Is There Such Thing as a Practice Relationship?

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A year or two ago I reached the point where I was pretty happy with my general social skills, and with meeting people and making friends. This came from years of practice, careful observation, and attending every social activity I could.

But my romantic relationship skills didn't keep pace with my improvements in friendship skills or general social skills because I didn't have the chance to practice my romantic relationship skills nearly as much, and because honest feedback for romantic failure is so difficult to get.

With friendships, it was possible to practice my skills over and over by going to hundreds of social activities and by meeting thousands of people. I made careful observations about what people talked about and how they responded, and I watched carefully for feedback to see how people responded to me. After years of work, I think I have a pretty good idea of what good social skills look like.

But I can't do this with romantic relationships. I can't have thousands of girlfriends, and even if I could, it's very hard to get honest feedback from people about why they ended the relationship.

So I wish I could have a "practice relationship" just as I had many practice friendships and practice mix-and-mingles. I wish I could have a relationship with a woman where we would agree that this relationship was just for practice. We could give each other honest feedback about how we were doing, and about what we liked or what turned us on, and what we didn't like and what turned us off. Then I could finally get the practice and feedback I would need to develop good relationship skills, the same way I developed friendship skills.

Is this possible? How can I have a practice relationship?

I don't know if there is, but I know what you mean. You could observe couples around you, but you can't assume that how they treat each other is how you could treat a girl you're getting to know. So it's hard to just learn through acquaintances or events. Although I think in a practice relationship, if there was such a thing, it would be hard to pick from all the different opinions. I wouldn't like going out as much as some women would and I would say we should stay in more, and they would probably say they want to go out more.

I don't necessarily want a practice relationship, but I wish I could have someone watch me date. I don't understand the rules or why things happen the way they do, and I can't read people well enough to navigate a relationship even though I can handle a friendship. Some people are exceptions, but for the most part it's hard to clearly pick up on how other people are feeling. I wish I had a dating coach or someone to give me feedback, or even a few practice dates with someone who'd tell me brutally honestly how they see me and if my perceptions of them are accurate or not.

I'm seeing someone right now and it's so, so hard. I have someone within arm's reach, I want them specifically, and I can't have them. I know he has social anxiety, but it seems like he's always busy or tired. Is that guy code? Is it NT code? Who knows! I want to talk to him and share some stuff that's been happening or that I like, but I don't know how to get his attention away from TV, etc, and into a conversation with me. I have no idea how to deepen the relationship or get more time together. So I just put in a movie and am on forums or chatting tonight instead.

I spent a lot of my early 20's analyzing friendships and my interactions with others, and trying to get rid of my fear of socializing. I learned how to have friends, eventually, even if people think I'm quiet and slow to open up still, and be liked in a couple of my little online communities and at work. I've tried treating boyfriends the same way I treat friends and it doesn't work. It's baffling. It's like relationships aren't just Friendship+. They're a completely different thing with a whole new rulebook, and I have to learn that one when I'm barely passing the daily pop quizzes on the first few social rulebooks.

I wish there were a good series of videos, or very detailed books, on how to understand relationships.

Exactly. A relationship is not just friends + benefits. It's not just that you have this really good friend that you just happen to also kiss/sleep with. A relationship is something completely different from a friendship and has a completely different set of expectations. In a lot of ways, I understand the expectations for friendship and basic social interaction, but I don't have any idea what the expectations are in a relationship.

Well, a romantic relationship seems qualitatively different from a friendship. Here are some differences:

A friend shares interests with you, but a lover completes you.
A friend comforts you, but a lover heals you.
A friends asks you if you need something, but a lover already is what you need.
A friend is someone you know, but a lover is someone you've known since the beginning of time.
A friend makes activities fun, but a lover makes activities meaningful.
A friend helps you pass the time, but a lover makes the time worth passing.

I know how to share interests with someone, how to comfort someone, and how to make activities fun. I don't know how to complete someone, how to heal someone, or how to make activities meaningful. That's what I'd want to learn in a practice relationship.

It's almost as if being a romantic partner means that I'm the meaning in my partner's life. I don't know how to do that.



