Dating and Making Friends: Labels

Post Reply New Topic

I've based these all on my personal experience (I've recieved each of these labels at one point or another) so they are hardly scientific but this is what I've noticed.

The 3 criteria I'm using for the equation are:
Social Awkwardness
Self-awareness of said awkwardness
Acceptance of said awkwardness

1.) Awkward + Unaware + Accepting = Annoying

This was me for the majority of my life prior to my diagnosis. I was super wierd (though oblivious to the full extent) and could make friends but struggled maintaining them. I had (and still do have) a sense of humor that few people truly understood and many would find off putting. I ended up dating a girl for 5+ years that most other people found even more annoying than me (I was unaware of this too.)

2.) Awkward + Unaware + Self concious= a**hole

Numerous friendships (and employment opportunities) ended when my goofy exterior (my acceptance of my wierdness) would drop and my more bitter and melencholic nature would come out. I was super introverted and closed off not wanting to be around anyone but also not having the awareness necessary to be tactful about it. This was me for the other half of my life prior to my diagnosis. Bullys in highschool would exploit this.

3.) Awkward + Selfaware + Self concious= Creepy

Summer 2012, less than a year after my diagnosis, I spent a month and a half living in a hotel room in Dallas for my job training along with dozens of other government employees. It was kind of like a second college except I was truly selfaware for the first time of just how poorly I fit in and still hadn't developed the coping mechanisms necessary to make it work. I overcompensated like crazy, trying desperately to be an extrovert and melted down a few times. I was also lonely and desperate for female companionship and would awkwardly flirt with just about every girl there. My friend and I even tried various PUA tactics to no success that year. I later found out that they'd been calling me "Creepy Mike" behind my back the whole time. f*****g a**holes........

4.) Awkward + Selfaware + Accepting = Quirky.

This is me now and it wasn't untill a got to this point that I started getting real attention in the casual dating market (sometimes even more than I could handle.) I stopped caring what the ignorant, vapid, shallow and insufferably boring masses (95% of single women and men, really) thought of me. I was accepting of my unabashedly wierd self, blunt, honest and sympathetic and reflected it in my laid back demeaner and sense of humor. The 5% of awkward girls started making themselves available to me for dates, friends with benefits, platonic friends, and eventually even a serious monogamous relationship.

Here's the secret: Weird people like other weird people. Its that simple. Pretending to be normal (or some uberconfident perfect casanova that you think all women are pining for) will have no benefit for most of us and will, if anything have the opposite of the intended effect. Normal people will eventually (usually right away) realize there's something off about you. Weird people (who would normally get along with the real you) will pass you right by because you're being a fake.

I believe it's more than possible to spin your awkwardness into a positive label and subvert the mainstream dating rules designed for NTs. This is called "Aspie Gaming." Or it will be once I release my book. You should spend all your moneys on it, fyi.

Last edited by Geekonychus on 02 Jan 2014, 2:49 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Haha! Well good job then

I'll be checking in a year later.

Adds to tracking list...
Stalk.creep++;

Very insightful. I've been through all of those stages in my life, too. And guess what I've found: whatever stage I happen to be in is the kind of people I attract into my life. So now I'm resolved to remain in the quarky/quirky category, and stop attracting annoying, assh*le-ish, creepy people.

Thats an even simpler way to put it and it's totally true! I have no patience for the kind of people I attracted in my a**hole phase. None of them are friends anymore anyway.

Excellent! I think I will have to think about it further, I could explain my life and my path using that theory. What is the difference between the a**hole stage and the creepy stage, in more depth?

Geeko's Noble Fourfold Path to Enlightenment.

I'm sure there's plenty of overlap between the two. For me, the

The a**hole stage is very standoffish. In the past, I would be accused of being angry because of my neutral facial expression (frowny), my quiteness, lack of eye contact and desire to be alone. Usually people would take this as a diss regardless of actual intent. "I'm being nice and he's dismissing me, what an a**hole!"

I lacked the selfawareness necessary to realize the true issue and now it's fairly easy to make a simple cursery change to my behavior (i.e, put on fake smile, nod in aknowledgement or find an excuse to be left alone) that mitigates at least some of the issue.
Not caring too much helps but in a place of employment or other important social situations that can only go so far. Once people get to know you, they'll be less likely to take that behavior as a diss (especially if you're upfront and have a sense of humor about being shy/awkward.)

The Creeper stage for me, came from gaining some sense of self awareness. Suddenly I had a diagnosis and realized just how big a fish out of water I was. Rather than engaging others as I normally would (Annoying), I would overcompensate pushing myself way out there(forcing small talk, making eye contact waaaaay too long, flirting at inappropriate times, coming across as uber-desperate) to the point of making others uncomfortable. I certainly wasn't comfortable with myself and people would pick up on that either conciously or subconciously.

I was an introvert trying waaaaaaaaay to hard to be extroverted. I know plenty of other people (including my ex) who suffered from and continue to suffer from this issue. One on one they are awesome, nice and supporting people worthy of being valued friends once you get to know them. Put them in a group of people and they become someone completely different. Desperate for approval and wanting to be liked, they conform thier personality to what they think others want from them. As a result, the Hyperextroverted Introvert is one of the most difficult people to be around. The ironic thing, is that if they were just themselves more people would like them.

Hmmm........I was thinking:
"The Aspie Game: A Social Misfit's Guide to Dating and Making Friends."



"Geeko's Noble Fourfold Path to Enlightenment" will be my more mainstream general lifestyle guide that I release after I become a world renowned advice guru due to the unprecedented success of my first book........ After Oprah endorses this one, I'll have a swimming pool full of money to swim in.

First of all, did you mean quirky instead of quarky?

