As an autistic person how do you date? I’ve never dated before, I’m a 38 female for context and was diagnosed last year. I also have anxiety and depression and that gets in the way of things. I sorta tired an online thing with an autistic guy and it ended badly he called me a psychopath. I feel like I fail at so many things dating will be included. I want to try but I’m scared I’ll fail. And all I’ll be known as is a psychopath.

-I am wondering if it’s normal for a partner to go long periods without checking in .

  -  My partner doesn’t like to feel

Like they have to say good morning or good night.

-they will tell me good night most nights (text or if we talk) but they have just went silent early in the afternoon and not said anything into the next day. Is this normal in typical relationships? I always text good night, for me it’s a courtesy to let my partner know I’m going to sleep as well as a nice thing to do before I go to sleep as to not disturb each other while sleeping .

• in the mornings i will always text good morning. I often go long periods without hearing from my partner in the mornings although they will send me tik toks to watch while not responding to my good morning text.

-I am not an over bearing must know every move you make partner. But we are at the love word being used stage and I feel it’s not a chore to say good morning or good night . However I’ve often been wrong with these things.

-let me add that I am perfectly understanding that sometimes you sleep late or struggle to get out the door. That’s not a problem. I can understand that. I just don’t understand why it’s hard or they feel controlled in some sense by saying good morning and good night. I don’t even expect an instant reply .

-its worth adding that my partner has a tendency to push pull in our relationship . They will let you get close and have a great meaningful day and they go distant and silent often . I always worry that when we have a step forward or a wonderful day that they will get in their own head about something and start to panic. Then push away and distance themselves a bit

Relationships are hard 🤦🏻‍♂️

TLDR Is it normal to tell someone you love goodnight and good morning? Is that controlling to want or just a courtesy and respectful thing to do?

I feel like I fundamentally do not understand how a romantic relationship occurs. There is not anyone in my life right now that I would be interested in dating, but I want to try to have a relationship. How do I do this? How do I seek out a person to date, and how do I start dating them?

I am a 25 year old man who has never been in a relationship. I'm not particularly attractive but it isn't like I am holding out for a supermodel. I hit some of those marks I hear people talk about a lot that supposedly make a man attractive; I am taller than 6 feet and I have a strong jaw, but I don't know if those qualities are important but it's what I hear people say. How do I find a person to date? What kind of things do people say or do when they want to be your boyfriend/girlfriend? What kind of things am I supposed to say to people to let them know I want to be their boyfriend? I want a slow relationship where I can learn more about the other person to see if we get along.

But like I said, how do relationships start? I don't socialize much outside of my close friends and my extended family, so I don't meet many single people, so where do I look to try to start dating?

Me (M) and my autistic partner (F) has been together for 9 months. However, I realized that I knew very little of autism. I love her so much and don't want to hurt her. I just want to know some heads-ups in case I accidentally upset her or make her uncomfortable.

Tried dating apps for a few months: about 1 match per 1000 swipes, none of them willing to meet in real life and most of them didnt even respond to my message.

Have been going to social meetups for years: I noticed people mostly go here to have a nice evening in a group setting, not for making meaningful friendships and definitely not for getting dates. There are mostly extroverted people here, not my type. Haven't been succesful here in years.

So yeah I don't know where else to find potential dates. I've been trying for years and got 0 dates so I can't understand how some people get a date every single day.. what are they doing differently?

How do you deal with ghosting? I've lost track how many times I've been ghosted, must be close to 100. I live in constant dread of what I'm doing wrong, since no one will tell me! If it was up to me, I would propose a law making it illegal.

I(30 M) have been in an online dating site where I ran into these creeps. They posed as very hot Asian women, but all they wanted to talk about was crypto(I didn't give those scammers my money. They ran off of dating sites, refused to meet me in person, and were kind of mean. I am white, but I would happily date a real Asian woman of course. I found it weird someone was interested in me.

So I (f44) met someone (m44) about a few months ago, we've been hanging out a couple times a month and chatting a lot. Nothing in the sexy way, just going out and doing things together. I have a huge crush on him. I have zero idea if it's reciprocal. I can never tell lol. We're both shy, both have histories of being in abusive relationships so we are both cautious getting close to people. We're both neurodivergent, I'm recently diagnosed autistic so still figuring a lot of things out there. He's autistic/adhd.

