The Need for Romantic Intimacy

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I can't keep enduring this. My intense desire to experience romantic intimacy is overwhelming, and my inability to satisfy that desire to any extent leaves me feeling so devastated and hopeless that I wish I could cease to exist.

I don't know what to do. I need to satisfy this nagging desire to have some kind of romance in my life, because life isn't worth living while I'm constantly being plagued by it, but it feels like there's nothing I can do.

Getting a girlfriend is the most optimal outcome, but even if I just found someone online to cultivate something romantic with that was unlikely to ever turn into something serious, that'd go a long way towards helping appease my desire while I don't have anything else.

It feels like the only option I have to find any kind of romantic fulfilment at all is paying someone to pretend to be into me, but that doesn't ultimately give me what I want as I'll know that an interest in me isn't motivating their behaviour, and reciprocated interest is the part that matters most to me.

Does anyone have any ideas on how I can satisfy my need for romantic intimacy, where I find someone who has some interest in being romantic with me? Because I can't deal with having to keep feeling so romantically unfulfilled.

People have met other people here on this Site, and have had varying degrees of romance with each other. A few even married someone whom they met on this Site.

I'm sorry you're feeling so lonely.

Try to "talk" to someone here. And don't mention anything about being lonely, unless the other person talks about being lonely.

I don't get the impression that there's anyone from this site who's in the appropriate age group and who would be interested in me. I'd be quite happy to be proven wrong though.

Don't get too "heavy" at first with somebody. Talk about "light" stuff.

Then again, there are women here who don't mind talking about heavy emotional stuff.

But don't talk about despair; people get turned off to that.

Hi! I had the same issue as you in my mid 20s. It sucks, I know, but I intend to help. You have a lot of time and will have a relationship, it's just going to take time and work.

Here's some suggestions.

paying someone to pretend to be into me,
You'll probably hate this. Trust me. Professional ladies know how to tug at the heartstrings and will likely do so if they know they can keep getting your money.

Your intense desire for romance is more biological than you might want to think. You're at like the commitment stage when you should be at the casual flirting stage. This is going to make you appear needy and turn women off. Instead, see everytime you manage to successfully flirt or approach a woman for conversation as small steps towards the ultimate goal. Eventually after some practice, you'll be ready to ask girls out and get some dates.

Occasionally there are.

I think it is best to not expect things from other people and be a loving person yourself.
Loving yourself and the people around you, expressing that love might fill the emptiness inside you.

They don't post in L&D, in fact some have told me they deliberately avoid this section. Guys are more likely to start interacting with them if they post about other things across the site.

I can empathise. I used to feel like that. I don't know what the answer is. I feel like I just aged out of it and found other interests.

Yeah, I understand that.



I know there's a small number of women in my age group around the site, but whether or not there'd be reciprocated interest between us is another question, to which the answer is probably not.

There's pretty much no women my age on this site who are also from my country, so the prospect of any real relationship igniting is all but non-existent. Though the prospect of me ever finding someone to date from anywhere seems non-existent anyway.



With all due respect, it doesn't. I need something romantic in my life to fill that void.


It feels like there is no answer. It feels like I'm never going to experience the joy of being with someone, and I'll instead have to endure an unrelenting romantic loneliness until I die of a broken heart.

I'm happy for you that aging out of it stopped it weighing on you. I know pretty much as well as I can know anything that that's not going to be my story, though. I won't make it to 40 if I'm going to have to continue to feel like this, so starved of romantic affection.

There is no flirting or approaching women. I don't have really any avenues for meeting women my own age, and even if I did, the days where I could muster up enough confidence to start a conversation with a woman I don't know have long passed, as my confidence has deflated over time due to a perpetual lack of success and a greater awareness of how different I am/ how different I come across from NTs.

Someone posted (and I thought it was in this thread) a suggestion that you use one of the popular dating apps to meet women in various Asian countries such as the Philippines. The poster said that, in his own experience, there are many women in the Philippines who are eager to meet white men from Western countries, including Australia.

(The same post also suggested doing something that would probably be a violation of the terms of service of most dating apps, for which reason I suspect the post got removed by the mods, if indeed it was originally posted in this thread.)

Have you tried meeting non-Western women?

People from other cultures are relatively unlikely to be put off by the ways that we, as autistic people, may be subtly unable to fit in with the culture we grew up in.

I felt like i would never get over it either, but this penny dropped one day. I'm constantly judged as not being good enough by all these fussy men, why am I trying to please people who can't be pleased. I'm better off being myself and being content instead of constantly pushing myself to be better and better when I get rejected and overlooked anyway. I honestly contemplated plastic surgery. Even my friend's weirdo friend who is absolutely desperate didn't register me on his radar. I'm that nothingy.

This way if, by some miracle, someone does show an interest in me I know they like the real me, but if not, I'm not wasting time exhausting myself constantly worrying that I'm not doing things "properly".

Dating a non-Western woman is something I'm definitely open to, but I don't tend to find myself particularly attracted to Asian physical features. I'd prefer to set my sights on somewhere other than east Asian countries, with a higher instance of physical features I'm attracted to.

I find curly hair very attractive, so a population where that gene is more widely distributed would be better.

I don't mean to come across as nit-picky or shallow, but the alternative would be not being honest.

There are many different Asian ethnic groups, with a wide variety of physical features. Most people in India look very different from most people in China, for example.


Some Australian aboriginal tribes, maybe? Are there any places in Australia where aboriginals and white people both tend to hang out together?

Also, in the Philippines and in southeast Asia generally, people with a wide variety of physical features can be found, including some with curly hair. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, "Contemporary Filipino society consists of nearly 100 culturally and linguistically distinct ethnic groups." (See that article for more about the largest ethnic groups.)

I'm confident that this is going to fall on deaf ears but...

Placing conditions for my happiness on something or someone outside of myself is a recipe for misery. Happiness is an inside job. If you can't be happy unless you have ______, happiness will always elude you - even if you get whatever it is that you filled in the blank with.