Do you find it hard to get dates?

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This has been a really interesting thread. My love life is nonexistent.

I'm 26 and have had one short 'relationship' in my entire life, with a man 20 years my senior who was also my employer at the time. It was deeply suss and looking back, it wasn't love, just a creep taking advantage.

Other than that - never had a date, don't know how they come about, never been asked, never asked anyone else, no idea how to even start. I've more or less resigned myself to being alone forever - I'll probably be one of those little old ladies you hear about who dies but no-one notices for three years.

I'm 20, and I haven't been in a romantic relation. I've rejected some romantic proposals, because I prefer to be single at this moment. I only want to play videogames and have fun.

Hi, I am a man. I say that because technically I was born male, but I don’t really consider myself a real man, because of the total lack of success with women in my life. I am sorry for butting into this very enlightening thread, but I just had to respond to a few observations by some of you about us. I have been lurking in this forum for only a short while, I call it “spying on the enemy.” Women aren’t really my enemies, but they are very frightening to me, much like a real enemy is scary.

I wanted to give you some insight into the way a man’s mind works. Well, my mind specifically since I cannot speak for other men, but I suspect that their thought processes are quite similar. And when I say a man’s thought process, keep in mind that I don’t consider myself a real man, see the preceding paragraph you just read.

I am 34 years old, and I might as well give a brief story of my love life so you can see what my background is. When I was a child, I had a bad experience with a girl my age, who I had asked over for a birthday party that my mom held. My personal beliefs were that b-day parties were wrong, since I was brought up that way, and therefore I cried when they sang happy b-day to me. Sorry, this might be abit longer than I thought. Anyways, this girl followed me to my room that I ran into crying, to find out why I cried and ran away. I told her to go away, and she got angry and said she’d never speak to me again. Next time I saw her, she kept her word, and I experienced a great deal of pain from that rejection and mistreatment. I never trusted another woman since, nor had I ever had another girlfriend since.

I did obsess over a half dozen girls growing up, but I could never get the nerve to talk to any of them. When I was in my 20’s, I had a very active love fantasy life and kept a journal of how I felt about one particular woman. The essence of what I wrote was about how pretty her various body features were, and how much I wanted to be with her. It’s quite pathetic and embarrassing for me to read to this day, but I keep it as a reminder of the kind of behavior I want to avoid and never do again.

I went on my first date at the age of 32, with a woman near my age who was also single and had poor luck with men. She was also a JW like myself, and we met over the internet, even though we were cautioned not to search for love via the net. She lived 300 miles away, and we talked on the phone for a couple of months till I finally drove down to meet her. I wasn’t physically attracted to her, but I thought that I didn’t want to be shallow like that, instead I wanted to get to know the secret person of the heart, and find out if I could be attracted to her personality and who she was on the inside instead.

Since it was a long distance thing, I stayed at a motel when I arrived, and dated her a half dozen times over a three day weekend, culminating in going to a one day assembly of JW’s together. We exchanged expressions of affection in the form of hugs and kissing. We never had sex, because sex before marriage is condemned in the Bible which we strictly adhere to. By the way, all of the dates (save the first lunch date) was chaperoned by her friends, a couple who were engaged to be married.

All this time I never quite fell in love with her. I tried my very best to do so, but the heart just wasn’t in it. I felt guilty for leading her on the whole time, so I committed myself to the relationship as best as I could, because I could not bring myself to break her heart. I would never have left her, even if it meant I would be with someone I wasn’t in love with, because I wanted to keep my word I wouldn’t hurt her. It came as a huge relief when on the following Tuesday, she called and broke up with me, citing her friends talking her into leaving because they discerned that I wasn’t acting like I really loved her, despite all of my efforts to be affectionate. I was really trying to see if kissing her would cause me to love her, but apparently it doesn’t work that way. By the way, that was my first kiss ever. The kissing wasn’t very pleasurable to me. Sure the physical aspect felt sort of ok, but I felt disgusted afterwards and there was no emotional aspect to it. This is the most experience I have ever had in love. She called a couple times later that year trying to get back together, but I refused, not wanting to repeat any previous mistakes.

Ok, that’s a brief history of my love life. Now for some analysis of how I feel about women right now, that you might find enlightening. I know that I am not an unattractive man, I might even send a picture to anyone that wants to verify this, promise it will be fully dressed and all, because I’m not a pervert. I have a weird and somewhat odd sense of humor, and I am introverted, quiet, shy, creative, and honest. BTW, this isn’t an ad, its just a review of my strengths. Now, despite all of these positive qualities, I do not believe I am worthy of the love of any woman. I feel that I am beneath all of their dignity, and that I would be shot down the moment I tried to reach out and befriend of one you. Not only that, but I greatly fear that my asking one of you out, or trying to flirt with you, would make you extremely angry and upset with me. Since I really don’t want to piss you off, I refrain from ever approaching one of you. I prefer to keep the peace. In fact, I try not to even look at you because I’m afraid you will become upset that I am looking at you. As you can imagine, I have practically zero self esteem.