The relationship counseling and dating advice industries are huge, so this isn't just an Aspie problem. We're drowning in relationship advice, and yet relationships seem more difficult than ever. But you can't learn about relationships from a book. You have to learn about it from the inside, by learning from your experience and being allowed to make mistakes. Unfortunately, most partners aren't too tolerant of romantic mistakes, even if they are tolerant of non-romantic behavior mistakes. If you make too many romantic mistakes, your partner leaves, which makes it much harder to learn the right skills.

In my past relationships, I was comfortable with desiring someone, and comfortable with her being my "one and only." But being the object of desire, and being someone's one-and-only, that is something I had no idea how to do.

And Canary, the guy you're seeing sounds like he has an avoidant attachment style. Check out http://www.attachedthebook.com/compatibility-quiz/

I don't necessarily agree with all of these points (such as that partners have to complete each other), but I also don't think I know how to provide in a relationship myself. I know how to make people laugh, share hobbies with them, talk about my day or ask about theirs, hug and kiss, enjoy sex, give compliments, try to be non-judgmental if they tell me about their problems... what else is someone to do? If we were living together I would try to help around the house and cook.

Advice articles and the like are very vague and often include bad advice as well, like to flirt with others to get them to notice how desirable you are. Things that, if someone doesn't have quite enough social sense, will actually make things much worse for them and their relationships. How does someone who doesn't know the unspoken rules find which advice will help them communicate, get their needs met, and meet someone else's needs? Is there any such advice in existence, or is it all in body language and intuition and things that can't be written down?

If there's a suggestion to be more open, or more romantic, or communicate more, I don't know what specific actions I should take to do that. If I were to "make activities meaningful" or "heal" someone, I don't know what actions I would take to do that. They're good things to try to do for others, though. I suppose I would just try to be myself and encourage someone to try to overcome problems, and help them with any tasks. I could bring them baked goods or something to make them feel better.

Other than that, I'm clueless. Doing all those things you mentioned just sounds so abstract, because everyone's going to have a different opinion when it comes to exactly what makes time together meaningful. That's why we have things like the 5 Love Languages (which I think are good for Aspies to at least think about), people don't all agree. Feeling like you've known someone all your life isn't something you can really control, outside of getting to know someone deeply perhaps. Then again, what do I know.

Sometimes I wish I could just have a permanent friend-with-benefits, and skip all of this extra complication, but I know those are temporary relationships.



A friend once told me that I don't know how to be cared for. I have no idea what that means, or how to fix it. According to that quiz, he's not avoidant. Doesn't actively tell me to go away or anything, but now that we're officially a couple we've been talking less and he doesn't seem as invested in getting to know me. He's often tired and not talkative when I contact him so I feel like I'm bothering him if I seek out closeness, and would be rejected if I persisted. We can schedule dates, but it doesn't help with the talking.

But, it is sad that we're trying to navigate a world even NTs are struggling in. So maybe it's not all social intuition and nonverbal cues and the like, but a type of communication that absolutely no one was taught how to do. If a partner dislikes something you do, but leaves instead of talking openly about it, how does one learn whether they have zero partners or 1,000? If we knew the action, or the solution, we wouldn't be in such a mess in the first place.

I wish someone would just outright tell me what it is I say and do that's not quite right. I know it's unhealthy to analyze every little thing a guy says or does, but can anyone really blame me? What if one sentence in one text exchange has the answer to all of this pain and unhappiness?

Yeah, with a psychopath. It would have to be with someone who can turn off their feelings or one who has no feelings.

Generally the first relationship you get into will end up being a practice round and all the others till you find the right person.

Last edited by Sweetleaf on 19 Feb 2017, 1:20 am, edited 1 time in total.

I think that the relationship environment that we live in is generally toxic and dysfunctional. Most marriages are unhappy: half end in divorce, and of the half that are left, maybe a third of those are actually happy marriages. So like one in six marriages is actually happy, and that's for NTs. So we Aspies are already swimming upstream in a dysfunctional relationship culture, plus we have our Aspie-ness to deal with on top of it.

Another issues is that people are expecting more from their relationships now. People now expect a partner to not only provide companionship, but also a sense of esteem and self-actualization (as per Maslow's hierarchy of needs.) A relationship isn't just about love and companionship anymore. It's also about self-expression, and about getting the admiration and respect of your peers. This has been called the "expressive marriage," because people marry not only for love, but for self-expression. That's a tall order, and a lot of people can't meet those higher expectations, which is part of why relationships are such a struggle.

