Estimated reading time: 20 minutes
Hello Doc. I have some questions, but I don’t know if I’m gonna like the answers.
I am 18, a trans dude, with lots of anxiety and probable autism. I have a lot of trouble making friends, and dating is weird to me because I’m probably aroace or on the aromantic/asexual spectrums. I’m definitely not normative with my approach to relationships: I hate a lot of labels because nothing feels right for my constantly-shifting brain, so I’ve given up trying to find one permanent perfect label. Also I am VERY mentally ill and that makes things more complicated for me (will get to that later).
My actual question is about whether I should try to mess around and date someone. I hate using the word “date” because something about it just doesn’t sit right with me, but I am lonely and would like to have a person to be close to. I’m most comfortable with calling all my relationships platonic, regardless of how much I enjoy being near a person/if I want to hug or cuddle them/other factors. But this stuff is hard for me because: I get in my own way with my anxiety, and I am constantly changing my mind on what I think I want. Also, I am very quick to change my mind about people and drop them if something doesn’t feel right. Company is nice, but I don’t mess around with my peace.
Now for some personal tea to show you how I interact with people: about a year ago, I tried to “date” a cishet guy to figure out if I was really aroace. He was an easy target: we were fast friends (which is rare for me), he didn’t get much attention from women, and he had self-esteem issues. I hadn’t come out to anyone when we first met, and he also didn’t know about my mental illness. I was trying to project the image of a bubbly, flirty, happy, social girl. I did like the attention of being someone’s favorite person, and I liked feeling like a person who was good and not dogshit. I could not mask forever, though, and he was heartbroken when his girl crush turned out to be a mentally ill dude. We no longer talk. I DEFINITELY do not treat people like this anymore: I realize what I did was two-faced and wrong. I’ve also spoken to a therapist about this whole debacle. A more recent example: during the summer, I met a dude to be my college roommate. I got feelings for him fast (not sure what label to use because I am scared of my emotions, but I did think about hugging and kissing him sometimes). I’m pretty sure the feelings were mostly because I was lonely after my last relationship went to shit. When he asked about my sexuality, I decided to be honest and told him I was aroace. He got a boyfriend once he knew I wasn’t an option: they have a very happy romantic and sexual relationship. I was SO jealous and upset even if I couldn’t provide the sex or romance. I tried to be friends with them, but the jealousy and possessive feelings got so bad that I stopped talking to them both. Now, I don’t want to tell people I’m aroace, because things keep having unpleasant endings and everyone’s feelings get hurt.
Does the timeline seem a little too quick? That is because I go through people like pairs of socks. With the exception of a few mentally ill queer friends I have, my relationships are chaotic and short. When shit gets weird, I hit the bricks.
Also, going back to the “mess around” part: I am a virgin and would like to stay one (I think). I’m not comfortable with most people, I am touch-averse, I have sexual trauma, and most importantly, I age regress (also trauma-related). I feel like being an age regressor who has sex is not something I want to be. It feels wrong and dirty to me. I may be freshly an adult, but part of my mind is stuck being a child, and I don’t know what to do because it’s such an unusual problem to have. All the people around me who are my age are having sex and relationships, and I’m in my room, scared out of my mind with my plushies.
Sorry for giving a very complicated letter, I’m mentally ill and weird. I would talk to a therapist about all this, but I’m taking a break from therapy to focus on my academic and professional life. Wouldn’t be opposed to seeing one again later, it’s just not something I want to do right now. Thank you and sorry!
Abby Normal Brain
It’s been a bit since I’ve had to drop this disclaimer, but I feel like it’s going to be important before I get into your letter: Dr. NerdLove is not a real doctor of any stripe or sort and especially not a mental health professional. Which is precisely why you should take what I’m about to say with not just a lot of salt, but that you should discuss any and all of it with an actual therapist:
A lot of the behavior you describe – from the way you go through friends, the intense and sudden jealousy and possessiveness, the way your moods constantly shift at a whim, the age-regression – sounds like symptoms of borderline personality disorder.
I realize that BPD is one of those conditions and labels that online randos armed with the latest in therapy-speak and excessive Internet brain-poisoning treat as “ontologically evil sociopath”, but the reality is that BPD tends to be more like highly-tuned anxiety in response to trauma. A lot of BPD-inspired behavior makes more sense when seen through a lens of someone who is desperately seeking connection, but just as desperately trying to avoid being hurt. And, like a lot of defense mechanisms, the mechanism itself tends to curdle until the mechanism itself causes more problems than what it’s supposedly trying to protect the person from.
A lot of the hair-trigger pivots, wild emotional mood swings and antisocial behavior becomes a lot more understandable when seen less as “this person is just nuts with a head full of bad wiring” and more of “my Spidey-Sense is so over-tuned and so sensitive that I see ‘danger’ at every possible moment, so I will push people away the instant I detect it rather than give them the chance to hurt me. And to make sure that I can’t go back and get hurt, I’ll preemptively burn bridges just to make sure.”
