Neurodiverse courtship and relationship hypotheses

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I think I'll answer this in a new thread:

First, let me say that I don't have the "truth" about how the ND courtship works, and even if I would be close to understanding it, I still would not know of optimal ways for NDs to do courtship since the natural way is extremely unlikely to work in today's culture, which is obvious from all the problems NDs have with relationships.

What I do know is the traits that have been linked to ND relationships in Aspie Quiz:

* Have you experienced stronger than normal attachments to certain people?
* Do you have an alternative view of what is attractive in the opposite sex?
* Do you have an urge to learn the routines of people you know?
* Do you like to follow (walk behind) people you are attached to?
* Do you have an urge to observe the habits of humans and/or animals?
* Have people you formed strong attachments to taken advantage of you?
* Do you have unusual sexual preferences?
* Do you like to protect people you are attached to even when they didn't ask for it?
* Do you feel that you are a very special or unusual person?
* Do you examine the hair of people you like a lot?
* Do you have, or used to have, imaginary relationships?
* Do you tend to look a lot at people you like and little or not at all at people you dislike?
* Do you have odd hair (for example multiple whorls, standing up when short or other peculiarities)?
* Do you prefer to construct your own set of spiritual beliefs rather than following existing religions / belief-systems?
* Are you more sexually attracted to strangers than to people you know well?
* Do you tend to develop romantic feelings for people that persistently shows interest for you?
* Do you prefer to learn the character of a potential romantic partner through observation rather than conversation?
* If somebody showed possible romantic interest for you, would you ask friends for help in checking out if it is genuine?

And the traits linked to NT relationships and the social dimension:

* Do you enjoy traditional dating?
* Do you find yourself at ease in romantic situations?
* Are you asexual? (reversed)
* Do you like tongue-kissing?
* Do you enjoy travel?
* Do you take pride in your appearance?
* Would you discuss relationship issues with your best friends?
* Do you find it hard to be emotionally close to other people? (reversed)
* Do you find it easy to describe your feelings?
* Is it hard for you to approach somebody you are attracted to? (reversed)
* Do you prefer to hug only a romantic partner? (reversed)

The problem is that having a list of traits related to ND and NT relationship preferences doesn't mean you actually know how the process works, or how to adapt in an optimal way to the traits. It only tells you which preferences should be considered in order to make it work.

My current idea of how the ND courtship works naturally is:

1. The guy triggers an interest reaction from the girl. Repeat as many times as is necessary.
2. The girl initiates a following scenario -> the guy gets a crush and becomes blocked from approaching and analyzing in real time.
3. If the guy is interested he tries to setup repeats so the girl can show off, otherwise the crush disappears and so does the blocks.
4. The girl shows off and the guy observes
5. The guy thinks the girl has done her part -> the guy no longer is blocked from approaching or analysing what happens in real time.
6. The guy shows off and the girl observes
7. The girl thinks the guy has done his part
8. Talking and a relationship

Now, the flirting behavior with quick glances is a possible replacement that might work for #1. It's not how interest is triggered naturally, and it won't naturally trigger #2 unless the guy does it in a smart way.

I'm sure there might be other ways to "streamline" this process, but they must at least solve this:

1. That the guy naturally won't approach or talk. The approach block is naturally disabled by the girl showing off
2. That talking is a trigger that makes the ND brain think it's in a relationship (the dating problem)
3. That obsessing (which happens in step #3 to #7) is the natural way NDs attach and create a strong bond, and not with sex and talking.
4. That going from a friendship to a relationship will create a shallow attachment unless the obsessive thoughts still can be triggered
5. That the guy won't get a crush unless the girl-in-front-of-guy scenario can be triggered in some other way.

Then, of course, not all people have all of these preferences, which makes things even more complicated.

That sounds plausible.

Hmm. This is interesting, and I sort of see where you're coming from, but speaking as a neurodiverse individual your

would not work for me.

The only way I've approached a woman, or been approached by a woman, is through a medium. So, penpal ads in the back of a music magazine, phone dating (voice ads and messages, not smartphone apps), and online dating - Plenty of Fish and OKCupid. nothing has ever occurred In Real Life.