I think the thing that makes the most difference is the partner you choose. Thinking back on the seven girlfriends I've had and the gazillions of dates that I've been on, the woman I was with made more difference than anything else in terms of the quality of the relationship, because my behavior was largely the same clueless behavior in all instances.

So a lot of it comes down to being able to recognize a good partner, which I have been terrible at. Not because I'm obsessed with looks - some of the women I've dated who were the best partners were also the best looking. But I failed to recognize several women who were good partners, even when these women were upfront that they liked me, and instead I pursued women who turned out to be terrible partners. Part of this was, as I said before, I was unable to accept their feelings for me because I didn't know how to be the object of their desire.

At this point I don't think I have problems with unclear communication or failing to add meaning to someone's life. It's more that I have a history of running away from good partners, and instead pursuing bad partners. Part of this is because I don't know how to accept affection and let myself be desired, especially lusted after.

Last edited by Surf Rider on 19 Feb 2017, 1:19 am, edited 1 time in total.

If you both knew upfront that it would never work out - i.e. you had religious differences or other differences that would make it so you could never get married - then why not? Yeah, breaking up would be hard, but you knew the day would come eventually, and as long as you both begin the relationship with the understanding that it's just going to be temporary, then why not? If people can have casual sex with the understanding that the sexual relationship is temporary, then why not a temporary romantic relationship?

I don't understand the point. I can see maybe the sex stuff for practice, but feelings? How do you practice feelings? People who can turn off feelings that easily give me the heeby jeebies tbh with you.

The practice came with the siblings (-rivalry), generally when you're IN the ltr you find all the obstacles your parents put out there to repeat themself!

My opinion: the quality of any relationship depends heavily on the relationship with yourself. Which in ASD is mostly difficult to start with because it relies heavily on affective empathy.

3 practical solutions:
-get counseling for yourself. An objective party can give you honest feedback on what are the specifics that you could address.
-pay for the girlfriend experience, there are agencies specific for people with special needs.
-Try dating someone else with ASD with similar values (like appreciates and gives honest feedback).

A what?!

Okay, in all seriousness, it is possible theoretically, but in practice, it sounds like something that's on the verge of impossibility. At least I'd imagine not many girls would be down for that, unless they themselves want to practice their relationship skills before getting serious as well, which sounds far-fetched as far as I'm concerned. You should also take note that what one girl seeks in a relationship, another one doesn't necessarily.

I guess we could debate whether "love it and leave it" is more or less moral than "hump it and dump it," but I don't think that would give us a good answer. If a practice relationship is between consenting adults - emotionally consenting, that is - then who is anyone to tell them the shouldn't?



I'm going to see an autism therapist for sure. The paid girlfriend services are really expense, like $500/hr, at least the one I saw. I admit that I find the idea of an "emotional prostitute" to be really, really funny. I'd take her on a walk on the beach and tell her about my day, and then I'd have her tell me about her day. Then we'd share our best childhood memories and our hopes and dreams for the future, and we'd kiss tenderly. Then she'd say "Time's up!" So then I'd give her $500, goose her, and send her off to her next client. That actually sounds a lot crazier than a practice relationship.

Maybe I'd have better luck on Craigslist putting an ad out for a girlfriend for hire. It'd probably be cheaper, especially if I told her we wouldn't be having sex. Unless she wanted to.

Finding a woman with ASD sounds like the best option. And the most dangerous. What if we really liked each other and fell in love?

Dude you just answered your own question when you said -

"What if we really liked each other and fell in love?"

You aren't supposed to fall in love, right? That's the problem - you can control sex, but you can't control feelings. And someone already did it to me anyway with friendship and I was devastated - even though I was expecting the friendship to come to an end. If I saw that person again, I'd kick their ass. The person that mentioned the paid escort - do that. Another thing, I think if the person is aware the "relationship" will end, they will not put their whole self into it because they don't want to be hurt. I wouldn't.

All relationships except for your last are practice relationships.

Your last relationship is also a practice relationship except that you're not practicing for your next one, it's practice for itself.

That's a good way of looking at it. Huh.