I have women issues.

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This is kind of personal, and almost hard me to admit, but I need to admit and explain it. And hopefully someone can say something back.

But I have women issues. I am a little neurotic about women and I feel like I am getting worse.

I was the type of aspie that picked up absolutely ZERO body language from other people. I was the type that would just go up and talk at people about subjects I was obsessed with. The only friends I developed were people who by mere random chance was interested in the subject, or who just found some amusement in listening to me talk. I was terrible terrible at back and forth talk.

As you can guess this of course made social interaction difficult. Of course means I had no girlfriend or even female friends early in life, or even up into early 20's. Of course means I was turned away by many girls to great personal distress and anguish. Being heterosexual, the aversion of female attention my whole life is actually one of the most traumatic things I feel I have been through my whole life. It makes me feel defective, genetically mutated and not human.

This has basically produced a set up in my mind where I feel like it is females that make me feel genetically defective. Which is why I say I am neurotic on this subject, I know I am neurotic. This isn't a healthy set up to have in my brain. I know its on me, I know it is my issue. But due to years of this issue I literally cannot escape the deep gut rooted feeling when being around any female that they are highlighting me as defective. There mere presence putting me down, saying I'm not human enough, I should just die. Again, I know this is neurotic, I can understand that in my head, but it's not how I instinctually feel deep down. Instinctually deep down, the presence of women shuts me down, puts me off, because of my past, and it's my instinct to avoid them.

I'm not that socially inept anymore. I have alot of males that get particular amusement out of me. I wouldn't say we are 'bros' like how guys get all friendly with each other. I don't have any male friends like that. But I do have male friends who enjoy my company, and talking with me, and vocally express their enjoyment of me. I remain separate and a loner from them still, not on their 'wavelength', but it is nice to have some people that enjoy how I am. I actually did also have a girlfriend once, took till I was 23, and she was very boyish in alot of ways, girlie girls tend to make me feel even worse about myself. So I am not completely socially defunct. I just can't get over the deep rooted hurtful feelings I have associated with females for so many years to really express myself as fully around them as I can around males.

My method to try and get over this was to try and date. I made an OKCupid profile, luckily, I look good, and am actually fairly attractive. So I actually got a number of dates from OkCupid, went through about 6 of them to catastrophic failure. Which closed me down even more. I think I'm probably going to have to go on like 100 catastrophic dates before I can get used to women, which is incredibly daunting to me, so I haven't worked up the courage to carry on with that.

I don't really know what to do with this... anyone have any thoughts?

You have to learn small talk. All relationships have to start from meaningless conversation. If you do it right, you can really get to know the person and have a more meaningful relationship. It's also good to get a body language book.

Hmm I guess I can't say very much because I am female so I am in a whole different ballpark. But you should see a therapist if you are not already because you have a lot of deeply rooted issues to work through and its gonna take a while to feel more comfortable around females. I can imagine how you might feel because from what I know of NT females is that they'll normally place your average aspie in the "weird, creepy" zone. But how women like to relate is a bit different then guys do. They like to emotionally connect and relate. But with men, they want to relate but they still want the man to retain his masculinity which I have not much clue about. I guess you need to just remember that we are all human and from the same planet (technically)

Sorry I was rambling.

so what exactly is classified as catastrophic failure? what happened that made you feel uncomfortable about it?

Uhm yeah....what happened that was so catastrophic? A lot of times dating makes me feel awful even when things went ok.

I'm female but I feel like I can relate to social issues making me feel like a failure as a person. Despite all of my professional accomplishments the simple act of a human conversation can cripple me. And for me, knowing the rules of social interaction does not relieve my anxiety and self doubts at this point. Perhaps if I was dx early in my life and did not now have a lifetime of social issues the rules would be more helpful to me.....?.... idk. But I can tell ya that girlie girls usually make me feel bad too. ; ) and also that one of my good friends met her long term boyfriend on that website. : p.

You're doing exactly what I would have recommended. Internet dating sites are great for finding people with your same interests and then you can "practice" on lots of different people with no strings attached. Have you gotten any feedback from girls after these catastrophic dates? Feedback can be goldmines for future dates. For example, if the girl says something hurtful like "you're creepy", you might be able to get her to tell you exactly what you did that came off that way. It's easy to accidentally look "cold" or "creepy" or whatever from being nervous or from having a blank face/not making eye contact when you're thinking. But when you know what put her off you can work on it next time.

And of course if it's HER that put YOU off that's useful too! You just know in the future that, say, girls with janked up teeth bother you more than you thought they would, or that maybe you need to look for girls that are a particular weight or race.

Keep at it! It'll work out! You have a good plan! And I liked what that other poster said about getting a book on body language. I think that's a great idea. I would look for one specific to dating, if you can find something like that. You can find body language stuff on YouTube as well.

