How I, a late bloomer, found love in my 30s — part 3
Socially anxious, I felt lost and in need of guidance
As far as I’m aware, I’m not on the spectrum — although I’ve never had an evaluation.
But when I first learned of the Netflix show Love on the Spectrum — which is pretty much what it says on the tin: people on the spectrum who struggle to find love — I took great interest in it, feeling sympathy for the people in the show.
I’m not qualified to comment on those issues. But I’ll defer to those who are qualified. So when I talk about positive points of the show, remember to take it with a grain of salt — this is only my limited perspective.
“Improve your social skills”
So why do I mention this show in my series about struggling to find love? Well, one aspect of the show in particular caught my eye. In the first season, a clinical psychologist and professor (Dr. Elizabeth Laugeson) is shown giving a “dating class” to some of the participants. It covers things like eye contact, having a back-and-forth conversation, and even how to ask someone out and how to reject someone’s advances.
I looked up Dr. Laugeson and found that she has a whole research program at UCLA dedicated to teaching social skills to teenagers and adults on the spectrum. She wrote a book called The Science of Making Friends, based on her research.
The book covers a wide variety of social skills and situations, breaking them down step by step. The book is even accompanied by a website that has example videos of roleplayed interactions, some of them related to the world of dating.
I won’t go into the merits of this particular professor’s work — maybe there’s a lot to criticize about it.
But I admit, I was touched by the concept of such a thing existing: a professor doing peer-reviewed research on how to navigate social situations and even how to date, and breaking it down into evidence-based, digestable chunks for people who struggle with these things.
The idea of breaking down social interactions, especially when it comes to dating, into steps may sound strange, unnatural or lacking spontaneity to many people. Many might not consider things like these to involve “skill”; they are just common sense things that you pick up by being alive, right?
Yet I felt comforted that someone had gone to the trouble of writing an evidence-based guide. In fact, I had been looking for something like this.
“Hack Her Brain Using This One Weird Trick!!!!111”
Let me make one thing clear: I wasn’t looking for a guide on how to “seduce” or “pick up” women. There are plenty of guides like that that promise 100% guaranteed success and that are filled with nonsense, a lot of it dangerous and offensive.
What I, a lonely, confused and inexperienced guy in my mid-to-late-20s wanted, was not a foolproof way of tricking someone into fancying me. What I wanted was a guide to explain the “etiquette” of dating. Because I was hella confused by it all.
Some might be surprised by the notion of a “dating etiquette”. In non-traditional, liberal societies where there aren’t arranged marriages or an abundance of “courtship rituals” and all that other outdated stuff — a society where Tinder and Netflix and chill abound and everyone just goes with the flow — it seems like everything is just about “vibes”, spontaneity, authenticity, the “spark”.
But make no mistake. An unspoken, implicit etiquette exists — even in societies without a rigid set of codes dictating courtship. (I cringe as I type the word “courtship” — it makes me sound like a British anthropologist from the 19th century with a moustache that’s bigger than my own face).
It may change from environment to environment, subculture to subculture, generation to generation. But as a hypothetical example, if I proposed a woman to “Netflix and chill” for the first date — out of a genuine, naïve desire to watch La Casa de Papel and play Carcassonne the boardgame afterward — I might very well end up confused when she calls me a “fuckboy” and then blocks my number.
That’s because there’s a meaning and an implication behind the invitation to “Netflix and chill” — beyond the literal meaning of what is said.
Luckily, this is just a made-up example — I learned what “Netflix and chill” meant long before I could make this dreadful mistake! But I still felt like I was missing something crucial when observing the social world around me — how people got dates and got into relationships. I just wanted to go about meeting a girl through ethical and socially acceptable means.
Mostly, I was afraid of making a wrong move, making a woman uncomfortable or creeping her out.
“Just be friends with women”
See, throughout my teens and early twenties, I had pretty severe social anxiety.
This manifested itself in specific ways. For example, each time I had to make a phone call to some help desk person or customer service of some kind, I would freeze and panic, and my mind would go foggy.
For some reason, I imagined the person on the other end of the line would think I sounded absolutely ridiculous, or that I was wasting their time. (It took me being forced to make vital phone calls on a regular basis for my job to tackle this fear.)
Another area this impacted was everything to do with dating or flirting.
