you guys need to go to parties/bars/clubs

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Am I the only one who's happy living a shut-in life here? There's nothing (besides seeing a good live band or performing in a band myself) that I can get outside of the house that I don't already have inside the house. I like going out to eat to restaurants occasionally, but I'm also satisfied with stoffers macaroni and cheese, soup, take-out, and my mom's cooking. All the music I could ever want to listen to is on youtube or my cds. My piano and guitar are in the house. I have my DVDs of Full House, X-Files, Seinfeld, Frasier, and 24. I have a high-def TV to watch new 24 episodes and New England Patriots games. The only thing I don't have is an Aunt Becky to my Uncle Jessie. My family is like Full House, only without the sappiness or corny jokes or lots of kids running around. We're extremely tight and I wouldn't trade them for anyone else in the world.

OP... I am glad you are excited and pleased by your outings... But do I need to go to parties/bars/clubs? No I do not. I do not need to, that sounds like hell to me. I like my living room, like the few people I keep close to me, and have no need to go to places that I find both physically painful and obnoxious, to try to talk to people I cannot hear in the noise soup anyway. Nah. Not my idea of a good time. I like my alone time and my little sense of sanity more than dissociating in a bar when I finally go on shut down mode. But hey, if you can roll with it, enjoy it, just be careful to not overdo it.

Considering there's almost no such thing as a non-alcoholic bar/club in the world, and I absolutely loathe alcohol, smoking, and drugs and being around them, as well as having photosensitivity, your idea sounds about as attractive as tossing me into a battle in a third world country with no weapons, armor or translators.

When I was younger, I liked going to bars. It was a lot of fun. At 46 I'm a little old for the bar scene I suppose, plus there aren't any near me since I live in a dry county. Before we moved to East Hell, my husband and I would send the kids to Mom's for the night and we would go to this one bar we liked for the evening. It was a lot of fun. I enjoy the music and the drinks, but drinks in a bar are entirely too high. I can't see paying $5 for a shot of bourbon and $2.50 for a coke to drink with it. The place we used to go had live music. Lots of alternative bands. I would absolutely refuse to go to a country bar though. Especially one of those redneck beer joints.

PaganMom

Well, OP...I liked your suggestion. Obviously, for people who have sensory issues or have tried it and didn't like it, it's understandably a non-starter. But I think you've suggested a very effective way to minimize the perceived risk of approaching a member of the opposite sex. Many of the posters I've read here seem to attach such an enormous amount of risk to approaching a woman that they talk themselves out of doing it. And I understand that, and I sympathize - it is scary, and there is risk involved, and getting shot down doesn't feel good. But it can be kind of like doing anything else that's scary - when you try something and fail, and realize that you'll survive the failure - it just becomes less scary.

It kind of reminds me of being back in business school....the school would sponsor happy hours where the only cover "charged" was a rejection letter from a prospective employer (and this was at one of the top business schools in the country). It was a great way of acknowledging that even though we all felt on top of the world after getting through one of the toughest programs in the country - there were always going to be other challenges, and some rejections. We might have thought we were big fish in that school's pond, but we were all just minnows in a big ocean in the real world....and we all survived.

So a bar or club might not be the right setting, but I think the idea of putting yourself in an environment where you can meet people (and the stakes really are relatively low) has some merit. But that's just my two cents.

It's a horrible suggestion. It's like telling an extrovert to stay in as much as an introvert, or telling a Red Sox fan to root for the Yankees or vice versa.

The answer isn't to adjust to the NT social life. The idea is to be happy with who you really are.

The OP is just selling out and getting nothing in return but a beer belly, superficial company, and if he's lucky, some fornicating.

To be less blunt...some of us may actually not like alcohol, crowds, bad music, and drama that comes with being in such an atmosphere, i.e. people fighting over nothing because they're drunk (I know from being in such environments.)

The OP was bragging about breaking a girl's heart. He doesn't even sound like a true Aspie.

If someone suggested something like "Find something outside of the house you like doing" that would be a different story. That wasn't his message. His message was for guys to assimilate, go to parties and environments that they don't even like, in the hopes that they can handle everyday rejection with women better. I happen to not have a problem with feeling bad after getting rejected by random women, but for an Aspie that does, going to a bar and getting a mean rejection from an NT party woman isn't the answer. Maybe for him personally it was, but I've been to these places, and seen and been victim of such rejections. The women are incredibly cruel to NT guys, but even more cruel to guys that are clearly not like themselves.

So what I'm saying is that getting rejected by attractive woman after attractive woman, for most Aspie guys, isn't going to make him any more confident when he sees that INTP girl in class that he wants to talk to.

Btw, I don't hate anyone who drinks. My mom occasionally has a glass of wine with dinner. My dad drinks beer. I have a problem with people that get drunk as a hobby. Not just the alcohol, the lifestyle and the reckless partying. A person that has a drink with dinner just tells me that they're enjoying an adult beverage, not that they think it's cool to party and get drunk.