaken. are you dating women who are in your own age range, or are they much younger?

I'm going to echo some of the other guys on here and say that it shouldn't be this way with the right kind of woman. I've made it clear with the girls I'm dating that I'm a very independent person and can't really handle co-dependency right now. It's worked out well for me.

I'd have to go back and count. The answer is "a lot". Especially if I make the mistake of feeding into it.



The problem is I work from home, I'm not religious and I'm not in school. The only two places I have to find women are online and at the bar. Coaxing a stable women from online to actually meet in person is just impossible. They're all so scared and damaged from whatever pushed them into online dating that they'll never venture out of their houses again. All that's left are the flirts and partiers.



That's easy in the abstract. It's much harder in application. Needy women hide the fact they're needy and only feed it out in small doses until they think they've acclimated you to their neediness.



I'm 34. In the last month I've dated a 31 y.o., a 38 y.o. and a 25 y.o.

31 y.o. seemed cool but flaked once things got physical -- a great make-out session was followed by a "f**k off" with zero explanation.

38 y.o. was such a relentless attention whore who was hitting on anything with a penis on the first date. I left her ass at the bar.

25 y.o. is the current problem maker. She opened me on PoF and played everything off as if she just wanted something in the range of casual dating. And then she slowly let the crazy slip out so that within two weeks she was pretty much in full-bore "I love you" mode. I've tried a couple times to tell her to dial things back, but every time I do she freaks out and says something to the effect of "you make me feel like a whore!"

The problem I have is that any time I have ever tried dating, this happens. Every chick I have ever been emotional with goes from "gosh, I can't take real dating, let's just be chill" to "OMG! I wanna have your babies!" in a couple weeks. I've tried different age ranges, different ethnicities, different backgrounds. It makes no difference.

It makes miss the good old days of just sitting at my computer coding til 4am. I have no idea why I ever decided to do this s**t to myself. At this point, I don't give a f**k if everyone thinks I'm a gay hermit.

I've met a few women like that from online dating, who basically send texts all the time. Actually I'd say it's about half of the people I've talked to from those sites. Always seemed so weird to me, particularly if I haven't met them in person yet (there was this one girl who was sending me like 10-15 a day before we had even met in person, I was like chill out a bit woman!). I have no qualms myself about telling them straight up, "You know, I'm really busy with work and I just don't have the time during the day to text and whatnot". Seems to work fine for me, if someone can't be respectful of that are they really worth dealing with?

With regards to the on-line dating route, women won't just meet anywhere and that's part of a safety measure not because they were "damaged". The fact is though, they also have to meet with someone in person eventually if they actually intend to find a partner on-line, so saying that women on on-line dating sites aren't willing to meet anyone in person is illogical. What you need to do when you arrange to meet someone on-line is to meet in a public place without either of you knowing initially where the other one lives. Also make sure you are both able to get back home without relying the date to drop you off.



You should tell them that they're going too fast. Also the 25 y.o. sounds like she has a problem.

I am the worst at texting and talking on the phone. I would rather just do it face to face. I usually can not at all tell what someone means, are they being funny, are they mad etc? While someone else would rather carry on an important conversation via text...it makes no sense to me.
I will be in the middle of texting and think, oh crap, gotta go do some laundry. Then hours later I remember I was texting someone (oops). I tell them that I get sidetracked and that's why I am not an avid texter. Maybe you could even turn your text off through your service provider?
I have learned over the years that what is best for me is to not give my number out, therefore I hardly get any text or calls. I can focus better if I am not constantly distracted.

That is precisely what I try to do. You'd be surprised the number of online dating females who like the attention but are averse to the risk of actual dating.



The problem is, as far as I can ever see, they all have a problem of some kind.



I know! I've even gone so far as to explicitly tell people texting and messaging services are terrible ways to communicate. People don't appreciate the value of face-to-face interaction the way we all do around here.

I swear to gawd, it was right around the time I started to try to communicate like a human that all the humans decided to stop communicating like humans.



Yeah, but you have to communicate with them to build up to a date. The problem is filling in the gaps when there's nothing to do or say. Everyone is constantly trying to fill in the silence. And they take it personally if too much silence is allowed to happen.

I am having the same problem with the current date.

She runs (rented or owns) a pharmacy, probably with rental's cost obligations though- still couldn't figure it out or talked about it, she doesn't like to talk too much about it nor I asked about (she changed the subject when I first asked about it and I didn't opened the subject ever since, probably she's paranoid of gold-diggers too (yay!)

What I know that she stays at the shop till 9:30 pm (and starts around 9-10 am) , 6 days a week.

So her only off time is Sunday or when she delegates her best friend, a pharmacist too, for like one hour - so the only way to keep in touch with her during the week is through internet communication (texting/voice calling since, so far, I can only meet her up once per week...at most, and her shop isn't nearby too.


The chat/texting can be very time consuming.

Nursing student in an intensive program. Same problem, basically, just she starts earlier and drives to school, too.

and she's second majoring too


-.- that's modern life we're talking about here, adapt or die

OP. It sounds as if you came along a possible solution in your original post but may not see it clearly. I think the solution is to find a way to not allow anyone to be a distraction for you. I know that is a solution considering my history.