I had no problem just talking to women or having platonic friendships with women — or at least, not more so than with men.
During one semester of my studies, my friend group was comprised of 4 women and only 1 guy — me. I felt at ease with them, feeling like I could talk about anything.
However, while at the time I would’ve liked to have a girlfriend or go on dates, and there were a few women who caught my interest, nothing ever happened. I never seemed to find myself in a situation where asking a girl out or flirting made sense, or seemed like the natural thing to do.
I went to social events and parties during university. But even so, it almost felt like there was an invisible barrier around me that prevented me from getting into these situations that I saw others getting into.
Having never gone on a date, kissed, held hands or even flirted with a woman, I couldn’t see myself ever doing any of those things, despite wanting to. It was very scary.
So what did I do to cope with this anxiety? I simply suppressed any romantic or “beyond-platonic” feelings I had by never, ever acting on them.
If I had feelings for a woman, I would act completely polite and friendly without showing any sign that I might like her as more than a friend.
What was I afraid of? Rejection? To a point. After all, rejection never feels good.
However, what was far more disturbing to me was the possibility of creeping the woman out, or making her uncomfortable.
I think deep down, I just couldn’t picture a woman returning my feelings… so even asking or making my feelings clear would just be making things awkward and uncomfortable for no good reason.
There’s nothing wrong with just being polite, not pursuing a potential romance or not acting on feelings of attraction. It would be rather exhausting having to chase after every person who strikes your fancy. Except in my case, I was at the opposite extreme all the time. There was no way anything could ever develop like this — unless the woman in question hit me over the head with a club and dragged me to her cave like the stereotypical caveman.
But we live in a world where the onus is still mostly on the man to make the first move (that hopefully does not involve hitting people over the head with clubs) — so good luck with that.
Being able to make friends with people of all genders is definitely important — why shut 50% of the population out of your social circle? But an ability to foster friendships sometimes does not translate into the ability to have a satisfying dating life, although the social skills required to do so have overlap.
I realized this when, at age 25, it was pointed out to me by some male and female peers of mine that a girl they’d overseen me talking to several times seemed to be into me. The consensus view was that I needed to “make a move”.
I liked the idea of going on a date with her and seeing where it went. So next time I met her, I “tried” for about two seconds — and by “tried” I mean I tried flirting by teasing her gently for a bit. This only made her confused. Unable to bear this awkwardness, I brushed it off and went back to regular friendly conversation.
It could be that she wasn’t into me at all, and had just been being friendly all this time. Or maybe I felt so nervous and unnatural when I tried flirting that it was off-putting. She didn’t really seem uncomfortable, though — more like she simply didn’t get the joke. But that short moment of disconnect spooked me enough to shut down again.
In the end, the outcome wasn’t bad at all — I liked being friends with her — but it did make me realize I had a problem that went very deep. (For some reason, just asking her out didn’t even occur to me.)
“Read the room”
At some point, it became clear that I couldn’t continue with this state of affairs. But the idea of doing something else was scary. I felt like I needed some guidance.
Mostly, any advice I could find boiled down to “read the room”. Use your common sense to judge when it’s appropriate or not to “make a move”.
Except, whenever I listened to my inner roomreading common sense voice, it always told me “ABORT MISSION! I REPEAT, ABORT MISSION” in a shrill, panicked voice.
Let me illustrate with an example.
This will be a huge fast-forward. But on my first date with the woman who is now my amazing girlfriend, I apparently failed to correctly interpret her hints.
Right after the date, I was under the impression she probably didn’t like me in that way — by the way, the date was also cut short by me having a literal panic attack in her presence… but maybe that’s for a later article. (I will say that the kind way she reacted to my panic attack was the biggest green flag ever.)
In reality, my girlfriend later informed me that she had given me several obvious clues. One of these was her repeatedly saying “my hands are so cold.” Implying that I could do something about it by holding her hands, thereby warming them.
I don’t remember exactly what I thought when she said this. It might have been something along the lines of “hmm, she seems to really regret not wearing gloves to this date.”
She also “complained” about me touching her shoulder — but not for the reason I imagined.
See, social touch comes naturally to many people, but not me. It’s not that I don’t like being touched (I enjoyed my brief stint of living in Spain) — I was just worried that if I did it, it would be awkward or uncomfortable, and therefore I’d overthink it. Thereby making it effectively awkward and uncomfortable.
