Well with new Jurassic park/world stuff coming out, there’s 90s stuff going on, too.

I remember being 22… yeah… no… just… ugh… no!

Beat me to it.

Well I do have friends, and yes they are pretty solid. Not many, but I guess maybe I already have that handled? I guess I misworded my statement there.

However they aren’t the type of friends you meet girls through. Like I said, I am autistic and all my friends are neurodivergent in some way. One of them was married, had kids, divorced, got engaged, broke up, and is currently single, the other hasn’t had a girlfriend for a long time, but he does have his own fairly active social life and is very active in the autism community… and I am actually kinda surprised he doesn’t have a girlfriend since he does associate with a lot of people with cool artistic lifestyles (and he himself is fairly artistic). I know a few other people, even if I don’t see them regularly, I am in contact with them.

So finding a girl will have to be a solitary activity like everything else I do. Not that that is a bad thing, and I am sure there are plenty of introverted girls who would be fine with everything. I am not looking for some party gal, I am not compatible with them. Also I am not looking for one-night stands. As much as I said in the past that I wonder what it would be like to bone new girls regularly, I seriously doubt it would be satisfying in both the short-term and long-term.

I should mention that… yes, I did go to gang-bangs and orgies. Most of my sex partners were through there, and I did get compliments from the girls many times (legit ones). However that is when I realized that impersonal sex is not something I want to do. Not to say I wouldn’t go to one of those again, but the groups that organized them appear to be defunct now.

BTW, those groups are the way I learned I had a big dick. When I was with my first ‘girlfriend’ (and she is one reason why I still have many sexual hang ups. The story of my first sexual experience ever is… not pleasant. Like even many PUAs who had sex with a parade of partners said they would have given up women and sex if they had an experience like that) the condom seemed to break a lot. I didn’t ejaculate, not even precum, so no pregnancy risk… but I didn’t understand it.

Turns out? Well, I needed magnum condoms. Magnum XL condoms are more comfortable. I know this is a TMI situation, but I am not doing it as a brag or anything, but this was a practical concern. I would not have sex without a condom, and I have never wanted children, so the condoms stay on for obvious reasons…

But my experience with that girl will mean that going forward, even if I might be getting sexual with a girl, I need to make sure that we are compatible to be with one another for a while first, otherwise I am not proceeding.

I will say that if you have never used a girlfriend as an emotional dumpster, then you probably will soon. It’s kind of just an inevitable part of the process of becoming a more dateable man.

Maybe I misworded that statement of mine, too. If you mean not opening up about stuff previously, then… well no, we all gotta know about one another’s pasts. My last girl frequently talked to me about her past (but me being 33 and her being 19 at the time kinda meant she was talking about her very recent childhood, which felt weird at first, but I realize that that is all she knew at that time), and I did mention my stuff. Her insight into it really did help me rethink a lot of stuff, which is why having a girlfriend is an important part of getting better, and not just ‘get better and get the girl’ it is ‘get better and gets girls while you are doing it, because they are part of the process’.

In terms of meeting people and stuff, this is one problem: I kinda had to ditch many old ‘friends’ because they weren’t really friends. I barely knew them and the one girl I did date did ask me why I was hanging out with those people when they clearly didn’t give a fuck about me. What happened at that time is that I did some drinking prior to going to that event with them, and while it was far from my first time drinking, the alcohol hit me really hard for some reason and I wasn’t looking and feeling good. Despite being visibly unwell, no one asked me if I was doing OK or even had any visible reaction to me. This did not sit well with her at all.

And yes, that ‘circle’ of mine was very offputting for her and she did mention to me that I didn’t seem to have any friends. The thing is… I wasn’t really aware of it at that time. Like I said, I had one HELL of an abusive upbringing that I wasn’t even aware of just how abusive it was until well after the time it was gone.

This isn’t to say I cannot build a social circle or a better life. I think I absolutely can. But here’s the thing: I have a lifetime of doing things solo and I am quite comfortable with that. Also I do have a lot of support at my job. I work at a place specifically made for people with disabilities to accommodate them. I had really hard times making friends in the past and I didn’t really know what being friends was with people. I got taken advantage of too much by some individuals and that really got me wary of a lot of shit.

I am trying to rebuild my life, and part of it has to involve (early on… as early as possible actually) to get a girlfriend. I always keep a small circle of friends when I do have them and I would rather keep it that way. I am picky about that for a reason. I want to convey that, no I will not be using her as an emotional dumping ground. That’s just not style. It never was.

