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Past determining my future

Austin has 7 universities. The University of Texas at Austin is one of the largest schools in the nation. It’s divided into 13 schools and colleges, the biggest of which is the College of Liberal Arts.
 
Neonatal RRT said:
Exactly. Had she not initiated, I would have never known.

I am thinking that this may be part of the problem with autistics, in general, when it comes to finding a partner. We fool ourselves into thinking we are aware, when, in fact, we are blind.

I can distinctly remember a conversation when I was 18 with my roommate's girlfriend one day. She said something to the effect that I was an attractive guy and she couldn't figure out why I didn't have a girlfriend already, given how many attractive young girls there were on campus. I said, I've never had an opportunity, and I kid you not, she looked at me like I was crazy and started laughing in disbelief. She said she knew for sure that many girls were giving me signals, in fact, named a few, and I was oblivious. It shocked and confused me.

Fast forward a few years, my wife and I were married, and a conversation in the break room at work with some of my female co-workers. We were young, so of course, some of the conversation could get a bit "racy" and we are joking around with each other, and I mentioned that I had no clue when my wife was in the mood for sex. I said that I knew when I wasn't going to have sex, but I never knew when I was. The females around me just laughed in disbelief, "Seriously, how could you NOT know?" I went along with the joke to save face, but I was seriously confused by that.

Furthermore, I've been with my wife for nearly 40 years. I am STILL clueless to her moods and signals. As much as I love her and spend our valuable time together, all those years with each other, I have zero idea what she is thinking. I always have to ask. Welcome to "mind blindness", my friend. In my mind, I am a pretty perceptive guy, but I think the mind has a way of fooling us. In reality, we don't know what we don't know. We are sometimes unaware of certain disabilities and blind spots.

So, my theory here is that there may be situations where young, autistic men are simply not recognizing the "green light" to initiate courtship behavior. There may be women in our world that are interested in us, but they don't recognize that we are autistic and are blind to their interest. Then, they may be waiting for us to initiate, and when we don't, they misinterpret this as "He's not interested." and move on. I am thinking that we unknowingly miss out on opportunities and then misinterpret this as "No one is interested in me." when it might not be the case, at all.

Now, I'm not going to pretend to have any idea of what to do about that situation, but I do think this miscommunication and our "mind blindness" is a contributing factor hampering our efforts in finding a partner.
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did she ask you out first or ask for your number first? or told you straight up that she liked you?
 
Steelbookcollector217 said:
Yeah reminds me of a long written statement from a book that gives advice for men on how to meet and attract women, the statement makes me angry and mad
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and
Steelbookcollector217 said:
Yeah the long written passage from a book, it was written by a guy who gives advice and helps men on how to meet and attract women, and he explained to them on men who have been wanting to give up on women and dating, if i find it, i can post it.
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and
Steelbookcollector217 said:
i even got this quote right here from an e-book about meeting and attracting women for guys, here it is, sadly the author is right:

"A guy, man, human male will often distract himself with work, porn, hobbies, his friends, or other things in an attempt to mask the pain of being unsuccessful with women, with being unable to attract them or just not being able to attract the ones he wants, of being single and sexless.

No matter what they do, nothing replaces their primal, innate, natural, instinctive, biological desire to have a loving, sexual, intimate, romantic relationship with a real woman.

Accepting defeat is not going to fix any of your issues with women. Your desire to have sex with women and be loved by women is not going to go away if you continue play more computer games, video games, other hobbies, working harder on your job, career, education, or making more money. You want women and that is that, it is not going to go away."
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OK, this is clearly from a PUA book or similar. It has that stench about it. I can almost see the next line of "So sign up for my 3 day course on picking up the hottest chicks".

Believe me, you shouldn't be taking any life lessons from this. These books are designed to sell you the idea that you need to buy a workshop or spray yourself with animal pee or something. I'm not saying they don't work (except the animal pee, that doesn't work), but they only work insofar as
- they get you to talk to people, for which you don't need this sort of thing
- you spend less time introspecting because you're concentrating on running some "game", for which you don't need this sort of thing
- you put any success down to having a cheat code which increases your confidence; confidence for which you don't need this sort of thing
- you are essentially going into a bar and asking so many people if they want to have sex, that someone thinks "why the hell not?".... for which you don't need this sort of thing

On the flip side they are highly manipulative and will repel possible partners because things like negging are really unpleasant. So you might end up sleeping with someone who doesn't mind be casually insulted by complete strangers on the street. They are the equivalent of thinking mum/dad is holding the back of the saddle when they actually aren't and you could always ride on your own. But instead of a gentle bit of mind-gaming by a loving parent, it's actually treating people like dirt.

If you can succeed with the stuff in these books, you can without it and without being unpleasant.
 
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MNAus said:
and

and

OK, this is clearly from a PUA book or similar. It has that stench about it. I can almost see the next line of "So sign up for my 3 day course on picking up the hottest chicks".

