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even for normal people they're not really designed with human joy in mind....but GOD it's miserable trying to start a real thing just from cold texting
i mean look at this what the fuck am i doing. the phrase 'pissing in the wind' comes to mind
Dating apps don't want people entering relationships since it doesn't make them money.
Yeah idk I'm having 0 success with them. Women are bombarded with likes/messages and I feel like with autism there's sure to be more charismatic ones than mine. When you get so many, there's little reason to even engage any except the very best ones.
And on the other side, I’m a terrible judge of character, so getting bombarded by messages felt like walking into a car dealership- I knew the majority of what I heard was probably dishonesty, but I couldn’t figure out what.
I ended up exclusively looking for keywords instead of charisma, and figured I’d assess a spark in person. Thankfully my husband referenced magic the gathering, banjo, cats, and bondage (he just listed that he was a rigger, no crass jokes or sexualization), so I figured he was either casting a wide net or telling the truth about his interests.
Honestly I'd rather have your problem. I'd rather have any options at all and not knowing how good they are, than literally none. Not really clear what to do when no one even engages with you.
I do understand how you want that. I would prefer not to, though. I’m still lonely, if someone is taking advantage of me, I just don’t know it yet. I also don’t know if people expect others to be as bad as they have been in my experience.
Before I met my husband, I dated people among others who: stole my medication from me and then resold it to me, lied to me about whether they were fit to come to my country (he didn’t tell me he had paranoid schizophrenia before he left his whole support network and came to a country whose language he couldn’t speak and where he could not work), and one who murdered his mom (before we dated, but I found out during).
It took a long time to start dating again after each of those, obviously. I don’t know how I could protect myself more while still dating though. I had friends vet profiles with me and meet people sooner rather than later, but it didn’t help much.
I know how wild that sounds, but honestly I’m a relatively attractive woman with no ability to tell if someone’s trying to trick me. It’s tough, lol. I’m glad I haven’t been trafficked. I’m very excited to be in my early thirties now, because people expect me to be a better judge of character and they’re less likely to try shit. I also come off a little jaded (because I’m not dumb, I just don’t notice if people are lying)- for example, I would never try the autistic dating app, because that’s a gold mine for someone looking to trick their date. I would love to date like that, I just couldn’t trust it.
All that said, men are obviously dangerously lonely, and I understand that it’s a real, serious problem. I’m sorry you’re in that situation, it sounds awful.
(Advice if you want it, though no offense taken if you don’t want it from me 😅) Do you have close female family members (around your age) or friends (male friends’ SOs count)? I second having a woman go through your profile and picture options. Or even the autistic dating app, because not everyone is as suspicious of it as I am and you’re in a less statistically vulnerable position (though if you’re rich, maybe don’t make that clear?).
Yeah I mean I don't envy your experiences. I understand that those things also suck. As a woman, losing a physical confrontation against a man is almost a given if you're not much better trained than him. Which makes a bunch of situations much more dangerous than if you're a man facing a dangerous woman.
I can't perfectly put myself in your shoes, but if I would imagine that women were much stronger than me, I'd still like to take the risk. I'd rather have the chance for good experiences and risk, than no risk but also no good experiences.
As for the advice, thank you. I'm already using most of my trusted female advice options, and I think I have a pretty good profile. But I could definitely do more and get better pictures. But it is very annoying to do so, and I accepted and am mostly fine with being alone. So while I could do more, I have no interest in allocating more effort than I already do. If it is meant to be that I'll be alone the rest of my life, then ok, if I find someone then even better.
Also I had no idea there was an autistic dating app, though I doubt it'll have any users where I live :) I'll try it
I haven’t been on one of these in a very long time but when I was regularly using them I just treated every encounter like an experiment to see what might get a response. Nothing bad or crass but ranging from lighthearted, funny, etc, etc. anyways, it helped me get a better feel for how to do an opener and made further conversation a lot easier for me too.
I don't think you did bad. You provided a genuine compliment and a decent conversation starter
thank you - it's very hard continually coming up with perky, happy sounding chat up lines and sending them off into the ether with little response. how do i even know how well i'm doing?
I didn't bother. I took my horny outside and used it as motivation to talk to girls and make friends. I would not have the people skills I do today if I wasn't so horny.
I recommend Hiki. A dating/friendship app for us autistic folks. Has a matching feature and a community tab which is more like social media. The community tab has been important at building connections for me, jumping straight into texts is strange for me, so engaging with people and getting to know them through what people post has been far better for me.
I personally had found it very difficult, and it absolutely destroyed my mental health (it was essentially the trigger for me to get therapy).
Granted my mental health wasn't great to begin with.
You should have good photos. Like get a professional photographer if you can afford it, otherwise YouTube tutorials and a friend/camera timer. The picture is the first thing people see and their choice of whether to read the message at all or scroll onto the next person will depend on the photo.
I had minimal matches for 2-3 years taking my own photos, like between 1-3 I think. I asked my buddy's GF to take some pictures of me playing with their dogs, and asked her to choose which ones went up from a woman's perspective. Not my first choices but it was a complete 180 for me. Had matches within the week, and I'm currently dating my last match from 4 years ago.
It is difficult, but it's workable.
I found my SO on Instagram. She seemed interesting so I sent her a message to which she replied to even though she gets a ton of messages like that. It's just that the bar is so low that if you spend even 5 minutes writing it you'll probably stand out quite a bit. I only contacted two women and both replied. This was like 8 years ago though so I'm not sure how much things have changed.
Somehow I also met my girlfriend on instagram. I was running a review page at the time for extreme films and music. I made a the joke, "the higher the hair, the closer to god" on a mutual online friend's post, and she liked the comment. I already had a thing for her, so I decided to message her. I don't remember what I said, but she said she knew I absolutely had to be autistic within a few minute's based on that message and the way my reviews were done. Now we've been together 5 years, so it panned out pretty good. Pullin goth bitches with my autism swag.
I met one of my previous SO's on a Facebook tag group, back when those were big. I am not quite sure why she decided to date me when I told her I was fantasizing about fellating her furry pfp because I didn't know what she looked like. That could have gone so badly!
Have you tried being attractive? If so, try to not be unattractive.
But seriously, the dating apps are a numbers game. Keep modding your profile and your approaches and you'll eventually find a winning combo. When you find a woman that's in to you, she'll make it easy.
Keep trying! I did on a whim and I’m now married to her, specifically because I didn’t respond like most people did (due to aforementioned autism)
Online dating is incredibly superficial. It also has its own challenges and requires the right skills. Send more then "hey" but don't send a wall of text. You also want to say something that shows you read their profile without just simply regurgitating it.
Yeah, I never liked them. They're designed to keep you in their app as long as possible, not to get matched with people you actually vibe with.
I met my fiance through a hookup app, but that was a complete fluke. The app didn't help me get to know him any better than it did for anyone else I met. It was mostly our time spent together in person that made me fall in love enough to propose. As soon as we started dating, I deleted that app and never looked back.
I had some success early on. But as with everything capitalism has made them worse with time.
They have no incentive to get you a match and have you leave the app, they only want you to subscribe to premium. So anyone not paying for it gets inte tonally screwed over.
Dating apps turn people into commodities. People become a choice, a selection, a product to be assessed for quality. Our humanity is dumped for characteristics judged on a scale of better or worse. I don't like them.
Also, "pissing in the wind" is hilarious 😆