37 years old and (involuntarily) never had a girlfriend.

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I have wanted to have a romantic relationship since I was at least 13 or 14 years old. Sadly, I have not been able to obtain one despite having a Masters degree, a solid job, and a good network of friends. I have never gotten the assistance needed to date, and I am worried at this point in my life that it is simply too late. I live in the Washington, DC area and you would think there would be a network able to help people on the Spectrum who want to have relationships and get married. Sadly, there isn't one.

What do you have a Master’s in?

Transportation Policy, Operations & Logistics. My Bachelors is in Political Science.

For what they're worth, there are a few dating sites/apps for autistic people:

- Uneepi (based in NYC)
- Hiki: Friendship and Love for the Autistic Community
- AutismDate
- Disabled Mate: Autism Dating Club

As far as I can tell, these sites/apps aren't yet very well-known or popular among autistic people, so your chances of meeting someone via these sites/apps are probably not very high, but they might be worth a try.

Given your interest in politics, have you considered getting involved in the autistic rights movement (a branch of the disability rights movement)?

If you choose to get involved in autistic rights activism, please don't do so JUST to meet autistic women. However, you should be aware that, among autistic rights activists, women seem to outnumber men, whereas men vastly outnumber women among autistic people more generally.

The problem is that I am not necessarily opposed to there being a cure for Autism for those who want one (myself included). The "Autism rights" movement- ASAN- goes to the other extreme of Autism Speaks. They are under the illusion that if they just foot stomp and shout "accept me, accept me, accept me" society will turn around and "accept" a difference they wouldn't recognize if it jumped up and bit them in the butt. Rightly or wrongly, society is MUCH more forgiving of people who aren't quite there intellectually or who aren't quite there physically than they are of people who aren't quite there socially. That's not changing anytime soon.

^ THAT is the best post I've read here in an age.

"For what they're worth, there are a few dating sites/apps for autistic people:"

I am on most if not all of those sites. I can assure you I am not single due to a lack of effort.

I think this depends on what you want with a woman.

Have you considered dating a foreign woman? Having a stable job makes it viable... But not if all you want is a girlfriend.

Sure I'm down with a foreign woman. I've held down to my current job for the past three years, so employment isn't an issue. For me the issue is not wanting to move until I am in a relationship. I am in no position to start over socially in an area where I know nobody.

Even today, society (at least here in NYC) is more forgiving of "people who aren't quite there socially" than it was of, say, gay men back in the 1950's.

Social change takes time. Improving the situation of autistic people will likely be a decades-long project. But incremental progress has happened for autistic people already. More progress can happen in the future.

I speak from a decades-long personal history of intermittent involvement in another social movement that has still not yet been 100% successful, but nevertheless has succeeded beyond my wildest dreams -- the LGBTQ+ rights movement. (I'm bisexual and gender-nonconforming.)

Hopefully progress for the autistic rights movement can be at least a little bit faster than it was for the LGBTQ+ rights movement. Autistic people do NOT face the extreme level of hatred that has historically been directed at LGBTQ+ people and still is in some places.

To advance the movement will require much more than just shouting "accept me, accept me, accept me." It will require building a much bigger and better-organized autistic community (organized subculture) than now exists.

For details, see Longterm visions for the autistic community and Autistic Workers Project.

Last edited by Mona Pereth on 07 Mar 2022, 11:20 pm, edited 3 times in total.

I would to an extent argue the opposite. In many ways we have actually gone backwards from the 1950s. It was much easier for people on the Spectrum to get married precisely because society was more structured and there was more pressure to marry. In addition, it was much easier to be employable then as now. Businesses used to invest much more in their employees because there was an expectation that they would work there for many years if not their working life. Now that we have a very transient economy, employers don't have that patience anymore. They want people who will make them/save them money NOW, and not in the long haul. As a result, they don't invest much in their employees and that absolutely hurts people who are on the Spectrum.

In addition, the Neurodiversity movement operates on two false premises. The first is that Autism is more and better understood by society than it actually is. The second is that society is more accepting of differences than they actually are. Autism is not like Down's Syndrome or Cerebral Palsy where the person either has marks on their face or physical difficulties, which give it away. Being on the Autism Spectrum is not a visible difference so when someone on the Spectrum paces, or self talks, or rocks- some behaviors I indulge in even to this day- the first thought of your "average" person is not "that person has Autism" but rather "that person is crazy."

