How Do I Flirt With People When I’m Autistic?

Dear Dr. NerdLove,

I’m a heteromantic demisexual cis-male of 28 with autism & ADHD. I’m strongly convinced I’m comorbid with dysthymia (atypical depression – basically never-ending inadequacy with oneself) and/or an anxiety disorder.

I’ve outlined this because I feel like my neurological & (lack of) sexual instincts make me express attraction differently from the majority of people: I don’t use body language cues, instead opting for verbal/written approaches with careful word choice to exact the accuracy and intensity of my thoughts and feelings. Therefore, I feel hardwired to repel romantic interest from women.

Moreover, I’m touch averse to the point where I seldom communicate through it (if at all). Same goes for eye contact. The only exception would be if someone told me they were going to touch me & I consented. Unsolicited touch makes me feel uncomfortable, so why would I want to create that encroachment for someone I liked? Outside of a private setting with a trusted person, no amount of positive reinforcement will change that I don’t desire touch.

Despite this, numerous women have expressed attraction to me over the years. I’ve just never gotten relationships from them either because they weren’t my type or external factors such as being states apart. I’ve only had 2 relationships thus far: my 1st was rife with psychological abuse that damaged me for years, my 2nd was brief but where my partner made an effort to understand my differences & accommodate them as best as she could.

I don’t like to ‘flirt’ as much as I naturally make droll, witty observational jokes or exaggerate bits. If I’m really comfortable with someone, I can get zany & hyperactive with them, in the manner of a ‘bratty little brother’. Autism makes it not worth the effort to parse people’s sarcasm from genuine insults: both sound the same, its just which message you choose believe becomes more accurate. Not very reliable when you have a chronic case of jerkbrain.

In all your articles regarding attraction, you’re firm in that touching is a major component in how (neurotypical) people express interest in their partner(s). On top of my ires outlined above, this makes me feel that whenever I shoot my shot, I end up in the internationally-disputed territory that is the Friend Zone.

This isn’t helped when all your articles I’ve read on the subject oscillate between treating the Friend Zone as if it were a force of nature (‘How To Avoid the Friend Zone’, ‘Avoiding the Friend Zone’, ‘Escape the Friend Zone’) or deconstructing an invented complex (‘The Friend Zone Myth’, ‘How To Get Out of the Friend Zone’). The definition you’ve provided that makes most sense to me is, ‘When someone simply doesn’t want to sleep with/make love to you.’

But when it comes to ‘acting like a lover’, its not compatible with my sexuality to put distance between someone I require an emotional connection with to even know if I want to date them. While I ‘failed’ my way into my 1st relationship begging & apologizing to my ex in reaction to her insistence on leaving, it stands to reason I never required overt sexual messaging, flirting, or touching to earn her heart. We were already friends – I confessed to her one night via text (rookie move, I know) where she had to decompartmentalize her initial apprehension to reciprocating mutual attraction, then came to accept me as her boyfriend days later.

Ideally, my dating strategy would double-down on my strengths while respecting my boundaries. If I have to mimic neurotypical behavior, then dating becomes a game that’s rigged against me. And what point is there playing when it isn’t fair – let alone fun?

If I’ve already had meager success attracting women, then what steps could I take to let potential partners know my romantic interest without breaking my own boundaries?

– Hands to Myself

Alright, so there’re a few things here that’re worth digging into, HTM. The first thing I would suggest is to talk with a professional about having dysthymia and/or an anxiety condition. While I understand that self-diagnosis is a fairly spicy topic, especially when you’re talking about neurodivergent conditions, I think that actually getting confirmation is important. Not, mind you, because you necessarily need a doctor or therapist’s sign-off to say “yeah, I’m depressed”, but because it opens access to actual treatment. It was one thing for me to say “um… I think I have ADHD.” It was another to actually get tested and confirmation, because that was the only way I was going to get the medication that makes me more functional.

