Struggling with dating apps

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After going through a pretty messy breakup a few months ago, I’ve finally decided that I’m ready to find love again.

It’s not going well so far. One of my main concerns is people running for the hills the second they discover I’m autistic, so I decided to try Hiki (dating and friendship app for autistic people) hoping to find people who I know won’t do that. The app won’t even show me any more people as I’ve swiped through everyone in a 20 mile radius. I must have swiped right (both for dating and friendship) on about 25 people. So far I have had 1 match.

I know not everyone will be interested in me and that’s okay, but as someone who’s always struggled to connect with people, it’s so disheartening feeling like not even other autistic people will give me the time of day, let alone enter a romantic relationship with me. And if other autistic people don’t like me, I highly doubt I’ll do any better on dating apps mainly populated by non-autistic people.

Am I doing something wrong? Should I try other dating apps? Any and all advice on navigating dating apps is appreciated.

I'm not familiar with Hiki but you mentioned it's for autistic people. There has been various autistic dating sites in the past that had lots of fake profiles. I'm not sure if that's the case with Hiki or not. Even if the profiles are real, I guess it's possible that the members may not be active due to the very small member base & diagnosed autistic guys outnumbering autistic women. The ratio of some autistic dating sites I've tried that had real people were ten guys for every one women. Lots of guys didn't bother logging in to check once they realized that the odds were so skewed against them.

I think it's possible you might have better luck on a more popular dating site in general instead of worrying about if your dates are autistic or not. Some people used to claim that autism is an extreme male brain & it's not uncommon for NT guys to struggle with understanding NT women so it's possible that some NT guys might find nn autistic woman more relatable, maybe more so if the guys are NT but have other types of issues.

I don't have much other advice for navigating apps because I tried LOTS of mainstream & specialty type dating sites out & never gotten so much as a single date from them. However I met my 2nd & 3rd(current girlfriend) on this forum. One advantage to forums is that you can check a person's post history which I would highly recommend doing when considering a relationship with someone on a forum. Another idea I have is to try offline groups for people with autism or other issues that you might relate to.

Thanks for the reply. I’m great at jumping to conclusions so your reply has helped me to think more reasonably about my situation.

That’s a very good point. Come to think of it, I do remember using Hiki in the past but ended up deleting it for those exact reasons.


You’re probably right. If nothing else, at least I’ll have more options due to a much bigger user base.

However, I’m not worried about whether my dates are autistic. I’m worried about whether they’ll judge me for being autistic. And sure, anyone who would judge me isn’t worth my time anyway, but it still hurts. I tried Hiki because I wanted to minimise the pain by surrounding myself with other autistic people, therefore making it very unlikely - if not impossible - that they would judge me for being autistic, as opposed to taking a gamble on who will accept me and who will bail before they get to know me.

Niche dating apps with smaller populations will have very few people in your radius, unless maybe you live in a very large city. It's better to try a mainstream dating app like Bumble or Hinge.

Smaller dating apps also have less active populations. Maybe the people you swiped on don't even use the app anymore.

You could try a mainstream app like Bumble or Hinge.

If you're not getting many matches, update your pictures. Get pictures with better lighting, clearer resolution, and in more interesting locations. Have a shot of you doing an activity.

Take lots of pictures (100+) of them. Ask friends (or whoever) which ones are the best.

Maybe it doesn't even have much active users. Dating apps are notriously known of keeping showing ghost profiles.

TBH, if you're looking for a man on dating apps, go with a regular dating app. (The ND specific ones are worth doing as well, but don't focus on them primarily) Be willing to make the first move, write a message that reflects that you've read their profile and aren't one of those stuck up princesses that's just looking for a meal ticket.

On your profile, don't be afraid to indicate what you're looking for, just keep in mind that menfolk tend to take what women put on their profile at face value, so don't put things on there that you don't like, the folks that will respond anyways tend to be jerks that are a waste of time.

To an extent, this is a numbers game, but as you've already realized, there may not be a particularly large pool of matches, so don't treat them like they're the next one in line.

As far as worrying about them not being willing to date a ND, there are pros and cons to disclosing up front versus waiting a bit. I don't really know what the right call is, but the more obvious it's going to be, the sooner you'll likely want to disclose. But, I probably wouldn't wait too long either.

OTOH, if it's women and others, then I have absolutely no idea. I wound up with a matchmaker because of how hard it was filtering through all the ridiculous ones that weren't willing to say what they were looking for, weren't responding to what they said they were looking for or were looking for a very specific and very uncommon match.

Possibly, but I used to get responses from most of the messages that I was sending women, so it's sort of unclear to me how much of a problem that really is. I'd wager that women sending messages are far more likely to get a response if there's anybody to respond to though.

Sorry to revive this old thread, but I have tried dating sites off and on the last few years and the biggest problem I have personally seen is the apps make you pay after a certain amount of likes. I feel like paying is not worthwhile to me, and while I have gotten matches on the sites its largely few and far between. I would say go with Hinge and then Facebook Dating, any other dating site isn't worth the time or effort these days.

I bought a subscription to E-Harmony for a year and did get about three dates out of it. However, not much selection, no woman in my age range within 50 miles. Even big sites like E-Harmony are mainly for the big cities. Smaller cities, just not enough women on those sites, I think it is because they do not want to be recognized by anyone they know or bump into anyone.