So many things to unpack here. (but to say it, yes please send me that guide for tinder. I am curious)

Firstly in terms of Night game/cold approach. I am not doing it anymore. This is what I have done for years and I had no success. The sheer amount of bad experiences and 100% lack of success is not going to bode well for me there. Also I am in my 40s now. I was even too old for many nightclubs (who often have people barely out of high school in Canada, since the drinking age is 18) when I came to Canada at 23. They are simply too loud and I am not doing it.

Also the city where I live in is not good for cold approach. It just isn’t. I have no other way to put it. I did have some people who told me that walking up to completely strangers in cafes and bars will never be confident, because only the loneliest and most desperate of people do that regardless of how they hold themselves and present themselves. I don’t fully agree, but like I said… when I was doing this, I spent more than a full year of doing that on a regular basis and I had precisely zero dates and no calls/txts returned. This isn’t going to work. I am not being dramatic, I am being very pragmatic.

I never had any issue walking up to strangers and talking to them. That was never my problem to begin with. This is why I am VERY hesitant to take a lot of PUA stuff seriously anymore. For example, many PUAs, including the ‘originals’ such as Mystery, projected their own issues as if they were universal. Like approach anxiety is a thing… it does happen… but it is not universal. I have no approach anxiety, I never did (I actually gained some just because I read about it for a while though!) but Mystery? He has a tick where he really does feel that he cannot talk to a girl if he waits for longer than 3 seconds upon spotting her. That isn’t universal, that’s just him.

As for social circle? I really don’t have one. I never did. I am extremely solitary individual and I kinda like it that way. I’m sorry about that, but the few people I do know are far, far more autistic than I am (if a hot chick met them, she’d probably run like crazy away!), and even then, I don’t see them as often as I used to. My solitary nature is in far more due to the experiences I had growing up in Dubai where I was very isolated due to a variety of factors beyond my control. When I came to Canada I had a lot of traumatic experiences while I was in university that caused me to recede back into solitude in order to try to heal. By the time I felt like I could go out I had already graduated and some anxiety issues related to phobias started to flare up that made it impossible for me to be able to socialize properly or correctly. Again, I am a MASSIVE introvert. If I am going to build a new social circle, I need to be extremely picky who I hang out with. This is because the last time I did it the people I was with were such losers that I really don’t want to waste any more time on anyone who isn’t up to snuff. This isn’t arrogance, this is me looking out for myself. I will not force myself to stay in a place where I don’t feel like I am benefiting from, or putting in a lot more than I am receiving.

You said that tinder was a few months effort that was built on 15 years of lifestyle? I’m sorry to say, but I need to fake that lifestyle since I really don’t have 15 years to build up to it. Like I said, getting laid/into a relationship cannot be THAT hard. There are people who are broke, have criminal records, and are ugly, and yet still have a partner. I am none of those things, but I also really cannot make that many massive changes to my life. I am heading back to the gym and working out a lot, but that is also taking up a lot of time, and I do need some ‘me’ time. I am planning on going out on hiking/walking trips and yoga and other stuff from meetup.com, and there are a TON of groups there so much that I would be stupid to waste any time on going out to loud nightclubs filled with drunk loud idiots. Also like I said, I am 41. While meeting younger girls is something I would be open to, clubs are NOT the way to do it. This is double in the fact that I will be going alone. Going alone to a nightclub is already a red flag at any age. Even if I woke up the next morning and I was 20 again, the fact that I don’t have a group to be with will not make me look good in a club.

(or maybe I am mishearing you. If you are saying you got healthier and more confident than I am mostly on point. Like I said, I am losing the COVID weight right now. It’ll take a few months, and maybe even until the end of the year, but it is going to happen. For clothes? Yeah I can get better stuff, but I need guides on how to dress up properly and take good pictures, since those are the critical factors. Also my previous experiences and what I learned were critical in abandoning a lot of toxicity that was around me at the time.)

And the introversion is why SC was never an option for me. Like I said, I am immigrant to the country I came into, and even though I tried to build a social circle, other factors and my (then) undiagnosed anxiety disorder and autism only left me quite cold with a lot of people. Just having no approach anxiety is not an antidote to it. I need to meet people cold, yes, but I cannot waste any time. Walking up to people in the street, in a club, in a library, or whatever is not going to work, or not going to work quickly enough for me. Going to a brunch or any group that is SPECIFICALLY for people to talk to one another and possibly hit it off or socialize further afterward is the only way I am willing to go for right now. I met that girlfriend of mine that way. I don’t know if it’ll be as quick as that time, but it is much better than going to a dance class that is 90% male and the only girl there is already married.