Anxiety conditions can be a motherfucker, but they can also be treated in a variety of ways that can turn down the volume at the very least and improve your quality of life. Same with dysthymia; not only are the symptoms very similar to other mental health conditions, but there are treatments available that you can’t really DIY – primarily medication and therapy. Let me tell you from personal experience: the difference between having a really nasty bout of rejection-sensitive dysphoria and not being whether I took my Vyvanse in the morning is like night-and-day.

The next thing I would point out is that you’re defining yourself by what you perceive as your limitations. The problem with this is two-fold. The first is that by doing so, you’re narrowing your options and limiting the ways that you can grow and improve. This can be a problem in no small part because it makes you far less willing to be open to trying something different or taking a new approach. When you define yourself by your limitations, you all but ensure that you won’t succeed when trying something different or new. After all, it’s not within the boundaries of what you assume you’re able to do, therefore even if you do give it a shot, you’ve already decided that it can’t possibly work. As a result, you don’t give it your full effort, and when you do fail, you’re less likely to try again. Why would you; you did it once, it didn’t work, ergo it won’t work the second time… no matter that the reason why it didn’t work may be a fluke rather than your doing anything wrong.

But the other problem is that you don’t always know what your limitations actually are. A lot of times, what we think of as our limits are far more accurately described as “things we’re not good at yet” or “things I’m not comfortable with yet”. But assuming that you are defined by your limits cuts off avenues for growth and improvement because you’re making assumptions based off nothing but vibes, not experience and knowledge. It may be something you’ve never even considered before, never mind attempted, but you’ve pre-dismissed it because it’s not within the four corners of what you’ve decided are the absolute borders of what you’re capable of.

Now I already know what you’re going to say, but here’s the thing: not defining yourself by your limitations doesn’t mean that your genuine limitations disappear. It’s not that you don’t have limitations, it’s that they’re a part of the holistic sum of you, not the things that define the entirety of who you are. Limitations can be challenged, they can be worked around or adapted to… but not when you assume that they form the hard boundaries of your potential. That’s when you cut off the chance to find other ways that work with who you authentically are and instead confine yourself to the very few ways that you believe will work… even if they aren’t actually working all that well in the first place.

Case in point: you’re autistic. That does mean that you’ll have challenges, yes… but there’s a difference between having challenges and assuming that being autistic cuts you off entirely from possibilities. You’ve made assumptions based off being autistic – your “being hardwired to repel romantic interest” – but that’s all they are. They’re assumptions that you make based off your beliefs around being autistic, not actual facts. And considering you also mention having a chronic depressive condition that trashes your self-esteem and self-confidence, it’s actually more likely that this is your depression talking, not the TRVTH. Because depression is many things but more than anything else, depression is a liar. It whispers confirmation of the worst things you already believe because they’re the worst things, not because they’re true. It’s just easier to believe them because our old friend masochistic epistemology rears its ugly head again.

Now, part of the issue I think you’re running into is that I think you’ve misread what I’ve written about The Friend Zone. I’m fairly consistent in what the Friend Zone actually is: it’s something people do to themselves when they don’t want to accept that someone just not interested in you sexually or romantically. It’s not something that’s done to them, and they’re “trapped” in it in as much as they choose not to leave by either letting go or by never actually making an actual move in the first place. A lot of the folks “stuck” in the Friend Zone have either never actually asked the person out on a date, and the rest won’t accept “I’m just not into you that way” as an answer.

Which is why as a general rule, the best way to avoid “the Friend Zone” – which is used as a shorthand for the overall concept – is to be upfront about your interest in the first place, instead of necessarily being coy or trying to backdoor your way into the relationship.

And incidentally, letting go doesn’t mean cutting ties and never seeing them again. It just means letting go of the idea that you’re going to have a romantic or sexual relationship with them. If you can get past the pain and disappointment and move onto acceptance and be their friend without being bitter or angry about it then by all means, stay friends!

