Developing Confidence For Love & Dating

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It is difficult for persistent failure in any area of life to not affect our confidence. If you are continually incompetent at your job, despite trying your best over a period of years, assuming you haven't been fired for whatever reason, you're still likely to feel inadequate at it, maybe with no hope of improving if your best is never anywhere close to good enough.

So if you have been trying to find a romantic relationship over a period of years and you're continually failing and rejected, it would be difficult to imagine that your confidence hasn't been affected. I think it's difficult for those who don't struggle in this area, or who haven't tried repeatedly to cultivate a relationship with a 100% failure rate, to really understand how those of us in this position have had our confidence affected as it relates to pursuing love and dating.

Therapy is often suggested as a solution, but I don't recall ever seeing anyone in the above position, myself included, benefit much from therapy at all. After all, if what's causing you problems is your inability to have a romantic relationship, how can a therapist help with that? They can't magically conjure you up a girlfriend. They can't make people want to date you. The best they can do is encourage you to pursue avenues that may lead to a romantic relationship, but if those avenues fail then you're no better off.

I also can't see how therapists would be able to help restore someone's confidence in their ability to get a romantic partner if each and every attempt that was made to do so resulted in failure. If you have social anxiety and have difficulty talking to people, then I'd imagine that what a therapist would do is help you take incremental steps towards interacting with people until you stretch your comfort zone to new lengths and have success in that area, but if your problem is a lack of a positive reception from members of the opposite sex at a romantic level, is there really anything a therapist could do to help your confidence out there?

The overall question here is what can one do to increase their confidence in getting a romantic relationship if said confidence has been destroyed by a vast history of failed attempts, and they only know failure in this area and have therefore come to expect it?

There are only a couple of ways that I can see this working.

The first would be if the individual is lucky enough to have a positive experience with a member of the opposite sex that is romantic, sexual or maybe flirtatious in nature. But since people in the position I've described have been unsuccessful with love to the extent that they can barely conceive of a favourable result, and don't see the risk-reward ratio of having any chance of paying off, they're more likely to avoid such situations where this happening is much of a possibility.

The second and more proactive way I see this working is if the person who has failed getting relationships evaluates the potential reasons for their failings and implements self-improvement measures that simultaneously improve their chances and give them justification to expect better results from trying to date. They can then separate their past attempts (the old me) from their potential future attempts (the new and improved me) in such a way that they can feel that their past attempts are less indicative of their future prospects than if they'd not changed anything.

This is really the only way I see anything changing for people in the "forever alone" bracket. What are your thoughts?

I think you nailed it pretty well yourself. If you always get rejected in dating your confidence will be destroyed and you will end up in depression. That's just how nature intended it to be. To fix this problem you need to stop using dating as a method to find a partner and use better alternatives that do not include rejection. NDs are bad at being rejected, and so finding methods that minimize rejection is the only way to keep your confidence up. It's impossible to try to deal well with repeated rejection.

Be like a weebil who wobbles but never falls down.

Speaking for myself, option one just never existed once my social skills fell behind my peers starting in sixth grade. Option two I have tried to use, but found that my lack of social skills is too great at this point in time to overcome. I have been working on self improvement for a few years now. I spend on average one and a half hours a day just walking fast while lost in deep thought. While I physically feel better by exercising more, it still does not fix the problem of how I appear to others. I am the stereotypical nerd and it shows no matter how I present myself. With that result, I basically gave up on trying to even be considered dating material.

The funny thing is that a couple of friends have recently been trying to play matchmaker for me. I have tried to explain my point of view on this and they just do not understand why I am still single. They just cannot understand this concept, as they never faced this in their lives. I do not think that they ever will. They are only happy with another, while I am used to being forever alone.

The world is a huge place and filled with people of many different cultures. So if looking for a partner in life, you might explore outside your small little microculture. Aspies are noted for their out-of-box thinking. Searching for a mate beyond the norm is out-of-box thinking.

It is only recently in modern western culture that people married driven by romance. In the past marriage was driven by necessity.

I say this from experience. I married a girl who did not speak English and I did not speak her language. I proposed to her using a language dictionary. It was a Grand Adventure. We have been married for 45 years and have 2 children and now 5 grandchildren. I am still odd and strange and quirky and have very little social skills. But you see that is what marriage is all about. My wife is my other half. She completes me. Whereas I am an extreme introvert, my wife is an extreme extrovert. When it comes to anything social, I listen to her expert guidance. So I use my great skills and she uses her great skills and together we combine to form a better whole together than individually. It is like a Yin-Yang relationship.

Its focussing on the end goal of a relationship/date that needs to change, in my opinion.

People who know and value themselves are going to be attractive to a suitable partner when they encounter that specific person.

The problem as I see it is that a person on the spectrum could indeed meet the right person (they are rare), but the opportunity is wasted because it comes at the wrong time...

It makes sense to reduce the odds of this happening again by focusing on self improvement for you to be well in yourself... absolutely not for anyone else. Ideally for confidence working on emotional and psychological areas from an ASD suitable approach, that part is critical imo. It's may be an overused line, but still a valid one... No one is perfect and everyone has areas for improvement.

I don't consider physical appearance a priority in the same way as others might and see it more so as an outward distraction from the parts of the person that really matter.
That being said, I do value people who aim to be physically well and reasonably presentable, on that level to me, superficial appearance can be an indicator of confidence.

