Something is wrong with me. Its the only explanation.

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Yes and no. I have to feel some level of physical attraction. But I can feel attracted to women who are not skinny. I can't really explain it other than to say I know on a case-by-case basis whether or not I'm attracted to a woman when I see her. I particularly like women with dark skin, but that's not an absolute. I've noticed that most of the women I find attractive are younger than me, in their 20s or at least early 30s, and I just don't feel attracted to most women who are around my own age. I missed out on dating young women when I was younger and I feel like getting to experience that is important to me. Besides, everyone says I look ten years younger than my actual age. Personality wise, I prefer ladies with a nerdy side to them. Deal breakers for me are smoking, excessive drinking, and people who take religion too seriously. I don't mind little kids, but the idea of dating someone with teenage kids or older weirds me out.

I literally heard a female lawyer woman say 'she does not want a male nurse boyfriend' because it is a turn off. It only works for the super social like party animal type of guys who are good looking and very sociable to turn working in a female dominated field like nursing and education into a favor in terms of dating. Otherwise, women will date a plumber, but they won't date the same guy if he work in nursing or education. They find it emasculating / yucky / suspicious.

Have you tried building muscles and going to the gym?

If you are socially challenged, sometimes no matter what you do, people and women just won't like you no matter what. For example, Elon Musk is hated by his wife and she also hates his kids because they all ignore her and don't show her warmth during interactions - she married Musk thinking he would turn out to be normal once she got to know him and she did not know what she was getting into. These are my assumptions, but that is what I inferred from the interview. I am 34, have almost completely lost my sex drive, and moving toward your spot of being 40 and not having had sex almost.. ever.

Look for something to enjoy in life and look for autistic friends. That's all I can say. Go to the gym too. Women can easily draw you in and then destroy what you spend years building up. My dad 'married' a good looking ten years younger woman, and now he works like a slave, she bothers him every 15 minutes, he had to get a job where he wakes up at 4 am five days a week, and works double shifts.. then she takes him on vacations and to events with her family which he does for her, but he misses his own family... I think it was a disaster for him and not worth the sex.

If you can chase these kids around, you’re not in THAT bad a shape.

She doesn't represent all women. Not all women have the same tastes. Not all women are turned off by this sort of thing. I personally never got involved with a male nurse, but it certainly would not have been a deal-breaker for me.


I think it might help for him to take some kind of leadership role. (More about this in my next post, below.) It's tricky, but possible, for at least some autistic people to become leaders. Taking a leadership role requires knowing one's specific social impairments very well and finding ways to work around them. (Note that this is not the same thing as masking.)


Again this is a vast overgeneralization. It might well be true of many women but certainly not all. (And I would hazard a guess that it's probably less likely to be true of autistic and otherwise neurodivergent women than women in general.)


People and women? Hopefully you meant people including women?

Be that as it may....

In my opinion, we need to associate with people who believe in assertiveness and active listening instead of relying on subtle hints, and we need to acquire the skills of assertiveness and active listening (or, at least, autistic-friendly variants thereof) ourselves if we don't have them already. And we need to associate with people who believe in conflict resolution and have a commitment to developing conflict resolution skills.

Looks like you're going into a profession dominated by women. Could be promising. (See my post above.)

Is there an organization (or at least an informal network of some kind) for neurodivergent special ed teachers? Or is there an organization (or at least an informal network of some kind) for neurodivergent college students and/or grad students aiming to become special ed teachers?

If not, I strongly suggest that you consider getting to work on building such a network, with the eventual aim of it becoming an organization.

While organizing it, you'll get to know lots and lots and lots of autistic and otherwise neurodivergent women. The vast majority will not have a romantic interest in you, of course, but I suspect this might be your best shot at finding the very few women who will.

But please don't pursue this goal with the primary aim of finding a romantic partner. Pursue it with the primary aims of uniting to protect the interests of neurodivergent special ed teachers and also, eventually, to educate the special ed establishment about various issues based on insights from the childhood experience of members. But, by focusing on these other aims, you'll make lots of female friends, some of whom will hopefully be less likely than NT's to reject you as a potential romantic partner.