That’s what I see in your letter, ANB: someone who desperately wants connection, but is also deeply afraid of letting people get close enough to have that connection, like a Hedgehog’s Dilemma on steroids and the ability to shoot their quills. There’s a mix of trying to figure out what you want while also trying to be what you think you should be in order to make those connections, but also being so anxious about those connections that you cut them off and push them away the first moment you get a twinge of worry and then changing yet again to try to fit things.
All of which is to say: no, I don’t think you should be dating. I don’t know if you even want to be dating, or if it’s what you think you should want, or if you’re conflating romance and intimacy with just basic connection, community and companionship. Right now, it’s a difference without a distinction, in no small part because you aren’t in a place where you can actually accept those from other people. After all, connection and intimacy – whether platonic, sexual or romantic – all require vulnerability and a willingness to accept the risk of heartbreak. There is no getting close to people or letting them into your heart without opening yourself up to the chance of being hurt. It’s not just a matter of rejection or maliciousness; the people we love and care for can hurt us without meaning to, without realizing it, or even through no actual fault of their own. It’s just a quality of being an individual in the world; occasionally we just bump up against others. Part of accepting intimacy is accepting the possibility, even inevitability of hurt, and being ready to experience it.
That can’t happen in the state you’re currently living in. You may want that connection, but you can’t bring yourself to take on the risks that come with intimacy. That alone makes it almost impossible to have any sort of seriously intimate relationship – not if you dip out at the first hint of something disturbing your peace. It means you’re never going to be fully present in those relationships and it’s unfair to the people who are trying to be your friend, companion or partner in good faith.
Of course, part of the point of those experiences is to not only learn how to manage it, but also to recognize that the fear of some of those conflicts is worse than the conflict itself. That disagreement you (the general “you”, not you specifically, ANB) feel made all your friends hate you actually had less impact than a disagreement on what toppings to order on your pizza; it’s just your (again, still the general “your”) brain’s overly developed defenses that made you worry that this was the case.
Now that isn’t to say that you, specifically, don’t have reason to worry. Like I said: a lot of these behaviors tend to be responses to trauma, and you mention – among other things – that you have sexual trauma in your background. So it’s not that you are paranoid and responding to phantoms, so much as you’ve been hurt before and you see echoes of the ones that hurt you. It’s an understandable response, but a response that has grown from protecting you to isolating you in the name of protection. And, if it’s not taken into consideration, you run the risk of hurting others, whether inadvertently or as part of the way you burn bridges and protect yourself.
But like I said: I’m not any sort of mental health professional, I’m a loudmouth asshole with an advice column who loves the sound of hearing himself talk. Which is why I think the best thing you can do is go back to therapy, ask about the possibility of BPD and start seeking out treatment methodologies that are specially geared towards those issues. I realize that you’ve said that’s not something you want to do right now – you’re prioritizing your profession and academics – but I think it should be a much higher priority than you think. Not because it will make it possible to date, but because this is going to affect your professional life as much as your personal one. Trust, reliability, clarity of intent and purpose and a willingness to endure friction are all critical parts of succeeding in professional and academic ventures, and these are all things that you are currently bad at. Professional relationships may have different purposes and expectations than personal ones, but they’re still relationships. The defensive crouch and over-tuned danger sense are all going to get in the way of these, especially if your immediate response is to bail.
So, while I realize it’s not what you want to hear or how you want to prioritize things, I think it’s the best choice you could make for yourself regardless of what you want to pursue for now.
And more than anything else, I think you need to recognize that you’re not broken, you’re not “weird”, you’re just someone who’s been severely hurt before and you’re understandably afraid to be hurt again. That’s the most normal and explicable thing in human existence. It’s just something that has gone from being a way of protecting yourself from real threats to protecting yourself from everything. That’s an incredibly lonely way to live, and it doesn’t seem like you want to live that way.
Don’t see this as “fixing” something that’s broken. Think of it as finally healing something that’s been hurt, thanking this part of you that’s been protecting you like an unsleeping centurion for all these years and allowing it to finally have the rest it deserves.
It will take time to close those wounds and heal those scars, but that’s ok. Love and companionship will be waiting for you when you’re ready.
You’ll be ok. I promise.
All will be well.
