Is This One Reason Why I Struggle With Dating?

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Growing up, I was the short scrawny kid with autism so as a result, I had very little friends and few social connections. Most people I hung out with during my teenage and early adulthood years were either my parents or people considerably older than me who didn't partake in a drinking or partying lifestyle so I was never exposed to this type of lifestyle.

But when I moved to college at the age of 21, I realized that for a lot of college kids, they want to go out and party, get drunk, and do drugs. These people have lots of friends that they can go out and do activities with such as going to the bars, or going to parties to meet and hookup with girls/guys. Even the most innocent and baby-faced looking girls are out at the club getting black out drunk and hooking up with frat guys.

I feel like I don't fit in with these kind of people. I don't have friends that I can go to bars with, I have very little interest in parties and think they're overrated, I have no interest in getting drunk and you'll never see me doing drugs. I grew up in a two parent upper-middle class Christian home and we simply didn't do that kind of stuff.

Maybe if I were a neurotypical male, I would have been more inclined to party and get blackout drunk for fun. Having more social connections as a result of not being handicapped by autism would have enabled me to have a more normal social and romantic life, thus exposing me to more of a playboy and party lifestyle.

I was not really exposed to the partying lifestyle either. I didn't really have friends I hung out with outside of school or work & I cant drive(my vision is too bad) & there was no public transportation in my area & nothing within a decent walking distance. There wasn't really a way for me to be able to party if I had wanted to but I never really wanted to. I'm an introvert who likes staying home & partying is a very social thing.

I got my 1st relationship when I was 20. She was 15 & had some drug & alcohol issues she was trying to deal with. I'm very protective of women I love in a romantic way & I tried my best to be supportive. I felt like a parent with her at times but I felt like that at times in all 3 of the relationships I had. I was on the verge of having a mental breakdown when we got together. I was very lonely & frustrated with things & I woulda ended up getting myself killed or worse if she hadn't reached out to me when she did. I wanted to return the favor & I was terrified of going back to the way I was before her. She had some slipups & I had BAD anxiety & BAD OCD worrying about her. I became controlling as a result & we started fighting a lot & we ended up breaking up. Shortly after I saw her bragging online about how she drank so much she had to go to the hospital & I flipped out & slashed my upper arm 9x & went to the ER. It was like my body did it with no input from my brain almost like watching myself do it. I started seeing a psychiatrist & taking psych meds for the next 5 years. Psychotic depression is a real b!tch.

I became straight-edge because blaming drugs & alcohol was lot better than blaming myself for f#cking up. I felt like total cr@p & I could NOT deal with blaming myself more. I was very lonely & desperate to have another relationship but when I was trying to find someone I did not consider women who were into drugs or heavy drinking. I did not want a repeat of my 1st relationship falling apart. If I had known a woman who was into drugs &/or alcohol was into me, I probably woulda jumped into a relationship if she wasn't much older than me & didn't have a kid but I wasn't gonna try pursing someone who was into that stuff. It seemed like the main women around my age or younger who were not into that stuff were majorly religious & wanting guys who were & I'm a Secular Humanist. That majorly limited my dating pool. I'm not really straight-edge nowadays thou. My depression started gradually getting better when I got in another relationship & I was trying to work on myself in various ways. As my depression lifted I started realizing that I was misdirecting my pain & blaming drugs & alcohol when the real screw-up was the way I dealt with it.

It's just super interesting how everybody is so different from each other. We all have a diverse set of personalities, interests, likes and dislikes, and general disposition. Sometimes I ask the question, what causes us to be the way that we are? Is it a combination of genetics, upbringing, culture, and what we experienced growing up? Perhaps it's a combination of all of that.


Like I said, I grew up as the short scrawny kid with autism, and this has definitely impacted my life, particularly in the realm of interpersonal and romantic connections. Because of my small size and awkward appearance in adolescence, people didn't want to be my friend and I was socially shunned and girls didn't want to date me either, so I didn't develop the skills necessary to find and handle romantic relationships.

Contrast this with a young woman who by the age of 15 was considered attractive and heavily benefitted from this privilege. For many hot women who grew up attractive, they were given more opportunities to make friends and find someone to date, thus giving them more practice and experience at an earlier age. That's why attractive people often have more friends and better social skills. It's because being attractive, especially at a young age, meant that they were given more social and romantic opportunities, were less likely to experience social and romantic rejection which may have dented their self-esteem, and people were generally nicer to them. All of this allows attractive people to develop their social skills and self-esteem to a greater degree compared to someone who grew up ugly and suffered discrimination because of it.

I think that we need to try not to dwell too much on the past. I was ok looking, but I was the posh English kid in one of the most racist parts of Scotland. I also wasn't into mainstream stuff, I'm still not.

This idea that I don't fit in hangs over my head, but people remind me from time to time that I am liked.

I am not that annoying kid that no one liked (moving away helped, I can't deny that).

I wasn’t into partying and drugs when I was 21....