That is a wonderful and very valuable point! Thank you! I will try to implement this into my life indeed.

There are countless overweight men who have girlfriends or wives.

I was not overweight in my 20s, but women still rejected just as consistently as they do now.

Being out of shape has nothing to do with why women reject me.

Getting a trainer to teach me how to do that would cost over $250 every two weeks. There is no way I could afford that.



That's already where I'm at.



In my experience, even the people who are open and accepting of neurodivergent people in other aspects of life still always revert to judging me according to neurotypical standards when it comes to dating. They're open to listening. They're open to being supportive. They're open to being friends. But when it comes to romance, they are unwilling to sacrifice the confident and suave Prince Charming of their dreams for some awkward introvert with weird obsessions.







Yet every woman I've ever approached has rejected me.



Funny how they all say that...



I can assure you that I am not one of those autistic people.



None that I'm aware of. But given how much discrimination neurodivergent people face in hiring, I can't imagine many would be eager to register with an organization that will identify them to employers.



Its an idea.



Even if I do find these very few women you speak of, they'll probably be ugly or otherwise unappealing to me in some way. When the pool of prospects is that shallow, the odds of finding mutual attraction are astronomical.

Natural selection sucks for those who are not selected.

Go for women of other ethnicities, don’t stick with the same demography.

we must have the same type of autism as I have the same exact thoughts and struggles with bodybuilding as you

Do you really need a trainer? Surely there must be some good video tutorials out there?

And who needs a gym? Surely there must be ways to do this at home?

Such an organization should, of course, keep its membership list confidential. Only those members who want to be public would be public.


If at any point you decide even to remotely consider the idea, you are welcome to participate in text-based chats of the Autistic Peer Leadership Group.


No need to assume this. Are most of your classmates sufficiently younger than you, at least?

It might also be a good idea to get yourself into better physical shape -- for the sake of your own health, not just to make yourself more attractive.

Truth to this. I remember reading an article about some Aspie that went to Japan and LOVED IT and recommended travelling the world to visit & meet people from other cultures because our social quirks are often excused and written off by us being "foreigners," vs. being rejected for being the odd one out weirdo guy.

You might find far greater tolerance from someone from an entirely different culture.



ALSO, I cannot possibly stress enough that based on my own personal experience (even though I am a gay man), it makes a WORLD of difference in one's entire life (social, dating, love, sex, work/professional and otherwise) to treat ASD symptoms and have them under control vs. just let them run their course and mess with your life. It's been about 9 years now and it still perplexes me why ~almost everyone here is so slow on the uptake.. why people here would rather complain about their social/love lives to to the nth degree instead of doing something different to get the root cause of their ASD symptoms under control in order to live a happier life. Vert Der f*k. but w/e, to each their own I guess. :beer:

I generally prefer women of other ethnicities. I've been equally rejected by white, black, Hispanic, and Asian women.



Nobody can effectively bring about any meaningful change while keeping their identities anonymous. There's a reason activists are always visible public figures.



I have no idea why that is relevant to this discussion. But to answer your question, there is a diverse age range among my classmate. Some are younger than me, and others are older.



I was in much better physical shape when I was younger, and women consistently rejected me even then.



I actually love that idea. I got my TESOL back in 2014 and have been wanting to go teach abroad ever since. But I never had the means to travel to and set up myself in a foreign country.

I have experienced living in a foreign country while growing. And while getting my odd behaviors written off as "being foreign" worked to some degree, it didn't work all the time.



I don't have any experience with gay dating. The cultural norm is generally that men are expected to take the initiative in pursuing women more than the other way around. For obvious reason, I don't expect that dynamic to be present in same-sex dating situations. I don't know what dynamics replace it or how they affect aspies.

I've been to multiple therapists over the past 12 years and have been treated with various types of medications. I've switched jobs and fields multiple times until I finally found one I feel comfortable in. None of that has ever done anything to improve the state of my dating life.

I've already been down this road many times. Someone tells me that once I achieve Objective X my dating life improve. So I work to achieve Objective X, only to find that it has done nothing to improve my situation and now there's another person telling me that once I achieve Objective Y my dating life will improve. Repeat ad nauseum.