A girlfriend is not a lost puppy.

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This.

A friend of mine, on the spectrum, got out of an 8 year relationship and then intentionally stayed single for a couple years or so as he worked on himself. Healthy diet, exercise, yoga, meditation, sleep, school courses, family time, some friend time etc - but everything focused on healing & improving himself (and overcoming the breakup) until he felt ready to date again. He’s now been in a very healthy relationship for 2-3 years.

I’ve never been in a relationship, but I’ve had far more “lovers,” than you. I suppose that counts as “success,” to some degree. Granted, it’s easier for gay guys, but still, there are gays who can’t get laid, too.

I didn't say I looked "all over the city", but I usually talk in terms of finding a girlfriend, and still see no reason to change my wording. Finding and attracting aren't mutually exclusive; in fact, if you're socially isolated, either you work hard on getting a social life which eventually includes women who might be interested in you, or you'll never find or attract any, regardless of how much you improve yourself on your own.

Most people are never isolated enough for this to be an issue, so they can take for granted opportunities for contact will always abound, but for some of us, the exact opposite is true.

It was only when I stopped "looking for a girlfriend" and started working on being attractive to women that I met my wife. It amazed me how many women were interested in me once I started working out, dressing well, taking classes, and simply smiling more often. I also stopped complaining and acting like a perpetual loser and victim.

Of course, living on my own and being employed also helped.

But wtf would people who have the ability to attract others know about telling others here what they can do to help themselves?

That seems to be a common response to good advice here. Someone who’s successfully managed to achieve something in their life shares with others here how they can do it too, and it doesn’t take long for most of the people who could benefit the most from said advice to either shoot it down or ignore it and carry on doing as they’ve always done and getting as they’ve always gotten.

But.. at least we try.

What?? You mean you accepted responsibility for your own behavior and it made your life better?? You don't say??

Do you actually want to help, or just congratulate yourself on being so much better than us? I’m not trying to shoot you down; it’s a genuine, literal, autistic question.

I ask this because if you actually want to help, you could apply your own apparent reasoning to yourself: just like we’re failing at life, you’re failing in your attempt to help us. There must be a reason for that, and it may often be that the other person doesn’t want to be helped, but this isn’t necessarily always the case. I may know next to nothing about life, but the one thing I have an obscene amount of experience about is my own struggles and frustrations and the precise ways in which my attempts to begin to get my life together have failed so far. If you actually want to help someone, it’s unwise to assume you know everything about their particular situation and they don’t, even if it’s true that you know infinitely more than they ever will about the things you experience when you’re past that kind of obstacles.

Refusing to reason with someone is never a way to accomplish anything with them that requires their conscious, informed coöperation. Of course, you don’t need to be interested in such kind of accomplishment, but then you’ve already given up the goal of helping them. It’s true that beggars can’t be choosers, that we should be
grateful that you try to help us and that you have every right to dismiss us as unworthy of debating with you, but it’s just as true that the moment you use that prerogative, the attempt to help is over. You can’t have it both ways.

I know this probably sounds like I’m just making excuses, but I’m not. There are many people here I admire, particularly Fnord, but also you, and even people I no longer discuss anything with because it didn’t lead anywhere good when I tried. However, admiring someone is not enough to know how to use their advice in my situation. Most of the time, the only message I can make out is “I never let myself sink anywhere near as low as you did morally, so by all rights you should have long been left to die—the very premise of turning you into a respectable person is laughable”. Not because they say this explicitly, of course, but because they only talk about things that are well beyond my means, or at least I don’t have the faintest idea how I’d go about beginning to do them.

And sometimes, like in this thread, the advice boils down to “Keep doing the one thing you’ve tried for a ridiculous number of years to no avail. And don’t argue with me, because I succeeded!” Well, you succeeded, but it’s a pretty safe bet I won’t succeed if I keep behaving the way you suggest, so if we’re going to have a productive discussion, we need to begin by getting that out of the way. There’s probably some kind of misunderstanding—maybe an assumption on your part that the avenues to connect with anyone interested in connecting with you will always be there, because in your life, it’s true; however, I know for a fact that it’s not in mine, so the same probably happens to others. Especially to others who didn’t succeed like you.