Dear Dr. NerdLove:
I feel like I’m doing mostly everything right, and I still can’t get dates. Short of hitting the gym consistently and completely transforming my body, which is something I’ve struggled to do for a long time, I’ve put in the work. I’ve been to therapy for years. I have many friends who are women or present as feminine (I have more queer friends than non-queer ones). I’ve asked their advice. I give my friends and even strangers compliments all the time. I try to put myself out there. I go to karaoke and local shows and spend time with my friends. I ask for help. I trim my beard and I try to pick out nice clothes and I even paint my fucking nails because I like to. I strike up conversations with strangers all the time. I know how to give compliments that people appreciate, and I even get some compliments myself sometimes. I have a job, a house, a car, a cat. I don’t buy into the redpill ideology or participate in manosphere bullshit or listen to PUAs.
Still, at the end of the day, I’m single. Very much so. It feels like people will take interest in me in a friendly, platonic way, but sexually? No. I’ve had one relationship in my life, and apart from that a handful of hookups that never really led to anything. I very occasionally go on a first date with someone, we have a decent time and a good conversation, and then it doesn’t go anywhere. Either they’re not interested in me, or I’m not interested in them. Dating apps feel like screaming into the void. I very rarely match with people, and when I do they almost immediately lose interest in me. I can meet someone out in public and hang out with them all night, but afterwards they seem to not want anything to do with me. I have friends who love and support me, and they tell me I’m great and that I’ll find someone, but years go by and I still have nothing to show for it. Just a handful of first dates that led nowhere and a couple of hookups that, if I’m being honest, mostly weren’t worth it.
I don’t know what to do. Even when I do feel good about myself and how I look, it doesn’t seem to make a difference. And that NOTHING response chips away at me until I end up here, looking for advice from strangers on the internet, because nothing my friends or my therapist has to say seems to help. People tell me that I’m a great guy and that I’m not ugly and that I’m charming and funny and people seem to like me, but when it comes to dating I’m just part of the scenery. I’ve even asked if I smell bad or something. Some days, I do hate myself and my body, and I wish I had a different one and a different life. I sit in it and search deep for whatever the hell I’m missing. I’ve tried loving myself. I’ve tried the positive affirmations and soul-searching and taking a break from looking and all of that, and nothing seems to help. I even took three weeks off of work to do an intensive outpatient program at the hospital. Nothing seems to change.
I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing. It feels like there’s just something wrong with me. Maybe just something about my affect turns people off? I don’t know. I feel like I’ve tried everything, and nothing works. I can make conversation with strangers, but they’re not interested. When I get the sense that someone is interested in me who I might want to date, it turns out they’re just being friendly. I don’t know if it’s the autism or the ADHD or low self-esteem or what. Even when I’m at my best and I feel my best and I’m having a good conversation, I still get rejected every time.
What am I missing? What am I supposed to be doing?
Missing Pages In My Instruction Manual
I’m going to preface what I’m about to say by saying that this isn’t directed at you specifically, MPIMM but about letters like this in general.
I am reaching a point where I’m not going to answer letters like this unless and until the person writing in can answer certain questions in detail:
- What are you doing to make yourself more desirable as a partner that isn’tjust external or physical (i.e. going to the the gym, your grooming, your income/bank account, your job, your car, etc.)?
- What do you think someone showing potential romantic or sexual interest looks like? What signs would you not only recognize but accept?
- What are you doing to actively meet people and to find potential dates? That is: what steps are you taking that isn’t waiting for someone else to express interest first
- How are you expressing romantic or sexual interest in the people you’re asking out?
- How long are you interacting with people before and after you ask them out on a date?
Quite frankly, these 5 questions tend to contain the answer to the sizable majority of letters I get like this – if the person isn’t focusing on sizzle without steak, they’re being incredibly passive in their search, missing out on signs of interest because what they expect is so over the top as to be almost absurd, or simply waiting for other people to do the heavy lifting for them. And if they’re not doing that, then they’re putting intense pressure on themselves to turn every interaction into a pass/fail, date/no-date scenario, rather than letting things develop.
So, getting back to your letter, MMPP, I think answering those 5 questions would be a good starting point. There’re a number of points in your letter that suggest that these are where you’re running into issues, especially the casual drop of having ADHD and autism towards the end.
Some of what you describe is just, well, the process of dating. The dates you get from the apps that feel one-sided, for example, is par for the course: you’re going to get a lot of false positives and first dates to nowhere, simply because of the nature of dating apps. This is part of why I suggest having brief (no more than 20 or so minutes) vibe-check dates – so you don’t waste any more time than is absolutely necessary.
But some of it sounds like what I see in many, many guys, especially guys who fall into various categories of neurodivergence: social capability, but a difficulty transitioning from “friendly” to “flirting” and an avoidance of rejection.
This is one of the reasons why I hammer the point about recognizing signs of interest and expressing your interest in others – because most of the time, what this comes down to is a fear of rejection and making a mistake. A lot of guys, especially if they are some flavor of neurodivergent, are afraid of misreading things or being presumptive and so not only avoid showing non-platonic interest but also are looking for signs and signals that they could accept as being legitimate and real. The problem is that the signs they are hoping to see are the sort that are so exaggerated that you only ever see them in fiction – and usually done in such a way that the audience can’t not pick up on it.