I do not believe I have the 'creepy' problem. In fact I don't have any problem attracting women for initial exchanges of banter. Where things go wrong is when I talk longer than that. I have more the 'Hes just talked for 10 minutes straight about something to do with computers/art/math/philosophy and I have no clue what hes going on about' problem. Thats really the catastrophic failure part, when I realize post respect a girl was just listening to be nice, but their was absolutely zero connection and she had decidedly lost interest long ago.

And I know about the part of, ask THEM questions. Which I can actually do now, I can carry on a discussion and keep the other person intrigued rather well. There has actually been three occasions now where me and my friend managed to attract a couple girls at a night club, intrigue them, carry on with them, have them leave with us, and hang out at our place. Talking and chatting the whole night, never resulting in sexual relation of any kind. But even at that level, zero connection resulted, they did not want to meet again. That sort of personal eye to eye level where you can see the other person as them, you just happen to be on the same wavelength. I can't get that with other people easily, and I'm starting to think that I literally can't get it at all. It's really that connection that makes women want to be around you (as I understand).

The way I interact with most people is not on a 1 to 1 basis, eye to eye, human to human. Its rather on like a basis of having a subject as middleman. Like for example, what do you think about ______ philosophical idea? And then we talk back and forth about it, we each go back and forth on logic, we take part in sharing thoughts about the same subject, but our thoughts are still disconnected, we never take the focus off that to us. No real connection is made, we may as well just be bouncing a tennis ball back and forth between us. Then if the person doesn't have the ability to go back and forth on logical conjecture, typically a conversation just won't happen.

I also suspect I have the issue of, I don't even know what a real sexual emotional connection with a typical female even feels like, I don't even know what I'm looking for, or what to recognize. I'm basically just trying random things to see what will stick. I have no central instinct of the kind of interaction, feeling or emotion I am supposed to hone in on.

I've started to believe that I literally have a missing part of the brain that other typical people have. And it's that part of the brain they try to connect to 1 to 1, but other people can't connect to me that way because that brain function is literally not there. When they look at me, and send the signal to me, I don't have the ability to pick up and reciprocate the signal.

I don't believe that this is true. This "missing a part" business. I'm studying ASD and I really don't think there is as much of a difference between people on the spectrum and NT people than we all have been assuming. It's not good for you to think of yourself as defective in any case.

It's better to turn it around and realize that women are strange beasts that confuse many men, both ASD and NT. I think this emotional/sexual thing you haven't gotten to yet is just a lack of experience. A lot of guys need to feel comfortable with a girl before they can feel a physical attraction/connection to her.

But your more immediate problem seems to be the problem with the conversation pace. I found this on YouTube and I thought it was very good advice. It seemed to be how dudes treated me when I've been on dates. As to getting to know them more than superficially, I would say to ask SOME personal questions, such as "are you from here?" or "do you have siblings?" But try not to talk too much about things that are too emotional, because that's rude. Like if she brings up an old boyfriend who was a jerk you can say "what a jerk" and change the subject. You don't want to dwell on it. Or if you just lost your job, you wouldn't bring that up.

Something that can work really well if you like someone but aren't sure about them is to ask if they wouldn't mind if you texted or emailed them. That way you can keep the in-person conversation brief and then express yourself more comfortably through writing. If she seems into you and you like her too, you'll have had time to recharge before another in-person event. Again, just keep it brief. This should keep her interest up and keep you from getting too stressed out.

Sooner or later, you'll meet someone who "clicks" with you and you'll be glad that you went through all this practice!

I don't have advice, but only can reflect on what you said

I can identify with that. I have one of many scenarios that I use to explain my situations. 2 guys that talk to each other, behind a wall, but neither knows what each other looks like. So the guy B complains that he can't get to the glass of water and other guy A starts of by saying:

guy A, well just get up and walk over there.
guy B, walk, but how?
guy A, with your legs?
guy B, legs? what are they?
guy A, they are attached to the bottom of your body, you use them to walk.
guy B, I don't think I have ever walked with them, what does walking look like....

and so it goes on and on and on, we don't know if guy B, actually has got legs. That kind of disconnect is what I feel between "normal" people and my self. They just do it and it will make sense later... doesn't quite cut it for me. There are such a lot I still have to figure out on my own supposedly. This magical instinct of nature or gut feeling, seems to be missing completely from my life.

I agree with vagraduatestudent. Ya wanna ask her about herself without being too personal. Just some general questions to start. This shows you're interested in her. I've had similar issues with wanting to talk about ideas and stuff but i did not show I had any interest in who I was talking to. I figured it was implicit in the fact that I was talking about something with that particular person. But I understand the difference now.