There’s more to it, too. You could argue I never improved myself enough. Well, that’s the catch: I’ve never been in a situation in which I clearly could do much self-improvement beyond simply studying while my parents supported me financially, or something morally equivalent or worse. I could have walked away and been homeless, but that seems hardly a wise move, since I doubt I’d survive. I’d really like to explore in depth the more or less sensible things you can do in our different life situations.

It may be my ASD lack of empathy (I do have empathy. I'm not an emotionless robot or anything.), but I have an increasingly difficult time feeling bad for any of the long time complainers here.

It's not as if I've EVER posted "I can work make a bit of money, use my body for sports etc, and make friends and you can't, Nah nah nah nah nah nah!" or any such nonsense. Everyone who's been on this forum as long as I have knows what I've shared with the group. I've said "I can do all of these things & more now, and here's how I did it and how you can, too." And people do not want to do any work to treat their own symptoms in order to function higher and live better, happier, healthier lives free from major depression, anxiety, and strong AS symptoms that interfere with life. There are No secrets to my success. I have been incredibly transparent about everything I've learned and done.

I shared all of what I did here ONLY because I want it to help others. Many here are content with themselves and their symptoms and their lives, but for those who are constantly complaining about their social lives, love lives, work lives, financial situations (I was $110K in debt and bankrupt 6 years ago & unable to function well enough to work at all.) etc etc.. well, I have an increasingly difficult time feeling bad for those people. Especially the ones who make posts saying that their "stomach problems," (wrong organ) and their disabilities/mental health both keep getting worse.. still they refuse to see the correlation & have a will to do something about it for themselves.

No, this can't help every one of us. But it can help many. (70% according to medical stats) And from my perspective, I'd think with those that complain the most would want to change themselves and their lives the most.. but, they do not. They just want to complain. And that's their choice, it's their lives. All I can do is offer my knowledge to help them, but like the old adage says "God helps those who help themselves." I am Not comparing myself to God, but in a similar vein, I cannot help anyone that doesn't want to help themselves. I acknowledge this. It's just frustrating for me to sit here and read complaints from the same long time members over and over and over again when I've handed them the solution - they're just simply not wanting, willing, or ready to do anything for themselves. I'm Not wired like that. I'm not greedy, but I Want Better of & for myself and it's completely unfathomable to me to be in such a painful hurting place of suffering and not want to get oneself out of it by any means necessary.

Here's something I don't understand. People say that you don't need to have a partner to be worth something, and yet any time someone complains about having difficulty attracting people, the first thing that happens is everyone assumes these guys need to work on themselves, as though they're not worth anything.

Of course there are certain things that are useful to work on, like negativity or being depressed. However, the general advice typically is not about that. It's about getting fit, being fashionable, social and, even worse, training on PUA stuff.

Telling people they can eradicate autistic traits is not useful advice and never will be.

Self worth is determined only by you. No one else can tell or teach you what you're worth to yourself. People with negative self worth are severely depressed. Sure, others can help make you feel better or worse, but what you deem yourself to be worth - that's 100% all on you.

Now, your worth as a potential partner or mate to someone else & your level of attractiveness? Totally different. These are the things people recommend working on in order to be more successful in the L&D world. Also note, having a reasonably positive self worth/not being depressed is more attractive to others, too, as people will pick up on your lack of confidence if you express it or display it.



These things. But I disagree that PUA stuff is all bad. There's nothing wrong with learning how to communicate with people in order to get them to agree to a date with you. It's all about asking the right questions - as if you're a salesman & what you're selling them on is agreeing to meet you for date.

Works out pretty damned good for me.

Those others fail to realize that before I figured things out, I was just like they are now.. They would rather assume “Once a success; always a success”, and go on with being miserable.

Sucks to be them.

But at least we try.

SHH!!

It’s supposed to be a secret!

... not ...

Because it removes all personal responsibility and resolves them of taking any action.

It's the path of least resistance.