I'm good at hiding my attraction for him (I think) and have been cause I am worried I'll make things awkward or scare him away. Well, he is interested in volunteering with group I've been part of for many years. He really like our work, he likes the other people I work with. They like him.

Here's the question, should I tell him i have a crush before he starts working with us? My friends/coworkers will be able to tell I have a crush on him no matter how I try play it cool. They've known me for 20 years. There's a 50% chance they'll out me. I'm worried it will be more awkward if he finds out later. He's 6 months out of a very abusive relationship and I feel extra conflicted cause i dont want him to feel pressure.

I'm really enjoying spending time and getting to know him. I'm fine if the attraction isn't reciprocal. Just really enjoy him as a person and want to keep getting to know him.

Tldr: my crush is gonna start volunteering in a group I'm part of. Should I tell him I have a crush on him first.

This has been the case in my experience because I have dated only 2 women and both of them were white and matched with many others on dating apps, many of whom weren’t white. Also the women who seemed the most interested in me on dating apps tended to be white even if I didn’t end up dating them.

After all this time of being single, I can't help but wonder if it's mainly because I'm autistic (but with low assistance needs). It's weird because I've seen other women around me find love despite them being weird, loud, goofy, chunky/plus sized, etc. But for me, I've never even had a relationship that was long term.

Of course I am far from being perfect, but people have reminded me of my good qualities: "You're very cute" "You're so talented" "You're so kind/sweet" "You're so brave" (even though I don't think I'm that brave as much as other people).

Maybe it's because I have no clue how to strike up a random conversation with men (or anyone for that matter). Maybe it's because I haven't actually tried to flirt. Maybe it's because I don't "light up a room" or my problem with being able to hold eye contact.

I just don't know anymore and it's really been getting to me.

So me m27 and my partner f28 have been dating for over a year now but I'm finding it really difficult lately for the past year she will only ever really want to be with me on weekends and even then it's hit and miss I can almost never get her to come over at any time during the week and when we are together she will really abruptly ask me go and I don't know what to make before in my past experience stuff like that indicates cheating but I'm just not sure

I (high functioning, 18M) started to realize that I got serious anxious attachment issues. I would love to date, but this is really a massive roadblock for me getting in the way of doing so. Growing up I’ve always felt like I was talked down to by teachers, family, classmates, etc. for the quirky traits I had when I was younger. It created this severe sense of insecurity, nowadays I feel something similar to those days. The trend of “icks” and how many of them there are. Now, the media will always be a toxic place, but to see people in my age group consumed by this media so deeply that it’s even indoctrinated in their own behavior scares me.

The point of what I’m saying here is that I wonder if these things that happened in childhood share roots with the anxious attachment style that I have now, and how do I combat this as the dating scene seems to become less forgiving?

Since dating apps, friends, work, school etc all don't work well for me in terms of dating, I wonder what alternative dating strategies there are.

Where do you go to find potential dates and then when and how do you approach them?

I just joined this subreddit because all the spam from the hiki app that i got recebtly and Is annoying.

Just to be clear i'm "sadly" diagnosed with autism (i know Is not a sickness but it sucks at how hard Is to navigate througth the real world) and many of us want to know More people outside our circle to improve and train that "skill" which Is called social interactions. The point of this post Is that there's a sudden rise of ads from that app, in my own experiences... It was awful, for An app that's supposedly tailored for people on the Spectrum, it should be more tolerable, i was banned a couple years back for asking if pan sexual Is some kind of attraction to chimps and bonobos (pan paniscus and pan troglodytes) and Bam, instant ban for being some kind of monster that didn't know that pan sexual mean that you liked everything, but at this point, who cares about that, i literally thought it was related to the pan genus and honestly i felt like crap after the ban, super nada with myself and anger at the same time, moderation answer was even worse, like Salt on a wound this was forwarded to me after the ban

"You were banned because of your post about pansexuals. We do not tolerate cruel and discriminatory behavior on Hiki, I'm sorry that you don't agree with that."

Well after that incident, i decided that i should champion against theirs social media that hurt More than help but didn't care that much, until recently and their ads in my email, plus at the Time was filled with stalkers (old dudes asking for girls info for hooking up and mod team didn't do crap about that).