Possibly, if I attended a real world social space (work, a lecture or arts event, a group related to a hobby or interest, a gathering of friends of friends though I don't actually have any friends, but I'll put that as another example of what I mean) and there was someone there who intrigued me, I might try and talk to them. Chances are, if they intrigued me, I'd actually be able to have a conversation with them.

I could never do the 'cold approach' in a bar or club etc, but at such a social space there would be a common topic of conversation in why we were there in the first place. And by 'intrigued', I mean their character, their mind and intellect and humour. That is what draws me in most. i would talk to them simply with an eye toward carrying on the conversations. I wouldn't be thinking of forming a relationship with them, or getting them into bed. It would be about letting our minds meet and interact. that's always where I start to get hooked. If we got into each others' heads enough, and in the right way, a relationship would follow.

But that's two paragraphs on an unlikely hypothetical. As I say, I've always made contact through a medium. This has allowed me to look for someone who catches my interest, and then take time with what I say as I get to know the person, not having to worry about getting tongue-tied in real time, as by the time we do talk or meet up, I'm feeling at ease enough with them to relax. So when you say:



well, again, not for me. While I do obsess (though I don't know if its to an 'unusual' degree), I also need conversation and, in time, sex. I suppose one way to consider it is that conversation is how I make the obsession tangible, and sex is how I make the conversation - the meeting of minds - tangible.



If I'm going to get with someone, I'm going to have obsessive thoughts about them. So I don't have a way to test that, or report on how such a thing went for me. But a relationship would always be built on a friendship. I don't think I could be attracted to someone who I couldn't be friends with.

Yeah, I don't quite get this. What exactly do you mean by showing off? And what is the girl-in-front-of-guy scenario?

That is the primary problem of it all. NDs are wired not to approach women, and especially not women they are interested in. This is broken after the girl has shown off. So, the cold-approach route is basically closed, unless you train yourself to go against your instincts, which I've not really managed to do other than faking that I have no romantic interest. The natural way to start the courtship is broken so typically cannot be used either. That's why you need to figure out alternatives that fool the system. One such might be the eye contact game, but it is not a precise replacement and doesn't naturally trigger girls. Online dating is another, but it jump-starts conversation which is the last step in the process.



That sounds very similar to the observation phase (girl and guy show off). Of course, if you can trigger this, and make sure it is mutual, then you have a good chance of ending up in a healthy relationship.



Sure, if that works better for you. I think you can introduce talking, either as monologue or conversation in this phase without a lot of problems, as long as you still can continue to obsess. I mean, I've done that too, and it worked. Still, I think in the natural process, there is no talking, and this is because the natural process was adapted to a situation where you couldn't talk to each other's because you didn't have a shared language. This is also why NDs have so many stims and nonverbal communication that is a lot more powerful than NTs have.

I don't have a better term than showing off right now. It's when one of the people are setting up things to show for the other, or is monologuing about things. Like for instance, the girl might plan to meet the guy in a complex way, or the guy might be monologuing on Facebook, and the girl uses likes or even more complex ways to respond. There should always be feedback in the show-off process, otherwise the one showing off has no way to know if there is mutual interest or not. So, at least theoretically, the show off could be done with conversation too, where the one showing off is telling the other a lot of things about themselves, and the other one mostly listens.



That's a real strange thing. It's when the girl is in front of the guy, possibly looking back over her shoulder regularly, which when done for long enough (like half-an-hour or more), gives the guy a crush. In more than half of my crushes, I'm 100% that this scenario preceded the crush and it might have been part of most of the others as well. I've even "tested" this on a train, and it worked. This is what happens naturally when the girl shows the guy around.

i don't know how an isolated exception (me) fits or doesn't fit into your theory as it is, but i can barely even think of any parallels at all with my personal experience. i'm trying to find a way to explain "how it's different" for me, but i don't even know where to begin, because the whole thing sounds completely alien and opposite to how it works for me. so i'm just going to comment on each point separately

first the aspie quiz, for reference (questions that my answer doesn't match the expected group):

i assume my answer is no, but i don't really understand this question. what would be the context?


