This is embarrassing to ask at my age

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ASD men who are married or have a girlfriend....How?

I'm genuinely curious how it came about. Family and acquaintances tell me to just "put myself out there", but that's such a broad statement.

i bought the kit at sears in 2014. some assembly is required but it comes with a 5 year warranty.


looking to trade her in for a newer model with more features.

I don't know if I sounded like I was joking, but I'm not.

sorry. i clearly was.


there's no big story behind mine. she used to come in to the art studio where i had lunch towards the beginning of my senior year of HS, and i noticed that she was getting very flirty with me.

i heard from her friends that he had a crush on me (she was a freshman) and since at that time i was left with a big hole that needed filling from a previous relationship that failed to materialize, i decided to tall her that i liked her too. i thought she was cute and we shared some interests. i asked her to prom. the rest is history.

she's graduating next month. i don't know whats coming after...

talking to her and being with her has taught me a lot about people, relationships and socializing, but i wouldn't have gotten even that one, if it weren't for another girl before her who liked me and i was too oblivious to notice.

i learned alot from her as well and those "lessons" are what allowed me to build this current relationship. i think they all build on one another.

I can answer from the girlfriend/wife side of the relationship. (My partner is AS and I'm NT) We met through online dating. And this is back from when online dating was still relatively new.

I am pretty sure he had a difficult time with it, because now that I know him well enough, he struggles when he meets new people. And I did not know that he was AS - in fact at the time, I don't think he did either. I think he just knew that he had difficulty meeting and connecting with others.

And while I'm NT, I'm deeply introverted, so a lot of his behaviors I could forgive because I'm not very socially skilled myself.

I met all 3 of my girlfriends on web forums. Me & my 1st girlfriend became good online friends because we both had dyslexia, ADHD, & OCD. She told me she liked me after a while & then I realized I liked her so we got in a realtionship. I met my other two girlfriends on this forum. I made LOTS of posts about being lonely, the kind of girl I was wanting, the way I am within a relationship & what I have to offer a partner. My 2nd girlfriend mentioned in one of my posts that she was kind of wanting something similar so I asked if I could PM her & she said Yes. My current girlfriend sent me a PM after reading lots of my posts here.

I had no luck but bad offline & no luck on dating sites but I have physical disabilities in addition to Aspergers & I'm too direct & straightforward for NT women, they take what I saw the wrong way & I misunderstand them too. I was single a LONG time after me & my 1st girlfriend broke up & I would of gone the mail-order bride route if I had the money & resources & I would of took in a girl who needed a place to stay if I had my own place.

I tried online dating, it got me nowhere obviously. The only thing online dating accomplished is confirming how ugly I am. It was tiring and downright frustrating to spend my energy sending message after message and no response. How can people say appearance isn't everything when it's obvious it is. I took down my online dating profile because the lack of success was bringing on thoughts of hurting myself.
Appearances aside, I'm also too direct for NT women (and NT's in general). In person, I'm extremely quiet, not because I have nothing to say, but because I'm naturally very blunt when I speak and have unintentionally offended in the past -- this makes me a boring date. Yes, I have gone on a date. It was probably one of the most awkward moments of my life.
I'm happy for ASD guys that have gained success in romance but it seems like everywhere I go, my traits can't be forgiven.

Sign up in a cooking course. It's the only one I can think of that isn't obviously "to meet somebody."

Vegan cooking is its own excuse - few people already know that one.

You believe that a man should be able to look after himself, so you're learning to cook. Sounds good.

When my brother joined the army they wanted him to be self-sufficient and it surprised him that he had to learn to sew on buttons.

It's unusual and sometimes attractive. Also you can invite a woman over to taste your cooking.

Marry an autistic

At this point I could not fancy getting married

Start going out with women, maybe meet them online, or get friends to introduce you. You will not hit off at first, but learn from your mistakes, if you have not enough going on in your life, make something happen. Be exceptional at something. Me I make art, women love it, even though I have little social skills and usually say the wrong thing in a conversation. Don't try to play a role, be yourself, you will meet the right woman.

Mind you I have been single for 2 years but have been on lots of dates.

And try to have some close friendships with single women, you will learn a lot about yourself.

I met my ex-wife online in 2000, and we were married in 2002. She had some mental health difficulties of her own and we both lent on each other.

Eventually though she said I was holding her back - due to various difficulties (resistance to) socialising, and also because she wanted to holiday abroad again etc and I'm terrified into a stupor by even the idea of being on a plane.

She is currently in Tunisia on holiday with my son, and her new partner.

My wife was definitely the "pursuer." She did/does most of the work in the relationship (including getting me diagnosed 9 years ago). We've been married for over 12 years after knowing each other for only 8 months. One thing we had in common was that we both knew what we wanted in a partner and had no interest in wasting time in relationships that didn't have clear potential.

^that must be nice.

I asked because I was curious how ASD men found someone, but it seems like being at the right place at the right time, having a "fun" skill, or simply winning the genetic lottery in terms of looks (thus having women make the first move somehow). I have no such luck: as I said before, I learned the hard way that I'm too ugly for online dating.

In case I give the impression that I'm some type of hermit that doesn't deal with women, I want to clarify that I do interact with women often (work, crossfit gym, the occasional party I go to every few months), but I can't even get anything that remotely resembles flirting behavior. At the gym, only the borderline superhuman guys with 5% body fat get any attention. And generally, I'm either invisible to women or they treat me like a child. Sometimes I'll get a deadpan stare which I have no idea what to make out of.

MrRusty, you said "Be exceptional at something" - yes, I get this, but the things that I'm exceptional at (learning languages with ease, physics, geology, ancient history) are skills and knowledge that a lot of people find boring.