Last year I divorced of 20 years and got my autism diagnosis 8 years ago and I would like to have a girlfriend because I have a lot of love to give but I'm very aware that I probably don't have the social skills to get one because I am utterly terrible at conversation. I don't read social cues or body language and I have always been clueless about how to get a girlfriend. I had girlfriends at school but that was easy because you could just ask someone out and that was basically it but as an adult I think it will be a lot more complex than that. Especially being 45 because everyone else has been mastering social skills and life for the past 4 decades and I haven't.
I don't have many friends where I live and I don't go to any social events or places so I'm thinking the only way I can meet a lady is through an online dating site but I don't know really how to have and hold conversations. There's a new person in my team at work who likes spending time with me because she is lonely and I have a lot to teach her at work but whenever we are in a non-work situation like if we go get lunch, I spend most of the time being silent because I don't know what to say or ask her. I'm not interested in her romantically but thought it would be a good opportunity to practice conversation but I just never know what to say, so I just sit being silent. I'm pretty sure that if I go on a dating site I will have to message people and start and maintain conversations which might be fine because chat isn't instant so I can think about responses and I can always get AI to help suggest responses or questions but I can't do that when I get to the point of having a real life date with someone I like. Women like to talk and have conversations and I just have zero skill at doing that.
I read a book on small talk once and the crux of it was to be genuinely interested in people but broadly speaking I'm not, with the exception of when I have a girlfriend and then I'm very interested in her thoughts and feelings and likes and dislikes and I like making her laugh and doing things she enjoys.
Does anyone have practical suggestions of how to learn how to do conversation and be interesting to other people? I know I'm supposed to ask open questions but that only gets you started, I run out of ideas of what to say about 3 questions in. Also I can't tell if someone is interested in what I am talking about so I tend not to talk much because boring someone is worse than not talking to them.
Maybe some sort of framework I could use? I can't detect body language or subtlety and never have any clue of if the other person thinks we have a connection or not so I would need a logical framework I can use to compensate for not understanding any of the emotional or social stuff going on. Also I have no clue about how to make connections with people, like what to do or say to make them feel like they have a connection with me, and what and when to do next.
Thanks in advance.