no. my divergent/associative thinking may be mistaken for imagination by some, but my actual imagination is very limited


definite no. it's the opposite instead


i think i understand the spirit of the question, but i don't know how to answer it. i talk a lot, and when i want to get to know someone, i talk to them. but i can be very oblique with my questions at first. people are usually unaware of what i already know about them, because, among other things, i observe details about them that they're probably not concerned with, and then i ask seemingly unrelated questions that let me draw logical conclusions by excluding possible meanings of what i've observed


definite no


definite yes


definite yes. i do it very often


oddly no. i never had a problem with that. i had some excruciatingly intense crushes in high school, but i could talk to those girls like i talked to anybody else. (worth noting that i did talk to them like i would talk to anybody else. not just that it was "just as easy", but really "the same way". they were dissociated from my idealized and sentimentalized image of them. a crush would go on for months and nobody would notice anything unless i told them, and they were usually surprised when i did)

one time, it went as far as me casually "declaring myself" to the actual girl in question. she was my friend, and i knew that there was no realistic chance of compatibility, so it was just a subject for conversation like any other, with no expectation of a response to it. she was unfazed, and unsurprised by the disparity between my inner intensity and outer neutrality. "i know. but trust me, i'm trouble. you deserve better"

i don't think she was being anything but realistic. she was the opposite of depressive, but she actually was a complicated person with a complicated family and a complicated life. a good example of what i meant in the other thread when i said that "to me it's not a matter of approaching, it's a matter of relationship". that's where the complicated part is. i liked her, she liked me, but there was nothing in the universe that could make my life compatible with hers. we just happened to be crossing paths because or mutual friends

and the steps:


no, if i ever trigger anyone's interest in me before i take any initiative myself, or if i'm even noticed at all, it's unintentional


i don't understand this. how can a girl "initiate" "a guy getting a crush"? what does it mean to "become blocked from approaching"?


100% greek to me


now this is something i'm familiar with . i do talk. i talk a lot

if a girl ever tries to flirt with me in any way in a real-life setting, she'll be wasting her time. if she wants to talk to me, she can just talk to me. when i want to talk to someone, i just talk to them. i don't understand what purpose "pre-talk flirting" could ever have. any flirting i ever do or will ever be interested in is either verbal or practical/concrete (symbolic gifts, meaningful gestures, etc)

Makes sense, anagram. You have basically all of the NT-preferences, so you don't recognize the ND preferences because it works the typical way for you.

A lot of that stuff doesn't really match up with how I think about things and I am far from NT. I don't even understand some of what you're talking about.

My brain hurts trying to understand this.

The main thing that has worked for me is meeting guy online, messaging back and fourth...then exchanging numbers to text by phone and then meeting in person and seeing how it goes from there. If anything whenever I've 'obsessed' it's just led me to ignore signs I was being led on, used or the guy was losing interest.

I only ever had three guys ask me out IRL...and one was just one of the doomed to fail high school/teenage relationships also he passed a note so didn't actually verbally ask me out, only thing we really had in common was both being unpopular kids at our school. Then the other two where in college, one led me on for months and one broke it off with me early on because he didn't feel much connection...I wasn't bothered as i wasn't really feeling it either.

How I get to know people is by spending time, interacting with them including talking to them...any time I've tried just thinking to myself 'oh I've been seeing this guy long enough, we must be in a genuine relationship.' and hoping they end up expressing similar feelings I've been wrong, that is usually when it becomes clear I've been getting led on, or they've decided for whatever reasons their best choice is breaking it off.

Hence why it was important to me with my current relationship to actually discuss that he's my boyfriend and I'm his girlfriend so it's clear. It worked so much better that way, and well he actually likes me and doesn't have too much personal baggage to be in a relationship with me so that helps to.

I mean I get it my preferences are totally neurotypical, but I suppose I cannot be the only ND person with NT relationship preferences. The idea different people regardless of neurology have different relationship/dating preferences is too far fetched I suppose.