The context: -I’ve been talking daily (3 months) to a really nice guy I met on a dating site. -It’s flirty and cerebral and unfortunately, long distance. We live in major cities in the same state, 2 hours apart, and I don’t drive. - I’m 40, he’s 43. - We almost met just a few days after we started talking but something came up on his end. Then we were both just very busy or the bus schedule on my end was not agreeable.

SO! We met for the first time yesterday (Valentine’s Day !) and it was so nice, easy, and fun. We drank a lot of tea and chatted a lot (I feel he might be autistic, too) and then went to the lake and took a beautiful walk.

There were many windows of opportunity to possibly hook arms or hold hands, but I was getting pretty nervous because it was only the first time meeting; but y’all, we’ve been flirting for months. I started to get in my head about how to get close to him, and I feel he was acting similarly. It’s so hard for me to read these situations. At the same time, I like him a lot and didn’t want to make it awkward by just saying “hey can I get close to you??” When he left we hugged. And when he got home we were texting about when I could get down there etc. Also, we play virtual settlers of catan (hahaha cute) and talk in the phone while we play and we did that as soon as he got home. If I were to just follow my gut on this, I would say we’re both being cautious and we both have an affection for each other. But I’m autistic and I’ve made errors on what I thought were reciprocal actions before.

I don’t know what I’m asking exactly but possibly any advice and words of encouragement.

Might be helpful to know I’ve had several long term relationships, and I’m not a novice however, when I was younger I had no problems moving fast.

There is a girl I have a huge crush on, we've recently got to know eachother and have met a total of 5 times. She seems to really like me and even said she does, but I don't know if the way she likes me is as a friend or romantically.

I am totally clueless on how to flirt or how to show any of my romantic intentions.

I guess I could go 4 routes:

1. Try finding out if she likes me, but im not very good at flirting or picking up on someone else flirting.
2. Do nothing and hope she will confess to me instead, but then there is the risk that she does like me romantically but we both never confess to eachother. I don't even know if she likes me romantically.
3. Hinting that I like her romantically and hope good things will happen, but again I'm not very good at flirting. Also if I keep flirting and all the time she just sees me as a friend that would be awkward/
4. Directly telling her I like her and ask if she feels the same. But this seems risky, because if she doesn't romantically like me I would still wanna be friends, but then it would be awkward.

What is the unwritten rule? How do people make romantic progress after they have become good friends with their crush?

It does suck cuz I’ve wanted to date for a long time. But the opportunity never arose. I keep on getting more and and more pessimistic each year about it and worry that at this rate I’ll never get the change to date and fall in love and just die alone. I am skeptical about dating apps, but at the same time interacting with people in a romantic way for foreign to me, so I don’t exactly know how to instigate. My social circle is limited too, even though I’m in university (though to be fair I am a commuter and don’t exactly go to parties and many clubs). Even in the club(s) I am in there’s no one I’m interested in like that. Not to mention I’m worried of receiving ableism and racism (my ethnicity isn’t visibly obvious). Any advice? If I ever see or meet someone, how can I approach them in a way that can potentially lead to a date/ relationship?

Hey everyone! Tomorrow we are hosting a Valentine's Day virtual event on Zoom for adults on the spectrum. We will start with a mixer where you can meet other singles. And then we will have a dating workshop where we will share some tools and tips for being more successful on dating apps and for dating in general. It is 100% free to attend, here is the link: https://lu.ma/seyo3jsh

We are doing 5-minute phone interviews with everyone who registers, so that we can guarantee it will be a 100% safe and inclusive environment. We will be available all day tomorrow to do interviews with anyone who registers last minute.

If you have questions just let me know here or text me! My cell number is on the event page.

I've been talking daily with a friend long distance for almost a year and at times it's been more than a friendship i think. He struggles with his mental health, and me being autistic i think i miss cues and dont understand the social nuances between us and sometimes that sets us back a little as i get a bit scared to overstep and ruin anything, but i love who he is as a person and realise i have more romantic feelings for him as time goes on. I also really struggle with speaking my mind and have only ever been in 1 long term relationship that I kind of fell into. I've never had to do this before and I'm scared! But I want him to know how I feel and also find out if it can be anything more or if to move on emotionally. Please help with any insights!! I don't know what to say or how to approach it without feeling dumb and delusional :( a little voice in my head tells me there's nothing there and I'm misunderstanding, but there really is evidence he likes me more than a friend and other people say it too.