Of course, part of the issue with looking for signs that you’d see in TV or movies is that the camera is deliberately drawing our attention to them; in Heated Rivalry, Shane Hollander’s interest in Illya Rosanov is made obvious to us because the camera serves as a vehicle to literally see through Shane and Illya’s eyes. When the camera lingers on Illya’s neck or Shane’s legs, we’re seeing through a heightened POV designed to drive the message home to an audience instead of the individual, in carefully crafted circumstances. We’re not seeing it from the perspective that most of us would actually experience – looking around the room, something catching our eye, looking back to confirm it, the internal monologue and analysis of it, etc.
When you factor in that many signals are subtle and require context – one person’s preening is another person’s nervous tic – and women in particular have reason to be cautious in being overt in their interest, it’s understandable that a lot of signals of interest or even just openness to meeting can get lost.
Similarly, that fear of rejection, of making people uncomfortable (something especially prominent in ND people) or just misreading the room means that a lot of people are exceedingly cautious in how they express their own interest. And doubly so if there’s a miscommunication between someone who’s neurotypical and someone who’s neurodivergent; one person’s seeming expression of curiosity is in fact asking for an invitation, while the other person’s explanation is taken as “if you don’t understand it at this level, you aren’t welcome” instead of “this is what I’m into and why.”
So as a result, there can be times when someone who was or at least potentially interested ends up with the impression the other person only saw them as a friend or – worse – didn’t like them at all. The person they met never gave signs of interest besides friendliness, and so they respond accordingly. This can be particularly confusing when the person who didn’t seem interested proposes a date, simply because up until that point, it seemed as though they were signaling not being interested.
But that’s precisely why looking for unmistakable signs or 100% certainty is, in fact, a mistake. By avoiding those risks and not being willing to express themselves more openly and clearly, they not only don’t communicate their intent or interest, they also don’t learn. Avoiding a mistake or being too cautious means that you’re also not learning how to course-correct, nor how to identify and read signals properly. While the consequences of making mistakes feels like they can be world-shattering, the fact of the matter is that mistakes are part of how we learn. Without making those mistakes, we never actually get to the point where we learn how to avoid making them or how to recover from them.
Now, if none of this sounds like it’s resonating for you, then I would suggest two things.
First is that you start journaling, especially about the people you meet and want to date. I recommend writing it out longhand, rather than typing, and to do so in as freeform as possible – no analysis, no trying to read into things as you write it down, just as pure a stream of consciousness as possible, but as objective as you can. Focus on what you experienced with as little analysis or conjecture about the other person’s interiority as you can, as well as what you said, how you felt in that moment and so on. Then, on a bi-weekly or monthly basis, go back and read your previous entries; often you’ll find that there are clear recurring patterns of behavior or experiences that you don’t notice in the moment, while revealing that other “patterns” you’re noticing are more of a case of recency bias or confirmation bias rather than fact.
While this isn’t necessarily going to give you the answers, what it can do is give you clarity on where your sticking points lie. Recognizing where mood shifts are happening, where interactions seem to fall off or someone who seems interested is just being friendly can give you places to poke, prod and experiment. If you know that X happens regularly, then changing how you behave leading up to X can give different results. Even if those results are still a rejection, it lets you narrow in on potential issues, and thus, solutions.
The second thing I would suggest is to lean into the fact that you’re autistic, instead of trying to date like you’re neurotypical. A lot of folks on the autism spectrum devote time to masking, and while that can be useful in some circumstances, it can be deleterious in others… such as in dating. Leaning into being autistic and neurodivergent would mean that, instead of trying to interpret unclear meaning or understand social cues that don’t seem obvious to you, you ask for clarity and state, flat out, when you don’t understand something. Not sure if someone’s flirting? You ask. Does it feel like this mightbe a date or might just be a friend outing? Ask. Not sure what someone’s asking of you? Tell them that. Yes, there’s a lot of neurotypical culture built into subtle inferences and indirect signaling, but a signal without understanding is just noise. Getting clarity and understanding is a hell of a lot better than guessing in the dark, even if it doesn’t “feel” as smooth or fluent as someone who graduated from the Lando Calrissian Academy for Players.
In fact, if you’re looking for ways of navigating social situations and relationships while not being entirely sure about catching social cues, you could do far worse than to look to Mr. Spock – specifically, Spock as played by Ethan Peck in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. While he may struggle with some interactions and social cues, he has little problem expressing a need for clarity or understanding and does his best to meet people where they are while still being his authentic self.
So, answer the questions I proposed, MPIMM and try the two exercises I mentioned. These will help you zero in on what you may be missing and make sure that you have a better read on what’s going on around you.
Good luck.