I will read inner game of Tennis and I am already looking at Models. I actually did download that book (or not?) and it appears to be the 2011/2013 version, so the post-PUA stuff? It is looking good so far, but I need real professional help (hence why I am going to a sex therapist) and I will not waste my time on PUA crap. I want to actually get my life together in terms of dating. I know I am a solitary individual, but I will be held back by it or accept that it will be the death of any sex life. That is bullshit.

But because their product is illegal, they are always going to be mixed in with seedy crooks. So try to think of “PUA” stuff as more of an ecosystem than a monolith. There are some people giving really terrible advice. Some people who have some good tips mixed in with their toxic bullshit. And a few people, often hidden, who have a lot of really good, solid advice that can help you.

That is the problem. At the time I started in it, I had no fucking idea what was what, and the toxicity of both the material AND the people I met in it (like I said, I was cyberbullied and cyberstalked by them for YEARS). I know that I am far from the only guy who had issues with dating, but I still feel like my situation was far worse than other people. Like I haven’t heard of anyone getting that much opposition to dating than I have, from either family or other people in pick up, who frequently just insulted me and did everything they could to break me down and waste my time.

Thanks. I did hear about some of those books, but I am VERY wary of a lot of things that have a PUA feel to them, since the PUA stuff has been the biggest problem to me in my social development (as I noted) and I am very hesitant to return to any such material as long as I know they might carry that label. I did read The Charisma Myth (and I need too look at it back again), but I will look them up. Models kinda has that trigger to me right now. But it could be that I am confusing it for something else since I did hear it.

you did mention Inner Game of Tennis, but I assume that you are the one who replaced ‘flirting’ with it, and it can work. I am not a 100% beginner, and like I said, there’s been some very strange things happening to me lately, and they’re kinda on the good side… but I can’t be sure yet. Seeing your results in finding sex on tinder is encouraging, but my experience with Tinder has been very discouraging. I went on Tinder from May to November 2015 and I only got one date, one other girl to date, and after I turned 32 in October, despite expanding my demographic to include everyone from 18 to 35, I got ZERO matches despite hundreds of swipes. It was almost like I had expired after 32. But seeing you get what you wanted after just a few months was good… but for me, due to a plethora of other factors (I was stalked and cyberbullied by many PUAs online and they even harassed my family for months. One guy was actively trying to get on my facebook page for 4 YEARS after the fact) due to my panic factor probably being far, far, far higher than others and my sheer insecurity at being an early something wanting a younger girlfriend. I hope that this time it doesn’t take me 18 months to find a girlfriend or go on dates. I was mostly doing ‘day game’ and ‘night game’ which was never the thing for me and the absolute worst crap I ever did. Also I had a tremendous amount of stress at my old job when my emotional state became apparent and they just tried to fire me immediately when I mentioned I was having dating issues and my whole issues with sex. People didn’t talk much about sex at the job, but when they did they mentioned dicer stuff than that… but apparently I struck a nerve and everyone thought I was a predator and needed to be gotten rid of immediately. They spent nearly 3 years trying to firing me and the stress from all that was physically killing me like cancer.

Fun fact: It was only when the stress got so bad that upon my Union representive’s recommendation that I go on a sick leave was when I was finally relaxed enough and… yeah, that’s when the one girl I met said yes and we went dating. She was 19 and I was 33, but you’d think I would be the more mature one but… nope. She was in full control of absolutely everything. In fact she was kinda surprised how I managed to reach my age and maintain a positive disposition towards people after a lifetime of suffering from incredible abuse, as she would have expected me to be an intensely closed-off person if I was ‘normal’ under the circumstances. I wanna make it clear that this girl did more for me in the few months we dated than anyone else in my life did in decades, and I will never forget her and I will never say that I don’t feel anything towards her anymore, because she is that good. This is considering when I was 25 I lost my virginity to a 31 year old… virgin girl, and that experience was one of the most shattering and destructive experiences I had in my life. Even one of the PUAs I spoke to (the type of guy who I legit believed really did bang over a 100 girls before the age of 24) said that if he had an experience like that now, he would give up on women and becoming a monk. That experience is also one reason why I am kinda hesitant to date someone older than me even though it was probably that she was a one-off and not all girls older than me are like that.

I am mildly apprehensive about online stuff, but at the same time I do want to try. While before I was focused principally on younger girls, and while I am going to be expanding my horizons and putting my age range from 25-45, I don’t want to be left out by any group. I had a lot of problems in my life and I felt robbed and left out of so much time for a million reasons that I just feel like any group that puts in an age limit is a personal affront to me, even if it isn’t that.

