Balance

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Hi everyone,

As I have heard and read about aspies, some of us can be very prolific talkers and very poor at reading others-in my case, women. Over the years I have memorized some textbook reactions of women that suggest that yes, "she digs me". I have been somewhat successful at acquiring dates and girlfriends yet I have been dateless the last few years because (I believe) I realized that I suck at striking a balance.

Before I acknowledged this balance, I used to approach a woman and do my best to sell myself: be funny, be smart, be compassionate-generally show her what is attractive about me, the way I believe that most everyone else does as well. My problem with my balance is that I have often neglected to take the time to let her talk, to let her show herself to me and this has often resulted in getting involved only to find that she isn't who I thought she was (duh! I was projecting in the first place!) and more often than not I'm the one who ends up dumping her. And I'm at the point where dumping someone sometimes hurts more than being dumped-I don't like to feel like I am a callous bastard when I could have avoided it if I had been more careful, been more thorough.

I believe in and have a love/hate relationship with evolutionary theory. Regardless of whether we can all consciously accept that there either is or should be equality between the sexes, statistics (yeah, I know, don't always trust them but beyond personal experience, it's all we have) have shown that more often that not, men initiate, women don't. For instance, a local free paper where I used to live said that for their personals, men placed (roughly) 70% of the ads and responded to 70% of the ads and women did 30% of ads and responses.

So, I try to listen, I try to be patient, I ask questions, I listen and do my best to really remember what a woman I may be interested in says so that I can bring it up later on a second date (if I get one). But here's my beef: in doing this I have found that I usually don't get second dates. Is it because my caution has put me in a position that has reduced my will and drive to impress, thus putting me in the "not to date" box (or worse, the "just a friend" box)? Am I struggling like sysaphus against an evolutionary mandate that says that I must get the ball rolling, that I must win her affection and that hers is only to win my mine by her appearance? I know that I cannot avoid a flawed human being because we all are, yet I wonder if my (seeming) inability to understand women stems from AS diagnosis or just from the fact that I should suck it up because, hey, all guys have to deal with the subtle, confusing, and frustrating social dance that is courting a woman.

Any thoughts, experiences, and insights would be great.