Why many women dislike socially awkward men

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My current record is 41 years. Unpunched since 1971.

It was a fight about a girl. This other bloke thought she was his girlfriend, I thought she was mine. He grabbed her arm and started pulling her away from me, I grabbed her other arm, pulled back, and said "Is this the Gentleman's Excuse-Me or can anyone join in?" Next thing I knew I was supine on the pavement, waking up from being KO'd.

She'd not told me of any attachment to anybody else, so it looks pretty clear that it was mainly her fault, though he was a violent, judgemental bastard. I say "judgemental" because when he saw us together she told him she was with me, and he said "you're with THAT?" and he and his friends sniggered at me. I was guilty of being naive. The area where the incident took place was a rather uncivilised, working-class area, where ungentlemanly conduct of that kind was socially acceptable. I didn't know such people and places existed. I still don't quite know what her motivations were for causing that disagreement. Best guess, she was trying to make him jealous. I've heard that some people do that, but again I don't quite know why.

(please take this as a joke - it's intended that way, don't take any of this as advice)

Go out and get a few DUI's, maybe even a good coke habit, shag a trailer park brood mother and help her get more taxpayer money, maybe even buy your own trailer and have a $50K pickup truck out in front that you lease with a second mortgage against the trailer - THEN you'll fit in.

This sort of thing makes me feel like I understand my problem - I'm like a beaver that doesn't make dams, and dams in the human phenotype sense is stuff you'll never need (or will enslave you to debt till you're in the ground) that you use as status symbols to press teh menz and teh gurlz. I'd rather just completely exclude people who need that from my life.

It’s actually 51 years, ToughDiamond 10 more years of Kudos for you!

Yeah, that bird seemed messed up!! I can't think of what her motives were either, unless yeah that guy was her ex OR her ex was in the bar. I was in a situation like that at age 21, where this girl made out with me at a bar b/c her ex was nearby - this was in the nineties, a few years before I was diagnosed but even then I picked up on her motive

Also, I can totally understand the "lower/working class" neighbourhood bit - that's where you're bound to find more belligerent behaviour - also, one of the theories I had of why autistics are less welcome there, because autistics are far less common among them and more common in the middle or upper classes (e.g. the sons of engineers, doctors, computer programmers etc.) who tend to have children later in life, a BIG risk factor for autism.

Which is why, as a younger man, I just viscerally knew to avoid such places b/c I knew I'd stick out like a sore thumb. I was avoidant in that regard for my own safety.

I can totally relate, my friend! We're birds of a feather I also had a series of very short-term relationships in my 20s, which all fizzled out due to some pretext on her part that never sounded 100% credible (but not outrageous, either).
One simply said she was ending it after a couple of months for no apparent reason at all, just "there's something there that's bothering me, but...I can't quite define what it is." She never expressly said it was about ME or my behaviours, just something undefinable missing.
One of them, at age 27 (which is what prompted me to get a re-diagnosis of my erstwhile "ADHD") flat-out told me what was turning her off, my saying things at the wrong time, and that I also had (still have) mild co-morbid Tourette's, which comes and goes. She also said sometimes I have a blank facial expression when saying certain things which put her off. To my credit, though, I could nonverbally tell something was bothering her by her facial expression and body language, which I raised proactively to her a couple of times and then she caved and told me her issues with me.

YES - absolutely. There's something more tribal and bellicose in the neurotypical chemistry, manifested in the young man years, and even without the deterrent of legal consequence... which is ostensibly why some "Aspies" are victims of violent crimes, up to and including murder during this period - at a rate higher than the gen pop

I think it's not just wanting to present a "tough guy" image to impress peers and such, but it more comes down to anything insulting one's social status or ego... which is king in the "NT World". So the fistfights are like the latter-day equivalent of pistols at dawn, or rapiers in the afternoon, etc. It's all about defending one's honour in the face of a slight in front of peers (if it's just one-on-one affronts without an audience, then less likely to turn violent).

As for your double standard lament of how we're judged on boldness/aggression vs. neurotypical men...I think you hit the nail on the head. I have a theory, that NT laypeople don't consider or think in terms of autism spectrum - they think in terms of a "mental illness spectrum". So on seeing our presentation, they just viscerally lump us in with bipolar, schizo, drug addicts etc... the great unwashed. Because of that, they have trouble separating any justified angry reaction we may have from our perceived "mental illness", they point to it and see it as instability, insane, rampage loner, and other labels that they just viscerally conjure up...because they look at our behaviour through that prejudiced lens of "irredeemably mentally ill".

Interesting. I never thought of whether there's a correlation between autism and income (or autism and having children later in life).

My parents had me in their mid 20s. And while I wasn't raised poor, my parents were raised poor.

I suppose to every rule there's an exception though.

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess a lot of the posters on here have watched The Big Bang Theory (because that show is easy for us to relate to).

