Niche Online Dating Sites As A Potential Idea For Aspies.

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The more that I think about it, the more that I believe that niche online sites are one of the best ways for autistic people to find a relationship.

The current landscape of dating today is primarily done online with many couples meeting on a dating app. However, I don't believe that mainstream dating apps are necessarily suitable for many people with autism. Apps like Tinder and Bumble are 95% based on physical attractiveness and are known to be ultra competitive for straight men.

Instead, I believe that meeting someone online through either a niche dating site, or perhaps an online group such as reddit or a forum site is very beneficial for someone with autism. For one thing, meeting online takes away some of the awkwardness that can come with meeting someone in real life. Secondly, it benefits introverted folk who may not be as outgoing in real life and people with autism are more likely to be introverted compared to the general population. Finally, niche sites allows people with similar beliefs and interests to congregate together which means you're more likely to meet someone who is compatible with you.

So what do you think?

I think that a person with autism meeting someone they have only met on-line will result only in pain and grief.  Of course, all those stories I read about people being victims of human trafficking may be in the minority, but how many more go unreported?  What if the autistic people have no one who cares for them, or maybe their relatives would be happy if they simply disappeared?

Of course, I could be wrong.

There was already many attempts on that, all failures.

If you meet someone online, that also means you're likely going to be in a long distance relationship as well.

Long distance relationships are not for everyone, and depending on where you two live, it might be problematic for you two to meet up anyways.

I think this is a GREAT idea.

Not trying to humble brag, but I am very pretty and know how to turn the charm on. People respond pretty well to it.

The problem is, the mask fades. The quirks come out. They leave, I retract.

Tinder is too wide a net. I would be really happy to go into a dating experience already knowing there’s some basis of understanding there. Tbh I have a hard time putting myself out there for this reason.

If this app doesn’t already exist it should be made.

I met a man on OkCupid, he was my boyfriend for 11 months, he lived in UK, he worked in another country.

My neighbor and friend Glenn met his wife on Ok Cupid

I tried Hiki and, although I suspect my location (small town in the UK) had a lot to do with it, it proved 100% useless.

I did try to be realistic about distance filtering, I wasn't expecting a neighbour down the street to just conveniently show up on there and match, but it's just not reasonable to travel half way around the country every time you want to meet/hang out.

It even has buttons for love and for friendship, which as I understand it don't have to match, so if you pick either one (as opposed to the X "no" button) you should still connect. But I got no matches, so no messages, no dates, not even any "hey, wanna hang out just as friends?", which sucked. I wasn't expecting miracles, but really, when you can't even get a "hello" it's pretty miserable.

What I found even more difficult to deal with was that many of the women who did show up near me had children, which is like a mood nuke when you're a guy with no meaningful experience and desperately lonely. How can I even begin to feel adequate when they clearly have a much easier time of finding relationships than I could ever hope to?

Clearly I'm competing in an Olympic race when I couldn't even qualify for the Paralympics, if even the women who are supposed to be as developmentally challenged as me, by virtue of the same disorder, were able to get as far as having kids.

I don't actively look or romance anymore, it never worked out too healthily for me in the past and now it just doesn't fit who I feel I am anymore. These days I'm looking for connections and deep friendships, and if romance was to come out of a nice connection with someone then great. But I would absolutely love some sort of tool to find and connect with other neurodivergent and specifically autistic people in real life. The connections I have made with other autistics have always been so rich and real in ways that connections with neurotypicals never have been for me. The problem is finding each other in the first place...

I'm actually surprised that the ADHD community haven't impulsively built some crazy online or in person groups or apps yet for this exact purpose of neurodivergent connection, that us autistics could make us of but I do keep hearing that "it doesn't work". I find it so confusing, because connecting with other autistics in real life is something I want to do more than anything else, and I have autistic friends who feel the same. None of us want to be the ones to kickstart it though, and none of us would know how anyway, so maybe therein lies the problem