So, as it is Valentine’s Day today, I thought there would be no better cliché time but to have the Me and… series move on to the subject of relationships. Of course, don’t expect any advice here as I don’t have any and I am as fresh in this subject as pretty much anyone looking for advice. Just like the other Me and… posts I am just going to be talking about my own experiences in it, whether that experience is big or small.
Featured Photo: Photo by Asad Photo Maldives from Pexels
There are a number of types of relationships, there are family relationships, friend relationships also just called friendships and then there are romantic relationships, there are also many other types of relationships as well, but the three I mentioned are the main ones pretty much everyone experiences in some form or another.
Since it is Valentine’s Day, the type of relationship I am focusing on are romantic relationships and I am mostly going to talk about them from a viewpoint rather than any experiences as I am yet to have an experience in that realm as I haven’t really tried to form a romantic relationship yet.
I guess the best point is to then start on why I have not had any romantic relationships yet and the simple answer I think is that I am just too socially awkward at the moment as well as social anxiety and on top of that I have often had little interest in it probably due to Autism and something else I will talk about further down. I only remember ever having one crush when I was in secondary school and that is the extent of it really so I know what it feels like to fancy someone but I don’t know what it really feels like to share mutual romantic love as it has not yet happened, I never told them directly but I am pretty sure the girl in question had an idea as one of my old school friends at-the-time told someone who told them, but luckily nothing came of it.
But that is about as far as it goes in feeling that kind of attraction to someone, it hasn’t happened since and I have been on dating websites now and again, but not really committed, I have started a few chats that didn’t really go anywhere and was kind of boring most the time and it seems that in every case it was only really me asking the questions and doing the chatting rather than them putting in much effort, which was actually quite foreign to me as in-real-life I’m used to that being the other way around, as I am not very good socially myself. So yeah, that makes it harder, the furthest I did get was getting one girl on whatsapp but that didn’t go anywhere either and was also mostly one-sided.
Now and again I still try but mostly I find it boring and going through dozens of profiles gets old real quick and also making up a message for each one is pretty taxing and I know many others complain as well that it just feels like window shopping rather than an actual good experience. I know there are also problems for both sides, often men find it hard to get in as woman face the problem of having their inboxes flooded with dozens or even hundreds of men, so they find it hard to get through all of them and even then many of them will likely be people just wanting a hook-up or being weird/creepy or something. So, both women and men have their own struggles.
I am also considering if I might be A-romantic as well, possibly of the Greyromantic type, now let me explain basically, what this means that if you are full-on Aromantic you simply just don’t fall in love with anybody or feel romantically attracted to anyone. Now I know that isn’t totally me, but Greyromantic is a sub-type of this where you very rarely become attracted or fall in love with someone or that it can take a ton of commitment for it to click, I think this type may be me as I have said previously I only ever had been attracted to someone once and it hasn’t happened again since, even through all the online dating profiles I can say I was not actually attracted yet to any of the girls I have hit like on or sent a message to, I of course know they were good-looking, but that isn’t the same as being attracted to them.
I believe what I was doing before I had this greyromantic revelation is that I felt like I needed to find someone to have a romantic relationship with as it is “normal”. It is portrayed as the status quo and that in a normal society, normal people have romantic relationships and partners, so I believed to fit in I would need to do this as well, in essence I was trying to force myself to fall in love or be attracted to someone without even realizing it as I wanted to “fit in” with “normal” society. What I should be doing is waiting for the right moment and instead of feeling like I have to online date or look for someone, just do it when I feel like it instead as that is the most likely time that something may click or happen as you are in the right state of mind.
Often months can pass until I am in the correct state of mind to do a bit of online dating again and so I really feel like I am a Greyromantic, I could still be wrong, but when I had the revelation it did feel like it just “clicked” and was like “ah, yeah, that makes sense” and I also think that many people with Autism are likely more proportionally aromantic or some kind of sub-type of that as our emotions and feelings work differently to neurotypical people. So what I have come to realize is that if it happens it happens and if it doesn’t then it doesn’t and that is ok for me and is one less thing to keep worrying about and can allow me to develop other things instead like this very blog and also social skills, working towards maybe getting a job that makes money (if that happens I will still do this blog) and working to make friendships.
Of course, working on all those things I just mentioned can also indirectly make the right moment you find someone more likely as well, working on yourself and discovering yourself and finding out what you really want first is really the only advice I can actually give as it is without a doubt the truest thing.
Thank you for reading this post, if you have any queries please Email me, you can find my Email in the Contacts & Community section. Please also follow The Weekly Rambler on Twitter and Facebook which you can access through the buttons at the bottom of this website. You can also use the social media buttons under each blogpost to share with your family, friends and associates. You can also subscribe to Email notifications at the right-side of this website to know whenever a new post goes up (you can easily unsubscribe from this at any time through a button in each Email notification), or alternatively you can use an RSS Feed Reader. Please also join my FB Group The Weekly Ramblers Readers Group where readers can more easily talk with each other and also with me whenever I am on, you can also find it in Community.