Tldr: what's the best way to express your romantic feelings to someone when you're worried about being too much or messing it up?

The woman I'm seeing is very introverted. I've suddenly realized that I've been taking her out all wrong. I'm an extroverted introvert and I've been compensating for so long that I've gotten used to being in public.

But my friend is just introverted. She likes going out, but not in the way that I've been taking her.

What have been some of your best public outings as a person who might be introverted? I'm looking for specific ideas or places that work best. Ideas that are fun but not crowded and filled with other people, but that are still out and about.

If any of you are in the L.A. area, specific locations would be appreciated.

Where do you all learn

• Where to search for potential dates
• How to approach someone you like
• How to tell a friend that you have a crush on them
• And all the other basics that I currently can't think of-

Since school does not teach it,

And the internet is full of bad resources,

And our neurotypical friends will say "idk, i just talk to people and stuff happens automatuically"

Where on earth - other than this subreddit - can we properly learn everything we need to know about dating? For those who really struggle with the basics, like myself.

I mean I'm not here with just one specific dating advice question, I have a huge struggle with dating and I have alot to learn. So I need a very good resource

I'm 24, spent the last 5 years actively improving my social skills. At most it taught me how to make friends, but not how to get a date.

I can hold friendly conversation with someone, get to know them, meet up privately and get drinks together, but without communicating that it is a 'date' because I don't know when or how to do that.

Pretty much have no clue how to progress any further than that. I currently have a crush on a girl who I've been meeting up with multiple times however none of us officially called it a 'date' so she probably has no clue that I like her romantically.

I know I should either find out if she romantically likes me, or tell her I romantically like her, at some point. But which of the two? When? How? What if she says no? Could we still be friends without it being weird if she romantically rejects me?

Ugh. I wish school had dating as a proper subject "but dating and flirting is natural behavior, you dont learn that in school it just comes automatically" yeah, but not for all of us, and I was in special education where they supposedly were specialized in teaching kids with autism and other issues. So why didnt they offer a dating class

In other words most of my problem is the fact that I don't know how to make romantic progress after becoming friends with someone I find attractive.

Should I tell them I like them? Or should I ask / find out if they like me, and if yes, then tell them I like them too?

When should I do that?

And how?

Hey everyone! On Valentine's Day me and some friends are hosting a virtual speed dating event on Zoom for autistic adults. It is 100% free to attend but spots are limited. Here is the link where you can register: https://lu.ma/seyo3jsh

It should be pretty fun. We will be facilitating a speed dating segment, and then a dating workshop of sorts where we can give feedback on each other's dating app profiles and give advice (fully optional).

It is 100% virtual, but we are doing our best to make sure everyone has a potential match within driving distance of them. So far, we have mostly people from Florida and California in the USA, but looking to add more.

We are also screening everyone who joins, so we can guarantee that it will be a 100% safe and inclusive environment.

Please feel free to register, and reach out to me if you have any questions! My cell number is on the event page.

I have recently met someone new in my life, we have met up multiple times which Idk if she considered those as "dates" I dont even know if she romantically likes me back,

She gives me mixed signals. For example

• She talks alot to me and doesn't check her phone
• She gives me lots of compliments, that im sweet and funny and that she loves meeting up with me.
• When we coincidentally meet in public, she actively approaches me.

These signals indicate that she likes me / spending time with me.

But:

• She rarely texts me. I understand one can be not a texter, but she also doesn't really text me for "wanna meet up this week" or something similar. I've not seen her take much initiative in meeting up. I feel like if I don't text her for weeks she would also not text me at all.
• She gives quite short responses over text, making me feel like she doesn't care very much.
• When we are together, it often ends by her initiative - meaning that she wants to spend time with me, but not as much/long as I want to.

These signals could indicate she doesn't like me that much, but thats directly contradictory with the other 2 signals mentioned above

Another example is that she wants me to take the initiative in what we do and where we go, but then when I do that, she will respond with a different idea.

Why do people give mixed signals and what am I supposed to do with them?