Leonard's character, while not quite on the spectrum, is the stereotypical socially awkward nerd. There's an episode where he makes the decision to come out of his shell (and be more bold when pursuing a woman). Long story short, it turns into a disaster.

Howard's character on that show, while also not quite on the spectrum (as far as I know), made all sorts of bold moves on the ladies. Yet his boldness ended up coming across as creepy (he even got a citation from law enforcement on one episode).

Meanwhile, if a football jock made the same exact moves as Howard, it would be seen as sexy.

Goes to show...you don't even have to be on the spectrum. If you're merely socially awkward (which neurotypicals can be socially awkward too), any boldness will backfire on you.

You're correct. I did get physically attacked 3 times after that, but those assaults all failed thanks to others who managed to rescue me in the nick of time. Those attacks weren't about women though.

I suppose my mistake was to display the courage and cheek of an alpha male when I'm not actually an alpha male. It usually works, but when it doesn't, it's dangerous.

You're right - social awkwardness may also be based on nurture rather than nature. Leonard had a "refrigerator mother", and Howard had a...super-overbearing and neurotic mother. So that likely messed them up plenty, where anything they had to say was discounted or not taken seriously and it bled into their adult years.

I can say that while I'm 5'10 with good looks in my 20s (and beyond!) it wasn't till the latter half of my twenties when I hit the gym hard and got more female attention in clubs, so yeah, it helps!! I may not have had the over 6ft height of a typical football jock (at the college-uni level anyway), but it helped psychologically lower my social awkwardness and became more of a virtuous circle. But like I said earlier, clearly it didn't fade away completely, since I was still getting dates with no further communication OR I'd get one or two steps further, getting in very short-term relationships with sleeping together and then a couple months later she'd say she needs time and space

Yes, dear brother, not having "NT privilege" means that we have/had to rely on persevering, gradualism, indirect and puzzling feedback loops, and maintaining one's composure all throughout each new iteration

At the time I had no idea such people existed. My friends knew that particular pub was a notoriously dangerous place, but they didn't know I'd gone there till it was too late to warn me. As a young Aspie I wasn't very streetwise.

Their ideology was somewhat akin to the skinheads of the time - i.e. generally a hard-hearted, insensitive macho bunch with no time for compassion or delicate feelings, though the clothes and hairstyles were different - the males wore smart suits and had short hair, though not crewcuts. Like many other species of animal, the young males tended to get into physical fights over the females. It's hard to know why I didn't have at least a vague suspicion that the girl wasn't my type, but when you're desperate for a girlfriend and one seems interested, you tend to overlook such "minor details." She was probably more into purely hedonistic sex than a soppy loving relationship. After the experience I confined myself more or less to hippies and the middle class, though I didn't completely shun the mainstream working class as a source of friends, as I saw that they weren't all violent and sociopathic.

While it's been said here a couple of times recently that even neurotypicals can be socially awkward, that's true - BUT - typically it's awkwardness that seems more "natural", if that makes sense. Those folks will just realize their blunder and cover it up with nervous laughter and the like. So while it doesn't score any extra points with a woman, it doesn't really "weird her out", like our awkwardness might - e.g. we don't always intuitively realize we've made a blunder, and when our face "says" that we had no clue that what we just said was inappropriate or "off", then that might give her cause for concern - like WTF?? Is this someone from another planet?? Maybe I'm using hyperbole, for comic effect, but it's something like that. Also if we appear catatonic when trying to analyze some nuanced statement she said with a certain facial expression, and give an off-colour response - then she's thinking we're socially tone-deaf.

Fortunately, later in my 20s, I gradually found ways to get around these, mask off-putting behaviours, realize errors through reflection in hindsight...but it was a struggle!! ! And I probably still made the occasional gaffe but milder or not as frequent.

One similarity between NT and AS awkwardness though is that they both have a genetic component. Yes, there is such a thing as a "shy gene"; I read about it in a book by a prominent psychologist Dr. Samuel Barondes, called "Making Sense of People". I highly recommend it

I know the examples I gave of neurotypicals being socially awkward were from the Big Bang Theory.

I know it's only a show. But I'd call it realistic fiction.

Leonard's social awkwardness is as you described: It slides off as more natural.

Howard, on the other hand, his social awkwardness seriously creeps most girls out. Granted, he managed to find Bernadette. But then again, even I've had girlfriends.

I like humble men who hate social events.
I guess you'd call that socially-awkward even though they hate the social.

I wouldn't want to be with a social man whether he was awkward or not.

^ someone who hates social events can still be be socially competent.
And it's not even about social events, it's everyday social interaction.
For example, if they can't go to the supermarket without making loud comments about other shoppers because they can't regulate their voice, or if they push in at the checkout because they don't understand the concept of turn taking, or if they get in other people's way while they check out every packet of pasta on the shelf for its protein content, then you have problems.

^

Hello, love.

By socially-awkward I meant shy, humble, hesitating, or uncomfortable in social settings.
What you're describing sounds more like grandiosity or a lack of respect for others.
That's never a turn-on.