Majority of people find partners through mutual friends?

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Just something I've observed; maybe other people see it differently.

But I notice that many couples meet through mutual friends or a shared social circle. Including work, school, living in the same apartment complex, shared hobbies/activities, etc.

Places where people meet strangers (bars/clubs, online dating, speed dating, etc). There are a lot of people who find relationships there, but it doesn't seem like the majority. And they all have the same pitfalls. In many cases, I've noticed people tried these things for years and find nothing, but then their SO is someone they actually know.

Why is this conducive to meeting a partner?

1) Repeated interaction. You both have time to get to know each other. You might not have a strong impression of someone at first, but then appreciate them as you get to know them.

2) Trust. If people you're close to approve of that person, there's more trust. This isn't foolproof, but all else equal in a vaccuum, you'd trust someone your friends approve of more than a total stranger

3) Shared interests. If you know each other from the same place, there's something you have in common. And there's at least something you can talk about to break the ice.

4) More investment. It takes guts to meet someone in person and ask them out. As a result, it feels way more special than someone just swiping left/right online in a sea of a ton of other people where you're more disposible.

You have some good points. I think the issue a lot of us on the spectrum have is that we tend to be introverts with sh!tty social skills. We don't know a lot of people who could & would introduce us to potential partners & if we are in situations where we do meet people regularly they tend to have a negative opinion of us. It's very hard to meet partners through mutual fiends when you s#ck at making friends.

Therefore, many of us need to become a whole lot better at making friends.

Later, perhaps tomorrow or in the next few days, I'll post a systematic plan of action as to how I think many of us can make more friends without wearing ourselves out in the process.

Has this systematic plan of yours been field-tested under real-world conditions?

The key parts of it have been. Much of it will be based on my own successes in making friends (and the successes of those friends, as well) when I was younger.

Other aspects are parts of a grand experiment that I have every reason to believe will work (eventually, at least), although of course I can't be sure yet.

EDIT: Of course nothing works for everybody, but I have every reason to believe that my ideas will work for many of us, at least in the long run if not the short run.

When Edison and his employees invented the lightbulb, it hadn't been tested under "real-world conditions."

We have to smile, like this



And start talking to them in an ant voice, about things we might bond over. Like dogs!

And then swiftly ask for their contact details before they have a chance to run. Unless they're already pretending their dog is pulling them away...

It's around 39% according to this survey, and it's the biggest chunk, back in 2015.

^ Wish they had put the bottom two bars in opposite positions so they were in order.

To be on topic, my husband and I met via a shared interest and in a social setting (but not through friends).

This actually cheers me up a bit. Conventional wisdom is "Play the numbers game by hitting on many, many vaguely attractive strangers," which I have zero inclination to do. Just not interested in teh hot randos. There does seem to be a current cultural assumption that if nothing has happened shortly after meeting someone, nothing ever will. Which can make a slow-burn courtship a bit awkward.

I've had a number of relationships, but never met a partner through friends. They probably know me too well and warn new people about me.

I've never met a partner through friends either. All three of them were work / school related, except for my current partner. We met in a waiting room. He was talking to reception about a place I'd visited, and I welcomed myself into the conversation. That's very unlike me, and I wasn't trying to flirt or anything, but it was an interesting conversation. The rest is history. I don't know if that would be considered a social setting or "other", but likely "other".

Yes. Work and school are a mutual social setting in a similar way that a social circle is. In all of the cases, there's a mutual location (a shared interest, at least some aspect of their life where they can relate to each other). And there's repeated interaction for both people to get to know each other.

This "current cultural assumption" is just stupid, probably conditioned by the movies.

In movies, "love at first sight" is common -- because a movie is only one or two hours long, so there just isn't enough time to show a relationship develop in any reasonable way.

On the other hand, whenever someone I barely know has said to me, "I love you," my response has always been something along the lines of, "That's not possible. You love an image of me that you have in your head. But you don't know me anywhere near well enough to know whether or not I'm someone you could really love."

For the record, I knew my husband via overlapping social circles for TWO YEARS before he asked me out. We had hit it off immediately, or so I thought, so his not asking me out was a bit of a disappointment for a while. It turns out he wasn't in the mental space for a real relationship and it took him those two years to finish working through his internal issues. So never say never!

My longest term relationships were met:
1st - through social activities
2nd - through friends
3rd - during my regular public transportation work commute
4th - through friends

I've met guys through bars and the like, but nothing past a couple of casual dates