Now the things that I would say are the least relevant are your being autistic and lack of experience. First and foremost, I think people overestimate the impact of “experience”. There are benefits to dating experience in as much as you know yourself and your patterns in relationships, you have a handle on what you want and you’re a little more secure in the bumps and potholes that crop up in every relationship.
Someone who has only ever dated their high-school sweetheart and were married for 30 years doesn’t have a “lot of dating experience”, but is doing just fine
Now, there may be people who might not want to date you because that lack of experience may mean that you aren’t sure of what you want out of a relationship, or who may worry that this will mean that you’ve not had all of the ‘experiences’ that you wanted (that is: banging lots of different people). But those are going to be folks who are ultimately just not compatible with you. They want different things than what you offer; that doesn’t imply a lack of worth or value on your part, it just means that you two don’t mesh and that’s fine. You’re both better off finding the people who are right for you.
Similarly, someone who thinks you’re weird or defective because you’re an older virgin is someone who’s showing their whole ass. That’s very much a “them” problem, not a “you” problem, because those are emphatically people you don’t want to date. The last person that anyone should want to date is someone who’s so lacking in compassion or understanding that they’d mock someone for having not done something yet. If you meet someone who is somehow bothered by the fact that you’re a virgin, then all that’s happened is that you’ve filtered an asshole out of your dating pool.
But having lots of dating experience doesn’t directly translate to “is good at dating”, any more than “has had lots of sexual partners” directly translates to “is good at sex”
But what about being autistic? Continue reading “I’ve known people who are autistic who were dating coaches, and quite successful ones at that”