Believe me, you shouldn't be taking any life lessons from this. These books are designed to sell you the idea that you need to buy a workshop or spray yourself with animal pee or something. I'm not saying they don't work (except the animal pee, that doesn't work), but they only work insofar as
- they get you to talk to people, for which you don't need this sort of thing
- you spend less time introspecting because you're concentrating on running some "game", for which you don't need this sort of thing
- you put any success down to having a cheat code which increases your confidence; confidence for which you don't need this sort of thing
- you are essentially going into a bar and asking so many people if they want to have sex, that someone thinks "why the hell not?".... for which you don't need this sort of thing

On the flip side they are highly manipulative and will repel possible partners because things like negging are really unpleasant. So you might end up sleeping with someone who doesn't mind be casually insulted by complete strangers on the street. They are the equivalent of thinking mum/dad is holding the back of the saddle when they actually aren't and you could always ride on your own. But instead of a gentle bit of mind-gaming by a loving parent, it's actually treating people like dirt.

If you can succeed with the stuff in these books, you can without it and without being unpleasant.
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thats not what the author meant, what the author meant was, mens desire and urge for wanting a girlfriend, wanting an intimate/sexual relationship, is an instinctual biological urge that never goes away, its no different than the urge for food and water.
 
Steelbookcollector217 said:
thats not what the author meant, what the author meant was, mens desire and urge for wanting a girlfriend, wanting an intimate/sexual relationship, is an instinctual biological urge that never goes away, its no different than the urge for food and water.
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Actually it is very different. You'll die quickly without water and over a couple of months without food. That is universal and is governed by physics. If you took a large group of men at random, you'd find a range from intensely sexual to asexual. None of them will die from not having sex.

The question is; how does a person who wants something but can't seem to get on track for it handle frustration? What all too often happens is that someone builds up a fantasy of what it ought to be like and obsesses over it. The truth is that the more desperate you are to get something, especially stuff that requires positive feelings from another person, like love, sex, and popular acceptance, the less likely you are to get it.

I guarantee that if one gets angry at seeing couples enjoying each other's company, you write yourself out of the equation for doing it yourself. The answer lies in eliminating the negativity the frustration engenders. It isn't easy, and it will be a work in progress for years. You may find that even if you don't get the fantasy, the reality won't be so bad.
 
@MNAus

You might be right in post #45, but that "PUA" claim cannot reasonably be made without supporting facts.

As stated it's pejorative, and somewhere in the "Strawman" space: "All dating advice is actually teaching the use of PUA techniques". You might be right OFC - but first you need to check out the specific book to find outt.

Dating seems to be a complete mess at the moment. Perhaps it's at its worst ever because (all) people's expectations are so strange. But it's never been easy for the least "attractive" part of the population. What's happened is that the proportion of the dating population in that "difficult" category is higher than normal.

So it's natural that people are looking for advice, and that the "supply of advice" is increasing. Some good, some that might be good (I'm not going to test it /lol, some is definitely bad - as with any other product.

None of this means that e.g. what Sadia Khan or Orion Taraban have to say should be conflated with "Pickup Artistry".

PS:
Even wikipedia suggests that the "PUA movement" came about as a response to this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rules
I don't think it was that simple myself, but there was certainly a connection. It doesn't matter much these days OFC - whatever the game was, it's changed since then. All that's left is misuse of the old terminology.
 
Mary Terry said:
Yes, it is. It's very accepting of people who are different from the mainstream population.
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My stepfather doesn’t like it and he’s normally pro-Texas.

I’ve never spent money on PUA books and don’t ever intend to. I’ve seen evidence that they drain money from you with little to no guaranteed results and aren’t going to work unless you want to be a “player.”
 
From what women have told me, they get hit on so frequently they do a background check before they get serious. Identifying a PUA is something they learn. I have also been told that PUAs are terrible lovers. You cannot be completely selfish and be a good lover.

There are a lot of women who are open to recreational sex, just not with a lot of guys. Nothing wrong with that. It is just how the species is built.
 
Hypnalis said:
Dating seems to be a complete mess at the moment.
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It is what it is.

But there is one reliable piece of advice for guys: don't listen to dating advice (or commentary) from a woman.

The game is not symmetrical. Very few see both sides clearly.

I'd look at that guys book if someone links it and it's not paywalled. Until then, I have no useful data, so I remain neutral.

Similarly, I'm not going to treat articles about any aspect of the male side of dating written by female journalists as data.

Sadia Khan, who I mentioned above, is a woman, and consistently makes sense about M/F relationships, so I don't quite follow the advice I gave above. OTOH I'm out of the dating game - it's only interesting to me because it's such a mess.

BTW A few years ago (pre-Covid) I accidently interrupted a young woman on a train who was listening to music via wireless earpieces (which I didn't notice). I wanted to find out where she got her watertight backpack to I could buy one for kayaking (and did so later). She was quite polite about it.
Maybe headphones guy is onto something /lol.
 
Markness said:
I’ve never spent money on PUA books and don’t ever intend to. I’ve seen evidence that they drain money from you with little to no guaranteed results and aren’t going to work unless you want to be a “player.”
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Astute observation. Wise move.
 
Your past may only change the perception of those who you've been with in the past too. Besides learning mistakes and how you can be better presently and for the future, the past is not too important to focus on. Focus on what will make your present and future much more smooth.
 
Should I try asking out a waitress who was nice to me but I don’t know her name nor her relationship status?
 
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