What I want most in the world is to have a wonderful woman in my life. I don’t want shallow meaningless sex. I do want sex badly, being a virgin at 34 is very emotionally painful, but being lonely is even more devastating. I want sex within a loving monogamous relationship, I just don’t think that there’s a woman that would ever love me. This is the world I live in, and it is my perspective. I know that it isn’t necessarily true, but unfortunately, having had a 100% failure rate with the half dozen or so women I’ve ever loved (the date didn’t count because I didn’t love her) makes me feel that I am unlovable. Even that date that ended in her breaking up with me makes me feel less than worthy of even someone who isn’t a runway model, which she wasn’t.

When I walk down the street, in the mall, or anywhere I see women, particularly attractive women, I feel, I have zero chance. What I am looking for is someone in my age range, from anywhere between legal drinking age to slightly older than myself. But when I see someone like that, I automatically assume she is either married, or has a boyfriend, and I shouldn’t even bother saying hello. Even when a woman seems to be showing interest in me, being friendly, smiling, etc, I tell myself that if I think a woman likes me, that my judgment is wrong, she doesn’t like me. If I act like she does, I fear I will make a fool of myself, therefore, I assume all women hate me.

Rjaye, I found your post most enlightening. I have downloaded a few e-books on how to pick up girls etc… and one of the (I know now) lies that they spread is that women are bombarded by men trying to attract them, and they have to weed out the wussies. Now I realize this might be true of supermodel 10’s type of girls, but in reality, I don’t really want one of those, I want someone I’m really attracted to on all levels, not just physically (although that is important to include), but also mentally, emotionally, and most importantly, spiritually.

The way my brain works is this… I have to be physically attracted to you first, and then that must be backed up by being attracted to your other qualities, your mental acuity, your background experience, your depth of personality, your sense of humor (if you don’t like my sense of humor, then a relationship definitely won’t work), and your love for Jehovah (that narrows the field down to about 1% of the population). But… if I am not physically attracted to you, then I wont want to have sex with you in marriage, and if I don’t want to have sex with you, I wont fall in love with you. So that’s the order of how it works for men. But since prettiness is vanity, all of those other aspects must be there, otherwise a pretty girl who is a snob and a shallow soul, is like a pig wearing a gold nose ring. Sure it might be pretty jewelry, but its still swine.

However, without physical attraction, I find it nearly impossible to desire someone at first. I tried to with the girl I dated, but even when she did have all of those other qualities, a great personality, liked my sense of humor, had interesting background, and loved Jehovah, since I couldn’t see myself having sex with her, I simply couldn’t develop romantic feelings for her. Strange how that works for the male brain. I don’t know how it works for the female brain, but I’m sure you will enlighten me as to what causes you to fall in love with a man. I’m dying to know.



Hi Grimbling, your post is also very enlightening to me. It is heartening to know there are very nice and qualified women in your age range out there looking for a man. While of course, this isn’t a pickup or anything, I’ve always assumed that every desirable woman is taken by the age of 25 or less. I had given up hope of finding love with someone who is around my age and hasn’t been thru a broken relationship or has 10,000 children.

I didn’t realize that there were so many eligible women out there that are just dying for the right man to simply walk up and strike up a conversation and ask for a date. After all, the purpose of dating is to get to know a potential marriage partner, in my opinion. I would never use dating for any other purpose, even though I know many people do.

The thing holding me back from approaching women is I don’t know if they even want me to approach and talk to them. I always assume they don’t. I don’t want to upset you gals by being friendly and trying to strike up a conversation. I have the deepest respect for women, and a huge fear of pissing them off. This is why I never try anymore. I just wish either one of you would just smile my way to let me know its ok to walk up to you and say “hi,” or just say “hi” to me in the first place.

I think that’s a big reason so many guys don’t approach you, they are afraid you will be mean. Smiling with eye contact might make a huge difference, I think.

Anyways, sorry for the long rambling post, I hope this will be enlightening to you. I look forward to reading your replies. [enter lurking mode, gynoshields raised, captain]

P.S. That T-shirt is hilarious, i'd talk to the first girl i see wearing that in a heartbeat.

When I was single, my friends used to tell me that I did not pick up on cues that men were giving me when I walked into a room.

I guess there is some kind of first look they give you, but I was too self-conscious to ever look anyone in the face when I walked into a room. Then they'd ask why I totally ignored guys, but really I was too self-conscious to even notice what those looks or cues were. And I still don't know what you're supposed to do back once they make that initial contact.

The way I met my husband and most of the guys I dated was playing doubles tennis. I really loved it, first of all, so I was having too much fun to care about the intricacies of socializing. But also it is a very social sport. You can tell a lot about a person just by the way they play the game. Plus you get in terrific shape.

Well, my husband and I have our issues because I think that we are both somewhere on the spectrum and do not communicate well AT ALL, but somehow we did get through the dating part and eventually got married and had a baby together.

Anyway, I can't find the original post on this thread, so I don't remember exactly why I posted a reply. But I just want to say that I've been there.