Well for me I ended up feeling like I was doing a lot to find a boyfriend and even doing shaving I was not very comfortable with because I wanted to be more appealing. So for me I took a break, like I spent months away from the dating sites to kind of take care of myself IDK I had had some negativ experiences and was just kind of trying to reset. during this time the guy who has been my boyfriend for like 5 years had sent me a message. BUt I was serious about taking my break so even though I had saw his messege I still needed some time to myself to recover from my final and last hook up date...like after that guy I was kind of determined to only meet guys who specifically stated they were looking for serious relationship because that is really what I wanted.

So I got my boyfriends message when I was taking a break from the dating sites, read it and thought it sounded nice, but I was kind of just dealing with myself so I saw the messege and just left it for a while. Then once I felt a bit better about meeting another guy I messaged him back to see if he was still looking, thinking he had probably found someone else by now and would have to turn me down. But to my suprise nothing had worked out with any other girls he had met....so he was still open to meet me so we did that and well, it worked out. But I was nervous when I sent him a messege back, because it had been like a month since he sent it to me I figured there was no chance he was still avialible. LIke I expected so hard for him to send me a messege that he had already met someone else, but that was not the case so then we met up...and we're still together.

I do really hope it lasts, I just know my parents fought and fought until finally divorcing, they should have done it sooner if they were so unhappy with each other. They had the oldest excuse of doing it for us kids....well us kids and our dad may have been better off if the divorce happened sooner. kind of easy to say my mom caused it, but my dad was also very stubborn with the catholic view of marrige lasting till death even though his marriage with my mom was not working. LIke I kind of get both sides of the story but I can't pick sides all I know is thier conflicts made me and my siblings lives worse. And now my dad is a homeless man like IDK I can't help him/cant help my mother. Also I don't have enough money to help their funeral costs if either of them die. I mean I am the oldest sibling of my siblings...but none of us have money to cover our parents funerals whenever that comes. So hopefully it will be a long while before they meet their ends.

But as much as I hate to worry about that kind of thing i just don't know how it works. Like I have no reasources to pay for a funeral for either of my parents and it kind of concerns me being the oldest sibling in my immediate family how I would deal with the...death of my parents like it occurs to me I would have literally no way to pay for a funeral or anything or bills the hadn't payed on the time of their death. Like seriously what am I supposed to do when my parents die....I suspect even then I wont have much money to pay for a funeral.

I agree. My strategy when single after a lot of rejection was to seek out women who might be more desperate in addition to me trying the other methods of meeting women & trying to get dates. I also analyzed the way I was within relationships, the way I am towards my partners, & what I felt my relationship strengths were. I then tried to use that to my advantage by seeking out women who might be attracted to or would like that & I tried to figure out how to advertise that to them. It was very difficult for me to try & change myself & my life much when I was single because I was limited & trapped by disabilities & my life circumstances. It's much easier for me to try & change myself & my life within a serious romantic relationship than it was for me to when I was single. I needed support & different life circumstances that seemed unobtainable when I was single. I complained aLOT about being single. Lots of people tried to help but a lot of what I got was being told to change myself, change my life, & to change my attitude but noone really had any advice for how to change that stuff that would actually work for me. I had been trying to change that stuff for a long time which as I already said didn't really work for me when I was single. Lots thought I was not trying due to being lazy even thou I was trying my very best. I was a workaholic when I was working because I was trying to change things. Working was never much about the money for me thou more would of been nice of corse & I felt like I deserved more cuz of how much effort I was putting in. Working for me was about getting my parents(especially mom) off my back cuz that was damaging my self-esteem. Working was a reason to leave the house & spend time around others. Working was a way for me to prove/show myself & others that I'm not the loser & parasite that others made me out to be. Working was also about proving & showing that I can make progress with life & I do have good qualities that come out under the rite circumstances. When I wasn't working I was doing my very best to find a job but most others didn't really think I was. Getting back to me complaining a lot about being single, I did get some useful advice/suggestions/ideas from others too thou. For example since I'm disabled in lots of various mental & physical ways, some asked how I would feel about women who were also disabled. I liked that idea cuz I've known various disabled people on & offline & I felt they were more accepting & sympathetic than typical NTs. Some disableds were also more desperate for romantic relationships & I liked the idea of being with a desperate woman because it seemed more likely that she would actually give me a real chance.


There tends to be a much higher ratio of guys to women on dating sites so the odds were stacked high against him if he was relying on only dating sites to meet women. Of corse IDK if he was using other methods or not thou.
My current girlfriend thought I would of been in a relationship when she sent me a message on this forum. She kinda liked the fact I was desperate because I was very accepting of women with problems, issues, & disabilities which she has. Lots of various mental issues run in her family & most of her close family are disabled cuz of that thou her dad is disabled cuz of having lots of injuries working on a farm. I actually sounded like a good catch to her & she doesn't really get why other women weren't interested in me. Cass is very different from the mainstream woman like how I'm very different from the mainstream guy. What would be considered problems & major red flags to most others are actually kinda what makes our relationship work. Cass wasn't intending to look for a romantic relationship when she joined but she was kinda reaching a point in her life where she was starting to kinda want one but didn't really know how to go about getting one offline cuz she didn't really meet new people. I guess she kinda wanted to get a feel for someone so to speak before jumping into a relationship which is hard to do offline if you don't interact with someone for a while.