I think you may have been too specific in your assertions/description of "how the ND courtship works naturally", and are treading close to question-begging - you come up with a system for 'ND courtship', and (via circular reasoning) anyone who doesn't fit that is doing 'NT courtship'.

On the other hand, it all seems pretty vague. That question - 'do you like travel'. Well, it depends. I have quite specific criteria for travel to be enjoyable, but within that criteria, yes. Outside of that criteria, no.

I think you need to take a step or two back and look at underlying issues for the neurodiverse, and remember the word diverse in there. I don't think you can come up with a one-size-fits-all for the neurodiverse courtship, unless you define it into existence as such, deeming anyone who doesn't fit into it as suited to 'neurotypical courtship'.

For example, you mentioned flirting in another post/thread. I am terrible with flirting. Clueless when it's being done to me, and useless at doing it to others. Flirting seems far more neurotypical than -diverse to me, but I'm quite capable of accepting that ND people can and do flirt.

Not at all. That's fully possible, but it is more common for "overall" NDs to have ND relationship preferences and NTs to have NT relationship preferences. If it was not so, then it would be meaningless to call them for ND and NT relationship preferences.

There is nothing circular about it. All the traits have been collected without concern for their function, some a long time ago and before there was even any idea about the relationship category. Then the categories were identified with explorative factor analysis on large populations.



It's relevant enough and has p < .00001 that it is related to being neurotypical.



I already did by using normal research methods. The ND relationship traits load on one factor and the NT relationship traits load on another factor. There is nothing manual in it. I cannot change natural groupings because people online doesn't like how they cluster. That would reduce it all to pseudoscience.



Flirting is not part of the questions, but looking more at people one like is. I think I've been very clear about this connection.

Have you published your research and data and such anywhere? Have you had any positive feedback, any 'yes, this is just like me!'?

I still think you are being too specific, and being overly confident with those specifics. I think, somewhere along the way, you've cut down to far too much of an abstraction, and then started from this abstraction, working through a number of presumptions, until you reach your present conclusions which, so far at least, have only been met with confusion by (an admittedly small number of) neurodiverse individuals.

For instance, on 'do you like to travel?'. I literally do. I like to be in motion on a bus or train or boat. I like to walk. I like to see and explore things that interest me, on my own terms. I like to plan an itinerary, to timetable what I'll do and when, to take a swirling mess of possibility and settle it into a plan. I can also be somewhat loose and spontaneous on my own, where I'm only responsible for myself (though even that really comes down to running through lots of possible plans quickly and then going with the one that interests me the most) and don't have to improvise while taking account of other peoples' wants and needs and preferences (too much data to process in too little time). I don't want to take a package holiday, or go off with a bunch of people on a meandering roadtrip. Now, to me this strongly leans to Aspergers - that is, neurodiverse. I take the concept of 'travel' and work it to suit my personality, my interests and needs. But apparently the simplified answer of 'yes, I like to travel' is suggestive of being neurotypical.

I recall a remark by William James - I think it's the 'Psychologist's Fallacy', but it's been a while - that he was wary of the connection between a given method of investigation into a phenomena and what was discovered about the phenomena, and particularly any assumption that what was found by that method simply was all that could be said about the phenomena. When you use phrases like 'how the ND courtship works naturally', alarm bells ring in my head, raising that concern.

Not yet, but I plan to at some point.



To the contrary. I went through the complete courtship process with an ND girl by pure chance, formulated questions for issues I encountered, verified the issues were ND traits, and then run the factor analysis. No abstractions done anywhere, and 100% the scientific method.

Of course, if somebody has ideas about alternative scenarios, just do the empirical part (go through a successful courtship procedure with a stranger), formulate possible markers, and I'll gladly test them for you.

I am neurodiverse, and this makes very little sense to me and doesn't really reflect my life at all and how I interact with guys.

I think your hypothesis is way off and there is no such thing as "neurodiverse courtship" in opposition to "neurotypical courtship"--I think there is just human courtship and human interaction and all the variety you would expect therein from a population of unique individuals interacting with each other.