Not implying that you'd be the one to move, although I suppose anything is possible.

In some ways, I agree with you, at least for those autistic people capable of doing well in school and/or otherwise capable of acquiring marketable skills.

When I say that things have improved a bit for autistic people, I mean since 2010 or so (i.e., since the autistic rights movement made its first big public splash), NOT since way back in the 1960's. I agree that things got worse for work-capable autistic people in various ways during the last few decades of the 20th century and the first decade or so of the 21st.


Hmmm, I have a lot of issues with the way things were organized back then, but I see your point. I agree with you more wholeheartedly about the following:


An even worse problem is that social expectations are now higher. It used to be that the workplace was "not a social club." Many workplaces are now a lot more collaborative, requiring "excellent communication skills."

Also, the process of job-hunting now requires a lot more effort on the part of prospective employees than it used to.

BUT some corporations now have special programs for hiring autistic people. This is a little bit of progress, but nowhere nearly enough, of course. This has happened within the past decade. Doesn't help most of us very much if at all, but it's a start.

And there are now some openly autistic celebrities (besides just Temple Grandin), which also doesn't help most of us a whole lot, but it's a start, and it's one reason (though not the only reason!) to hope for positive future changes.

Also there has been incremental progress on the special education front. To get really serious progress on that front, we will need someone to start a professional association of neurodivergent special ed teachers.


No, we're fully aware that things are very bad for most autistic people right now. We just have more hope for eventual future improvement than you do. Our hope is based on our knowledge of the history of various social movements. And we are willing to work hard to help bring about various improvements.

My own personal hopes are based not just on abstract knowledge of the history of social movements, but on personal experience with the history of the LGBTQ+ rights movement. I was a gay rights activist in college back in the late 1970's. Later, in the 1980's, I became close friends with Brenda Howard. Based on my experiences, I have some idea what it takes for a marginalized group to win social acceptance.

Of course there are plenty of differences between being autistic and being LGBTQ+. Nevertheless, my point is that social change movements can indeed accomplish A LOT, though not instantaneously of course.


It will be necessary to educate the public about stimming. This will take time. It won't happen instantly. Hopefully some of the afore-mentioned autistic celebrities can help with this. (But it will be up to some of us non-celebrities to lead the way. We can't just depend on our celebrities.)

In the meantime I recommend living, if at all possible, in a highly multicultural neighborhood with immigrants from all over the world. In such a neighborhood, standards of social behavior are far less strict, because there isn't any one narrow social norm that everyone is expected to conform to. The important thing is just to be considerate.

I understand completely that the Neurodiversity community is under the illusion that "if we educate people they will accept Autism." That's 100 per cent wishful thinking. It requires a desire among the general population to actually want to learn and to understand Autism. You bring up various civil rights movements throughout history. The flaw in that argument is that most if not all of those differences are visible and none of them involve relative deficits in social skills. Whether we like to acknowledge it or not, humans value social skills and are uncomfortable around people who are seen as deficient on those skills. Not to mention they are even less forgiving with people who aren't deficient either physically or socially. For example, it is often said that people with Down's Syndrome have great social skills. This is the case because again they have the marks on their faces that spell it out and they for the most part fulfill the stereotype of PwDs (persons with disabilities) as perpetual children. If anything, the biggest challenge that many people on the Spectrum face- especially men- is that they don't completely fulfill said stereotype and that some of the behaviors we can engage in are not what people expect from adults.

And for the record, I have been engaged in disability rights movements for several years. I have spend the last three years working for a nonprofit in Northern Virginia where I live whose main focus is to increase employment opportunities for PwDs. Prior to that, I spent two years with another nonprofit with a similar mission, the highlight of which was going to Iowa and New Hampshire in late 2015/early 2016 to advocate for disability employment to the Presidential candidates on the entity's behalf. While we certainly have made progress on disability employment, we are far from even being close to our desired goals. Especially since even in organizations- such as Autism at Work- that have Autism employment directions, they are very much stuck in the mindset that people like us either want permanent entry level jobs or STEM jobs. In their eyes, people like me who come from a government affairs mindset don't exist.

Can more be done? Absolutely. That requires though for humans to not be humans.

Personally, I oppose forcing anything upon the society.