Do the majority of guys with A.S. never get a girlfriend?

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My boyfriend now I met when he was 24 and a virgin [if that's what you are getting at]. I was 23 and... not a virgin.
Didn't matter. Just saying.


[ETA: Actually he'd never kissed anyone, either]

i'm not saying it's wrong, but it seems like a pointlessly negative thing to get hung up on or worry about that can't really help you.

maybe imagine being in a relationship with a person you hated or that hated you. imagine being in a relationship with someone abusing you. imagine being in a relationship with the love of your life and then they die or watching them suffer long term physical or mental degeneration. imagine being in love, getting into an accident causing what society considers a horrible physical deformity or becoming crippled and ending up alone or imagine they are in the accident and now, do you care for them forever, putting aside what you want to do, or do you leave? these are way more common situations than being in a "good" relationship.

crazy cat ladies, kung fu hermits, witches, "confirmed bachelors". being single happens to everyone. in terms of negative connotations and peer pressure from outside society, men have it easier, as far as i can tell. how much it bothers an individual, that's not for me to say. but, you know, given the choice of having an easier time not being in a relationship period or at least with someone i didn't like or having an easier time to get into relationships* , but no choice in liking the other person or whether you consider them a good person, i know which one sounds ridiculously better to me.

anyway, imo, if you want to get better at social skills or anything, i'm pretty sure you can't really ask people if it's possible because it seems like the way to get better is to have confidence in yourself. that's my experience at least, either commit to believing you can get better or at least learn something new and working on it or don't. i have no way of testing the theory, but i'm pretty sure anyone can improve at anything, you just don't get to set the time scale or degree of improvement, so you kinda just have to be into the improving more than where it might take you.

*this isn't my perspective, but that's not the point.

You likely have a lot of reasons for saying that, and it is probably true from your perspective and from your personal experience.

I can't say I agree. From what I've seen- obviously, my personal observations, not anything statistically sound- in how people generally regard single men in social situations [generally, not in known personal circumstances]:
Single men tend to get "the cold shoulder" if they chat up a conversation with women often-even in simple friendly conversations, devoid of any flirtation- and tend to be alienated from women in general more often if they don't have a mate. They tend to more often be seen as "constantly on the prowl" or are viewed with skepticism, seen as looking for a date or that however they are presenting in any situation is not their true motivation. They may not be seen as honest, reliable, or as having integrity if they go on too many dates, or as having "something to hide" if they prefer to not look too hard for a partner and not be fully engaged in some sort of dating scene.

If they are young, they are seen as irresponsible and immature. If they are past a certain age they are also seen as immature but as possibly disloyal.

And I've seen this just as a one off judgement, right off the bat with very little engagement.

Of course, just as your opinion comes from your experience, my opinion [of what kind of judgement, etc some single men may encounter] comes from mine. I can't say which is more accurate or if either is actually "more" accurate. I'm not sure anyone actually has it worse.

to answer the OP.The majority of ASD'ers(male and female) never date.

I don't agree with the above. There's probably many Spectrumites who don't date--but I don't believe it's the majority.

yep.it's the majority.Most ASD people never date.

There must be a large number who never go on the internet ever [who also don't date ever], to counter weight all the ones who are on the internet talking about dating and sex all the time.

internet forums are not scientific.They are not random sample size.Forums,like WP
are self selective. Alot people including ASD people,don't go on message board,forums.

any survey on a forum is flawed.

Ok, cool.

So you can direct us to the scientific research of which you speak then?

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr036.pdf-
not for ASD but for general population.

Other studies

http://sfari.org/news-and-opinion/news/ ... -as-adults


http://www.disabilityscoop.com/2013/05/ ... ted/17905/
http://nationalautismnetwork.com/articl ... le-w-r1421

http://superbeefy.com/how-does-asperger ... sexuality/
''Surveys of single adults with Asperger?s Disorder find that only a small percentage report having any sexual experience''

Last edited by billiscool on 10 Sep 2014, 6:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.

That doesn't mention anything about individuals on the autism spectrum. Can you explain what this study/report says about ASD individuals, because I seem to be missing something there...

I did say it was for general population

here's ones:http://superbeefy.com/how-does-aspergers-disorder-impact-adult-sexuality/
''Surveys of single adults with Asperger?s Disorder find that only a small percentage report having any sexual experience''

of course people with ASD are going to struggles with dating,just because few
of you people on WP are popular,doesn't mean the majority of us are

Ok, so I'll respond to your updated post now...

I'm prefectly willing to entertain legitimate sources but there are problems with all the ones you presented:

As you mentioned, that one addresses issues among the general population and doesn't actually even mention individuals on the spectrum at all.



Though this ARTICLE doesn't really address the matter at hand- dating amongst individuals on the spectrum, it does reference a handful of peer reviewed articles. Unfourtunately only one of those is really relevant: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21285894. I can't access the full article but it does seem to suggest there are social issues inherent when one identifies as being on the spectrum. "More than half the youth at follow-up had not gotten together with friends in the previous year and 64% had not talked on the phone with a friend. "
But we all know that. Something else to consider is that many people who have social anxiety find other ways to be social: via internet, for example, as opposed to in-person or on the phone. Because I can't access the full article it is ifficult to tell whether the study took this into account or what it says about dating specifically. Also, those on the spectrum tend to mature much slower than the general population. That is, those who are not involved in romantic relationships or dating, or comfortable socializing in their teens or even into their early to mid-twenties may still mature and figure out that they can do so comfortably later on.


This article is titled "Study: Nearly 1 In 3 With Autism Socially Isolated" which is not a majority, so i'm not going to explore it.

http://nationalautismnetwork.com/articl ... le-w-r1421
This: "A new study released by Washington University?s Brown School of Social Work documents the loneliness experienced by many young people on the autism scale. According to the research, nearly 40 percent never hang out with friends, 50 percent never receive phone calls or invitations, and 28 percent have no social contact at all."

Is from the above. Again, it does not state majorities in the statistics and it only addresses younger individuals, so my previous comments stand.


To figure out what this was all about I had to download some kind of program and I'm not about to do that.

My point in writing all of this out was not because it's a good time.
My point was that there is a huge amount of stigma and there are all these assumptions- often times we are in fact held back and given loads of crap just based on assumptions. Not anything statistically backed or with much evidence.

A lot of assumptions that we then perpetuate ourselves.

So if there is a thread where people are looking for support and ideas and then another person comes in, basically saying that the majority of people on the spectrum don't date? I would rather have clarification about whether that is an assumption, myth... if it's some kind of stastic it would also be good to know what the accompanying factors might be as well.

It's easy enough to get down on ourselves, we don't need to be jumping on each others heads.

ETA: I'm not sure why anyone would have the impression I was "popular", either.

http://www.autismdailynewscast.com/roma ... yisaacson/
''just 32.1 percent of people with autism had had a partner and only 9 percent were married.''

Oops, irrelevant comment deleted. Carry on.