“I decided to send her some information about autism. But she didn’t really show any interest in learning about it.”

Imagine for a moment that you struggle to think of things to say, have no concept of social navigation (which seemingly comes naturally to everyone else), have trouble judging social situations and frequently over-think things that others regard as insignificant. So much so, that it leads to a real mix of emotions. That’s what life is like for me when it comes to dating on the autistic spectrum and with anxiety.

As a guy with autism, it’s hard enough trying to make and maintain friendships, let alone date. Especially when you have a tendency to misunderstand and misjudge social situations and contexts, find it hard to think of things to say, take things literally, have trouble distinguishing between sarcasm and potentially harsh or hateful comments, have trouble relating to people empathy wise, and have difficulty joining in with banter. Autism has a far reaching impact on the individual- more than most people realise.

So as someone zero previous dating experience, I thought I’d give online dating a go. After all, how bad can it be? You see all those lovely pictures of couples holding hands on their websites and feel that this could be you. Maybe all these years of being socially isolated and feeling lonely are over?

Well, it’s more difficult than I thought. You sort of start off with this rather simplistic view of dating, almost like in the movies – that is, you go on a couple of dates, see if you like each other, then ask them if you’d like to be in a relationship and that’s all there is to it. After using multiple dating apps, I quickly found out that this wasn’t the case. As you swipe and read profiles, it seems that on first impressions, you as a guy have certain social expectations and obligations placed on you which was a real, tricky learning curve for me.

From profiles that stipulate, “Don’t be boring!” to being a complex list of obscure emojis that don’t make sense and the majority going as far as to being outright blank, it was a challenge to even think of anything interesting  to say besides small talk. The only way I could describe it is like being lost for words, like, “What do I say to this person exactly?”

After going on a few swiping sessions, along with thought-induced headaches on what to ask a match, It wasn’t long before a tiny minority of those right swipes turned into matches and that’s where the problems start, particularly the first message.

Since I have no real specific idea about what the contents of my first message should contain, or the way I should go about it, I resorted to everyone’s favourite search engine, Google, to help give me some social direction. The searches revealed that men seemingly only ever say the bare minimum, “Hi what are you up to?” type messages or start asking sleazy stuff, so that was something to be avoided – if anything it made me feel a tad disgusted to be a bloke.

Small talk was something to be avoided too as my previous attempts proved to me that it was ineffective at getting a reply, or if you did, it was a minimal effort, or one word reply making it difficult to ask further questions to continue a conversation. So I decided that my best approach should be to ask something about them, which seemed to go better in terms of getting at least one reply.

After a few months of being on the online dating scene and having a trickle of matches, but near enough no luck, online dating started to feel like a chore- almost like there was something wrong with me. The majority of my matches resulted in ghosting, random un-matching, low effort or no replies.

It was this point I started asking myself whether it was worth dating at all and also feeling low and negative. I started asking myself questions like, “Am I genuinely so boring and uninteresting that people just don’t want to talk?” After all, I’m not one for clubbing or partying like so many people my age. Socialising is a minefield especially when you also have low self-confidence. Partying and getting drunk is just not me- I don’t understand it. It was like something obvious to other people and not me, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. This led to me deleting online dating apps entirely for a few weeks, before eventually plucking up the courage and energy to try again.

Second time lucky? Well, sort of. Only two did actually lead to a dates, albeit months apart. My first date asked me on a date first, a rarity apparently – having said that, it was really awkward. There were lots of silent moments and I didn’t really know what to say, so felt like the onus was always on me to keep everything going which was really difficult for me, it tired me out thinking of things to say.

The second date went surprisingly well but I did get criticised for not being empathetic enough, not making much eye contact and being just a tad quiet, so I decided to send her some information about autism. But she didn’t really show any interest in learning about it to better understand me.

One girl did say to me she was attracted to me, but there was too many mixed feelings for me as I read too much into what she was saying, which did lead me to have a bout of anxiety and feeling low for a few days. Some matches questioned why I had never dated, saying it was a red flag. Some asked about why I’d never had sex. One even questioned how bad my autism was because apparently her ex had it quite bad, to the point he wouldn’t leave her alone.

So all in all, was it worth it? Definitely not. I’m still single and still feeling lonely. Dating is so much more confusing when the social goalposts seem to move all the time.