Now, sometimes people don’t become attracted to someone right off the bat. Most relationships are built over time, not a love-at-first-sight kind of response. We very rarely start a relationship with someone we’ve only just met. More often than not, we get to know someone, realize we kinda dig them and ask them out to see if there’s more to it. So being friends with someone first and catching feelings isn’t “being stuck in The Friend Zone”.

(This, incidentally, is part of why dating apps can have more misses than hits; there’s an expectation of serious chemistry and attraction right away, and when that lightning doesn’t strike the moment someone says “Shazam”, they assume that it’s just not going to work.)

This actually brings us to acting like a lover, rather than a friend. As I said: much of why some folks struggle is that they’re afraid of being overt with their interest. They don’t want to risk rejection, they don’t want to put themselves out there and don’t want to make a move unless they’re 100% sure they’ll get a “yes”. So they act like friends – creating the reasonable expectation that this is all that’s on the table.

But acting like a lover means expressing interest in someone that isn’t just platonic. It means flirting, it means demonstrating that you find them attractive and making it clear that you would like to date them. That’s not contradicted by being friends, mind you; friendship and attraction can co-exist quite happily. But when you never give any indication that you find them appealing as a potential partner, it’s going to come as a shock to the other person and it becomes very difficult to shift that view. The times that I’ve gone from being friends to having a romantic or sexual relationship with someone, it’s been because either I had been clear that I was their friend and attracted to them from the jump, or enough had happened that they were able to adjust how they saw me without having that cognitive dissonance that says “wait, him? Nah… but… wait… huh… nah… but…”

Now to drag all of this back around to your question: being autistic doesn’t mean you inherently repel women’s affection. It does, however, mean that if you aren’t necessarily sending or receiving signs of attraction and interest, people don’t realize that you might be into them. Therein lies the problem about defining yourself by your limits: if you assume that you have a very narrow way of connecting with people, you may have problems being understood because you’re not communicating your interest in the way that a lot of neurotypical people might recognize.

But that’s not a limitation, that’s a challenge. It just means that you have to work with and around the areas where you’re weakest. That doesn’t mean you have to mimic being neurotypical, but you do want to understand what people generally expect to see from someone who’s interested in them, so that you can either convey that interest or let them know that this is what you’re doing. Think of it as learning another language; you don’t need to speak it like a native, but you do want to understand it well enough to communicate. And that communication can (and should) factor in “here’s how I work, here’s how I best understand, here’s how to win with me” so that the both of you can make sure that you’re understanding one another.

Part of it means being up front with the ways you express affection and interest. Most of the people you’re going to date are also going to be neurotypical, just demographically. If there are aspects to the ways that neurotypical people date and flirt that you can’t do and others that are hard for you, then you want to make sure that you’re conveying that interest clearly in other ways so that they understand that you’re actually into them.

One of those ways is flirting. Flirting, when you strip it down to its essentials, is just expressing interest in someone, ideally in a fun and engaging manner, and encouraging them to do the same. There are as many ways to flirt as there are people – joking and teasing, building sexual tension through touch and motion, mini role-plays as the two of you build a story between the two of you… A lot of flirting can look like banter, because bantering and joking back and forth is fun… but without the part of expressing interest, it’s not really flirting.

Since you’re autistic, then this may include just flat out saying “hey, I like you, I’d like to take you on a date.” That’s entirely fine, and God knows there’re lots of women out there who would appreciate it having it unmistakably clear. A lot of the stress and drama of dating is not being sure how someone actually feels, or when folks play the “won’t actually say what they want” game so that they can hide in the noise of plausible deniability.

This requires a level of confidence that can be hard to summon up at first; being that straightforward can be intimidating. But the reward of muscling through the nerves is that you have far greater understanding and clearer communication.