I definitely have the typical Aspie social deficits, however I've rarely had problems finding men interested in dating me. I think the reason is because I've always formed friendships primarily with geeky men, because of common interests. A decent percentage of the time, one of those male friends will try to persue a relationship.

I think that men I've dated are intrigued by 1. I don't really care whether I'm in a relationship or not, 2. how different I am from the Typical Princess-y Girl, and 3. that I share their interests.

Whether those dates and relationships go smoothly or not is a different story....

Like r_mc, I'm completely unable to distinguish between "I'm persuing you for sex" and "I want to date you", but it seems like many NT girls are unable to make that distinction as well. I don't think it's just us!

Wow, what a bold statement. I wish that was true...

Another guy full of self-pity and misplaced resentment toward women. There ought to be forum for them around here.

I don't ask guys out anymore. I used to, and got rejected a lot. Then my friends would try to set me up with guys, and it became clear what the problem is. According to society, I aim "out of my legue" whatever the f*** that means. I guess it means, there's an unwritten strata for dating and I'm only allowed to date guys in my stratum. Even if a guy "outside my stratum" was somewhat interested in me, he often got driven off by his friends' reactions, or people around me would discourage me openly. In other words, society thinks I have no business trying to date "above" my stratum.

I didn't realize I was doing this. I was only going after guys I thought had things in common with me, like common interests, high intelligence, a sense of humor, and a desire to do something with our lives. But those guys are off limits to me, because I'm "weird." So I'm suppose to date - excuse me, "settle for" - guys who are boring, self-pitying or will drag me down. No thanks. I'd rather be single.

I guess if I'm going to find someone, it'll have to be someone as "outside" the norms as I am. I don't know where to look for such a guy. There's a lot of guys who think they fit that bill, but really don't. So instead or worrying so much about this, I just try to live my life, and be happy with who I am.

i have never tried to date. if there is a perfect partner for me he can look for me.

Exactly my experience, too. I haven't had a relationship for 15 years. Had a few dates but the guys turned out to be boring and too needy, which seems to be getting worse as they get older.

I've been quite put off dating due to my experiences and really, really wish I could skip the dating part of relationships and just find someone I can be comfortable with, like a best friend (with benefits ), without having to go through the whole awkward dating ritual.

I know I shoudn't be here but...

...I would give flowers to you...unlucky for me that I am obssessed with this girl at the moment and I give here my drawings...she doesn't contact me though...I try to forget though!

(And please NO attacks on me: read my story on the general discussion)

I'm 27, almost 28 and I have never gone on a date. While my sister has had boyfriends, I think that she hasn't had many either and finds it difficult to find Christian guys who are halfway decent in our age range and I agree with her. Most guys seem to be oblivious to what they are missing and usually end up dating some girl who probably doesn't have half the brains that I do. But I digress.

Hi, guys, catching up after being away for a while.

Everyone said some interesting things. One of the things that struck me about Lobber's post is the lack of self esteem, and not just the lack, the complete absence of it. I've been working on this with my therapist, and it's slow going.

I've seen such similar things on other threads, and I wonder if we learn very quickly or have an unsupportive environment that sabotages any positive feelings we have for ourselves.

This seems to be the biggest issue outside of our inability to read or respond "appropriately" to social cues.

Metta, Rjaye

i have never tried to get a date myself by asking guys out, i never wanted to. although peoples would say that guy likes you. as a joke see. that would annoy me.

I'm going to have to say no for this. Of the five guys I ever wanted to date in my life, I've successfully dated four of them - the fifth is unbelievably stubborn so he probably won't no matter what. Over most of my life, since about age 7, I've found a fair number of guys who I didn't have much interest in but they were more than eager to got out with me. So in short, no, I've almost never had trouble finding a boyfriend when I wanted one.

Yeah.

I'm sweet being single though. You either get the dicks coming onto you in a gross way, or you just get given a wide berth. I'm never approched by anyone nice, really.

I hope I don't look unfriendly.

Then again, I'm awfully picky and wouldn't date 90% of people anyway.

I don't know. I've only had two girlfriends.

The first teased me alot(Pulling my hair, hitting me, etc), which an older woman said meant she liked me. I thought she had gorgeous hair and liked her, except when she was teasing me, so asked her to be my girlfriend, which she accepted. I was 9, she was 10. Puppy love and all that. We never kissed on lips or went on a date, just held hands and talked to each other during recess and lunch. A few months later and she was leaving with her parents back to the states, never to be heard from again.

The second one I initiated the relationship, and it worked. I was 16, she was 15. We dated, claimed to love each other, the whole ten yards, I even proposed. About seven months into it I moved to the neighboring county with my mother, we tried it long distance but her parents and my dad didn't approve and she started playing games and found someone else that wasn't so far away.

Other than them I've never asked anyone out or been on dates. So I guess my success rate is 100, but I doubt it would be if I tried getting in the game now. My social skills have dropped, I'm nearly bald, and I've put on nearly 100 pounds. Have I mentioned I have low self esteem? And socially I have very little confidence.

Anyways, I'm not looking, so have no plans to attempt asking anyone out.