And another one. Do you believe going through your creepy stage was a necessary step to take in order to get to the other side and reach the quirky/quarky one? Or do you think there are ways from someone to go from one directly to the other? Which ways would those be?

Fixed. I only have "internet explorer" on my work computer (no spell check on the browser) so the occasional grammer/spelling error should be expected.

As for your question:
In my case, yes.
For others I'm not sure. It will be a bit different for everyone. For the socially awkward, dating generally means a ton of trial and error before you even start to get it right. You will make mistakes (a metric f**kton of them, most likely.) Thing is, they stop become mistakes as soon as you learn from them. The problem I see from many people here is that they let the fear of making a mistake (or being judged) cause them to give up the race right at the beginning or not even get out of the gate. That is the real mistake.

The other big one is learning the complete wrong lesson from an experience (i.e. "All women/men are/want __________," "I shouldn't be trustful of others", "I'm unlovable", "if only I had been perfect.........etc.") and regressing into an even more hopeless state. It gets worse if they let thier bad experiences make them bitter and sexist. They go from "guys who struggle with the ladies" to "certified MRA-grade p**** repellents." Women who do the same are also quite unattractive (that's where the straw femenist stereotype comes from.)

Using an entire gender to scapegoat all your personal struggles will all but ensure that the members of that afformentioned gender won't want anything to do with you. This should be obvious but based on some of the stuff I read here, it really isn't. This is where the overlap between a**hole and Creeper tends to blur.

weird,geeky girls ''hate''me. when comes to normal platonic friendship with women,
their all regular nt's.I've tried going after ''weird''girls,''geeky''girls and they
end up ''hating''me. Believe it or not,I get treated better by pretty nt women
than I do by ''weird''girls.Yes,I have pissed off,some pretty nt women,with
my pickup lines,but at least I actual did something,the ''weird''girls they
just stop talking to me,I never use pickup lines,they just started ''hating''
me.Even the pretty nt women,who I've pissed off,at least still say hi,
or do very brief small talk.But ''weird''girls treat me like crap,I've always
been on my best behavior,yet they ignore me,if I say ''hi''they say
nothing.Take what side you want.

Nobody is obligated to like you. Even other weird people.

I'm pretty sure that when socially awkward women are not interested in (or creeped out by) someone, they are more likely to simply ignore or dismiss that person. As opposed to more NT women who are expected to be friendly and polite out of curtesy.

The fact that you can type with no hint of irony "I've always been on my best behavior" is pretty clear evidence that you aren't capable or willing to look at yourself objectively. You're far from the worst case, but anyone familiar with your posts on this board (and some of the overt/offputting ways you approach women) would tell you that's a silly assertion.

If only you could just step outside your body to see how you come across..........
If a girl is friendly to you but still rejects your advances, you make a thread about mixed signals..........
If a girl simply ignores you (thus making her feelings clear and straightforward) you assert that she's mean......... It's almost like you're angry at them for exhibiting Aspie traits.

I've been the one having to do the rejecting before, I can tell you it is a no win situation. Either you're a "manipulative jerk" who lead them on or a "heartless a**hole" who doesn't care about their feelings.

Perhaps you should be working on trying to empathize with the women you approach and imagine yourself in thier shoes.........rather than just approaching the issue from a self-centered "I can do no wrong so therefore they are the one's with the problem" perspective.

Aspies may struggle with cognative empathy but our (usually) higher than average affective empathy can be one of our greatest strengths if we know how to use it.

it's not me,it's the ladies(not all)nothing wrong with me.I have female friends,I can
get along with women.Not everyone has to like me,yes,I agree.
the women that ''hate''me are 19 year olds and ''weird''''geeky''ladies
for some reason. If I am so ''bad''how come not every women hates me.
the weird,geeky girl,I did nothing to piss her off,she just stop
talking to me after a few month,she just started to ignore me.
and had other ''weird''girls do the same thing. stop blaming me,100%
of the time.You can take what side you want.BTW I have improve
myself,Im not using picking up lines as much,so give me some credit.

I'm not blaming you 100% but those weird geeky girls that you don't seem to like you, they aren't here to answer for their alleged "crimes." You are here, so I'm addressing you.

Simple logic would dictate that if all these awkward girls were repulsed by you than there's likely something about your behavior that puts them off. The common factor is you. It's also possible that you simply aren't compatible with geeky women in which case there's nothing wrong with that. There are plenty of weird women that aren't geeks. Maybe you just haven't found the right flavor of awkward yet:

One thing to keep in mind that most of those NT women you are praising are just being "fake nice" because that's how they are taught so judging compatibility based on how polite someone is to you is very misleading. At least with these awkward women it's obvious how they feel. It's the same with awkward guys (certainly in my case.) I've met plenty of awkward people who's personalities that I found to be the repulsive (even more so than your average NT.) The worst OKC date of my life was with an Aspie girl.

My off-the-cuff hypothesis: Considering two parties with mutual awkwardness, it's likely that many compatibility issues would likely be increased exponentially. If awkward ASD, OCD, ADHD, BPD types experience emotions at higher extremes than a NT, it stands to reason that they would attract and repulse each other to a similar extreme.

In other words, love harder, hate harder. Very rough theory that needs refinement but I think aspects ring true.

no,I never did anything,the geeky girls just stop talking to me and ignoring me.
fake nice?what,dude,I have female nt friends,I hung out with one,today.
I have a female friend that flirts,kiss,and hugs me,another female co-worker
that starting to flirt with me,I've had girlfriends before. Please,some nt women
like me.why is that so hard for some people to accept,that,yes women can and do like me.

Billiscool: Don't worry, be happy! You always seem like such a downer, maybe you aren't getting the right point across? Rewrite things a bit, even from your past. I heard about it on NPR.

Not commenting on Geeko's original post. Additional über angst nasty angle to deal with.