It also means being willing to ask for what you need. You don’t understand sarcasm, but if someone’s saying something sarcastically and you take it seriously, then you end up with an unnecessary conflict. So rather than guessing (or taking the option that feels most likely), ask for clarity. “Sorry, I really don’t pick up on sarcasm; were you being serious just now?” Instead of guessing or trying to sort things out, ask. Your being willing to ask to make sure you understand also tacitly gives them permission to do the same – something that can clear up a whole galaxy of potential misunderstandings before they even start.

But again: all this is contingent on your recognizing that autism just means you process things differently, not that it makes you inherently repellant to others. The less you assume your limitations are the boundaries of your existence, the less you limit yourself by pre-rejecting yourself before you so much as open your mouth. Recognize your challenges, figure out how to deal with them rather than assuming that they disqualify you or repulse others, and you’ll have more social success.

Good luck.

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Good evening ~

I need some good male advice, please. A guy who I met recently will be going back to hiking the AT within a week. We have hung out with each other, caught a movie and had great sex for the past 3 weeks.

I told him I would miss him once he gets back on the trail, and he responded with “awwww”…

Do not know what to think about this, he’s affectionate and caring, but I’m getting the friend zone vibe for a reason I think.

Can you help me out with this, Dr Love? I mean Nerdlove?

Need A Male To English Dictionary

So… if you all are hanging out regularly, going on dates and having great sex over the last couple weeks, I’m going to go ahead and say that there aren’t “friend zone” vibes going on here. I mean, as I’m always saying: the whole deal with the Friend Zone is that there’re just people who don’t want to date or fuck you. And ya’ll’ve been dating and fuckin’.

I think the issue here is that you’re reading way more into this than is necessarily there. What he means by “awwww” is pretty simple: he doesn’t really know how to respond or have much of a response to your telling you that you’ll miss him, but he doesn’t want to just leave you on read. Replying with “awwwww” is an affectionate way of acknowledging the sentiment (you like him, you’ll miss him) but cautiously, without either coming off as stiff and disinterested (“thank you”) or implying more than he feels like may be there (“I’ll be thinking of you too”), but will still expressing appreciation for what you’re saying.

Now, part of where things get a little hazy for me is that you don’t include some key details. You say he’ll be going back to hiking the Appalachian Trail. Does this mean that he’s basically passing through town, rather than someone who lives there and is off on a week-long trek? Was he taking a break before getting back to it? If that’s the case… well, I suspect that this was a trail-fling for him. If so, I can see why he might hedge on the side of less-reciprocal; he doesn’t want to give you the wrong idea or lead you to think that there’s more to this.

Now if you’ll pardon me but you accidentally inserted a quarter into the vend-o-rant: this is behavior that makes me grind my teeth because this is comes up a lot in flings and casual relationships. Someone wants to try to ensure that things stay casual, but they do so by being distant and less communicative. Some will even actively avoid being affectionate or expressive, in hopes it keeps the other person from developing feelings. It rarely helps, and mostly hurts, and almost always creates confusion because everyone assumed they were on the same page when in reality they were reading entirely different books.

This is why clarity, genuine communication, checking in with each other and – importantly – actually saying what you are or aren’t available for is so critical. If you have been hoping that this is a potential relationship or that things are going to pick back up after he completes the trail and he was seeing it as a trail fling, then the disconnect makes sense. You had very different expectations and so you were seeing things in a different light. I suspect the guy may have caught this but rather than actually saying “hey, just so we’re clear…” he let things go. I mean, after all, saying “you know this is just temporary” might have meant the end of the sex.

And if that wasn’t what you were thinking… well, again, that lack of clarity meant that you were both talking past each other, rather than to each other, and you might’ve had a different result both while he was in town and after he left.

TL;DR: he didn’t know what to say to you telling him that you missed him and erred on the side of acknowledgement, appreciation but also distance. You may have had conflicting ideas of what your relationship was and that lead to potential miscommunications. As always: use your words, be willing to risk consequences in the name of actually understanding one another and make sure that you both know what you’re actually doing together.

Good luck.

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This post was previously published on Doctornerdlove.com and is republished on Medium.

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