My current job is also highly supportive and I am going to get my sex therapist through it. I don’t talk about dating on the job, but I have a feeling that if I did bring up the topic to my boss, he would be OK with it. So I know I won’t be under ANY stress from my job, and that stress along with other stuff in my life previously is what was the biggest hinderance in finding a date/girlfriend.

(Part 2 of 2)

but holy SHIT did he make me look bad. I need to mention that everything he said was a lie. and I even pointed out to him then and there that going to that group was his idea, not mine, and I pointed out to him that everyone around him who was in a relationship did not do anything remotely close to what he was saying.

Then he admitted to me that A: He never had a girlfriend, B: Never dated, C: had no idea how people actually met, and D: Was possibly a virgin. In short, I was extensively more experienced than he was, despite being from overseas.

I could go on forever, but I will stop here (gotta save it for my therapist). You actually did offer some real advice, and I did go out on some brunches on meetup.com and I am much calmer than I was before, and the girls there did talk to me far more than they did previously. Doesn’t mean I am going to getting laid left and right, but it is a much better start, and I actually have far more support from my job and the few family and friends that I have contact with, I had to cut out so many people from my life it isn’t funny.

Just saying ‘go online’ and nothing else for starters. I ‘went online’ in the mid-2000s and found nothing but PUA and early manosphere crap that was utterly stupid and did far more damage to me socially in the long term that I didn’t even begin to fix until more than 13 years after the fact. It didn’t bring any positive results either. But due to my circumstances I just really didn’t know any better.

Also when I did ‘go online’ or ‘to bars’ and I described some highly weird experiences that I knew weren’t normal they would twist the events so badly that it makes me wonder if they were the autistic ones and not me.

For example when I was 22 years old, I went to a bar and started talking to this woman. She was older than me and kinda vague, lied to me about her name, lied about her martial status (before taking everything back, but never telling me her real name). This was in Dubai I might add, so the social dynamic is a very different place than it would be in north america… and would also really come back to bite me later. The only shit I had to go by was offering her a drink at the start…

But here is a kicker… no one ever bought her a drink before. Apparently she literally did not watch any western media or ignored whatever was on screen. Because the whole concept of anyone walking up to anyone in a bar and buying them a drink was a legit alien experience to her.

Long story short… I saw her a second time a few weeks later at the same bar and she had some friends with her. She treated me like I was an ATM and basically thought that as long as she groped at me inappropriately (she even grabbed my head and shoved it against her breasts, forcibly I might add since I tried to resist) she could ask for meals and drinks and spending money for her and her friends (without the slightest hint of reciprocal sex). However she and friends were giddy and laughing while doing it.

I described the situation to them as I am here without mentioning the whole ‘this person never had a person buy her a drink’ but I DID add it later.

However this did nothing to convince them that they were trying to manipulate them, and they insisted that actually I should have gone for it and lost my virginity in a threesome with some MILFs that day. I am mildly exaggerating, but that was the gist of it.

BTW, just as an FYI, in many bars I went to in Dubai, they were lousy with sex workers. I did have plenty of girls touch me and act all giddy (but not ask for anything) and offer me ‘massages’ (which is a thinly veiled euphemism for sex in case it wasn’t obvious) for reasonable prices. The guys I was talking to weren’t in the middle east and just could not wrap their heads around my experiences being different from theirs.

Even with going online, they said nothing about where to go, how to make a good profile, what pictures to use or anything. Even trying to message people they insisted that you must never say anything other than ‘hi’ at first. This is even when they actually showed me what they did and had giant text walls that they sent detailing whatever was on her profile. I wasn’t able to replicate those, but their advice was just designed to make me waste my time.

Long story short. I am 41 now. Not a virgin, but dealing with a lot of bullshit. I dont care who I tell this to, but I am prepping to see a sexual therapist. I am practically writing my autobiography so I can just give it to them and bring them up to speed so I don’t waste tons of time and money just going on and on with the sessions. I need actual help and not just someone to talk to.

I have had more than one. I am autistic with an anxiety disorder and ptsd and I had guys who aren’t those things always talk to me about girls like I am super pick up master just because inam decently looking and in shape. They way they talked about their experiences made me kinda not want any, too…

And no matter how much I tried to explain my situation when asking for advice they just gave sabotaging and extremely vague advice that doesn’t mean anything. I wasted away my 20s and a large part of my 30s because of shit like that.