this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2025
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(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.
Well, I gotta say, that was a wild ride.
Personally, I grew up emotionally disconnected, unsupported, socially isolated, and bullied. Like, kids at school making fun of me for wearing clothes that hadn't been washed, because my parents either didn't notice or didn't care. I ended up depressed, socially anxious, and socially stunted as a result. For years as a kid, I prayed for the day that I would have the courage to pick the lock on my dad's gun and blow my own brains out.
Luckily, I moved out of my folks house at 18 to go to college, and have barely been back since. I avoid spending time with my parents as much as possible, since I seem to have pavlovian conditioning such that being around them triggers my depression, and leads to excessive alcohol consumption.
After agonizing about it for years, I finally lost my virginity at 23. After that, I failed to sleep with another girl for years. At 29, I panicked, said FUCK THIS!! and decided to do whatever it took. So I found a paint-by-numbers guide to getting laid on Tinder on the internet, followed it to the T, and managed to actually start sleeping with women.
I'll say, the experience made me happier and changed my life for the better. It made me a better person. But at the same time, it didn't solve all my problems. And also, the couple months of effort that I put in at 29 was really just the culmination of work I'd been putting into myself and my life since I was 13. I still have some heavy emotional problems I'm dealing with - but feeling sexually desireable isn't one of them anymore, and I'm grateful for that.
To me, it sounds like you've been through the shit, and you are taking the right steps. You're cutting out people who make you miserable - that's excellent. You are going out to meetups and meeting people. Awesome. You are going to therapy - that is fucking amazing. Seriously, the fact that you've been knocked down so many times and are still getting back up is something to be proud of.
Our culture is really weird about sex and dating, so it is really hard to find good advice. I think my best advice is to focus on improving yourself to be more datable for a while (like, yeah, it's okay to want more people to be into you!), and then to take a break and focus on other things, before coming back to it. You get better at things when you focus on them. But you also need to relax and be happy and not be one dimensional. So alternate back and forth, hopefully without burning out.
I recommend you spend as much time as possible meeting new people and cultivating friendships. Dating and improving yourself is so much easier when you have a deep and wide network of friends to lean on.
For a macro view of how to become a more datable man, I recommend the book Models by Mark Manson. It boils down to "don't be needy". If you want to know how to not be needy, you might have heard of the next book he wrote to answer that question - The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck.
If you have problems moving things forward with women - anything from introducing yourself to asking them on a date to getting them into bed - the best advice I ever heard is "stop trying to be smooth." You are autistic. This is actually a superpower in dating, because you will have a hard time sending and receiving the subconscious, unspoken cues most people give each other. Instead, you use your autism to be direct - tell girls exactly what you are thinking and exactly what you want. Ask them what they are thinking and what they want when you are uncertain. Just be autistically honest. As long as you are honest and respectful, just say anything that pops into your head. "Hey, I saw you over here and thought you were really pretty. What's up? I'm John." "I'm glad you agreed to go on this date with me, but I have to say, I'm kinda nervous." "You have a beautiful smile and it makes me want to kiss you." "I'm having a good time with you tonight. Do you wanna go back to my place?" "You seem nervous. Are you okay?"
At the same time, learning to flirt and communicate effectively is a process that doesn't happen overnight. To learn how to flirt, I recommend a book called "The Inner Game of Tennis". Read it, and everywhere it says "Tennis" just replaced that with "flirting".
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.