There’s no prophecy like a self-fulfilled one.
So I’d found an article from a relationships therapist talking about how people can safely and respectfully “break the touch barrier” with each other on a date. This is often done to lightly touching an area of the person’s body that is considered “safe” — maybe a hand, maybe a shoulder — and seeing whether the other person reacts with comfort or discomfort. (In case of discomfort, obviously back off).
Throughout our first date, I was looking for an excuse to do this. While we were at the restaurant, I was looking to see whether she wore any ring — so I could take her hand into my hand to “inspect” the ring.
Unfortunately, she didn’t wear any rings, so I had to go back to the drawing board. And ironically, in all my worry, I didn’t notice she was doing the exact same thing as me with her cute “my hands are cold” move.
But 2 or 3 times, while we were walking side by side, when she said something I thought was funny, I briefly put my hand on her shoulder.
In my mind’s interpretation of her body language, she didn’t react uncomfortably. But she didn’t seem super-duper-stoked either — neutral, perhaps. So I abandoned any further efforts there and then.
What I’d meant to do was to emphasize my appreciation of what she just said, all while breaking the touch barrier. But when she told me she didn’t like it when I touched her shoulder, I was worried it was because I’d violated a barrier of hers.
No — turns out she just didn’t like me patting her on the shoulder like she was my bro, all while staunchly ignoring her invitations to hold her hand. She thought I was friendzoning her!
Mind you, all this happened after I made a significant effort to take more initiative and be less passive — by that time, I’d sent her the first message, given her my phone number first, invited her to call on the phone and talk on Skype, and asked her out on a date.
All things that would have been unimaginable to me just a few years ago.
And even then, my girlfriend also did a lot of heavy lifting — especially after our first date.
My “oh shit, she actually really likes me” moment only came when we were sitting across each other in a train and she literally texted me to come sit next to her and cuddle. (It felt like winning the jackpot). And our first kiss? She asked me to kiss her.
The one thing she didn’t do was club me over the head and drag me to her cave.
All this is to illustrate just how clueless I was on my first date with my girlfriend — which reflects on how hopeless and daunting my situation seemed just a few years ago, when I had yet to go on a date in the first place.
But then came along Dr. Elizabeth Laugeson. Encountering her work gave me a flicker of hope.
Not so much the content itself — although it is useful for many — but moreso the idea that this person recognizes the romantic suffering of people who struggle with dating etiquette and tries to ease this suffering by performing scientific research and turning her findings into teaching material.
Again — Dr. Laugeson’s work is specifically for people who are on the spectrum. Whereas I believe my problem was social anxiety hampering my social skills, specifically in certain areas — because I avoided social situations due to fear of getting it wrong, or because I had distorted thinking around certain situations, or because certain situations filled me with so much panic and self-doubt that I couldn’t think clearly about them.
Nevertheless, a serious person taking this problem seriously made me feel better. At times I felt ridiculous for feeling so terrible about a “first world problem”. But encountering her work, even though it was only tangentially related to my situation, made me feel like my problem was legitimate — one that could be worked on and addressed directly when given the right tools. And that helped me to make progress.
There are many people in 29 year old me’s situation, struggling with this stuff and looking for healthy, positive guidance. I’ve talked to a few.
Unfortunately, this void in the market is often exploited by charlatans. They often start out giving a few nuggets of practical, hands-on advice — followed by a steady drip-feed of toxic ideas.
We can do a lot better — and that’s why I’m writing these articles. At 29, I got into a conversation with a Redditor about my dating woes… and what do you know, having been in the same boat, he went to the trouble of writing an extremely long reply (sourced with links and resources) about how he got out of it.
Besides his reply being “alpha male BS”-free, what touched me most was not the advice itself — although it was helpful. But what helped me most was the fact he understood my situation, validated my feelings, and went to a huge effort to transfer his knowledge and experiences to me, for no reward. Even if none of his advice had been “effective”, the effort and care he put into it soothed a part of my soul that was hurting (very dramatic, but true). So my hope is that at least one person sees this and feels helped and understood in the same way as I felt then.
I have a lot more to say about social anxiety, loneliness etc. so stay tuned. Next time, I’ll talk about the problem of meeting new people.
