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Dating Agencies for Asperger People

GaS
over 10 years ago

Not sure if this is the correct place to post this but ..

My son is 38 , diagnosed with Aspergers at age 20 .

He has a very limited social life but is so wanting to find a girlfriend and has been joining various well known dating agencies online ( and spending quite a bit of money to do it Frown ) but he is finding it hard to accept that his aspergers may put people off .

I don't want him to feel that he is inferior to other folks , which he isn't , but I really don't think the websites he has been trying are suitable for him . Does anyone know if there are any "asperger friendly" sites that he could look at ?

Parents
  • over 3 years ago

    A number of websites and other services over the years have purported to offer dating services especially for autistic people however they have a number of issues.

    1. They are often mostly seeking to introduce autistic people to each other which is somewhat limited by the large gender imbalance in diagnosed autistic people.
    2. A lot of focus is on filtering out dangerious nurotypical persons which rather limits the pool of avalible people.
    3. They tend to be either
      1. very location spicific because there is a small group of volunteers arranging things often in person
      2. or they are 100% online with only a few active users spread all over the world.

    Ultimately the autistic dating pool is just too small for autistic people to find many dating options looking exclusively for autistic people. Likewise there isn’t really a group of neurotypical people spicificly looking to date autistic people.

    The real question is how best to support autistic adults looking at dating through conventional channels. Very little work has been done here. Most of it is either 

    1. aimed at teenagers and is mostly an extension of ‘how to make friends’ style programs. From what I’ve seen the material is mostly over simplistic and a bit patronising.
    2. Or it’s repurposed relationship counseling material that's been designed for couples where one or both are autistic. Maybe somewhat relevant to autistic people wondering why they can’t get past the 2nd or 3rd date but not much use to people whose main problem is getting date one.

    As far as I am aware no one has ever done any a priori development research regarding interventions for autistic adults who have difficulties forming romantic / sexual relationships. This is really a real shame, because there’s clearly a demand for it.

Reply
  • over 3 years ago

    A number of websites and other services over the years have purported to offer dating services especially for autistic people however they have a number of issues.

    1. They are often mostly seeking to introduce autistic people to each other which is somewhat limited by the large gender imbalance in diagnosed autistic people.
    2. A lot of focus is on filtering out dangerious nurotypical persons which rather limits the pool of avalible people.
    3. They tend to be either
      1. very location spicific because there is a small group of volunteers arranging things often in person
      2. or they are 100% online with only a few active users spread all over the world.

    Ultimately the autistic dating pool is just too small for autistic people to find many dating options looking exclusively for autistic people. Likewise there isn’t really a group of neurotypical people spicificly looking to date autistic people.

    The real question is how best to support autistic adults looking at dating through conventional channels. Very little work has been done here. Most of it is either 

    1. aimed at teenagers and is mostly an extension of ‘how to make friends’ style programs. From what I’ve seen the material is mostly over simplistic and a bit patronising.
    2. Or it’s repurposed relationship counseling material that's been designed for couples where one or both are autistic. Maybe somewhat relevant to autistic people wondering why they can’t get past the 2nd or 3rd date but not much use to people whose main problem is getting date one.

    As far as I am aware no one has ever done any a priori development research regarding interventions for autistic adults who have difficulties forming romantic / sexual relationships. This is really a real shame, because there’s clearly a demand for it.

Children
  • over 3 years ago in reply to Peter

    I'm an old aspie - I can spot aspies a mile away - there's lots more of us than you realise - mostly undiagnosed people getting on with their lives and are just lucky to have found a job that suits them.

    Socially, undiagnosed aspies are everywhere - model clubs, history clubs, photography clubs, classic car clubs, caravanners, model train associates, pub-quizzing teams, volunteers at museums, cos-players, historical re-enactors, sci-fi conventions - basically we're everywhere doing the interesting things - and not sat at home watching 'Strictly'. 

    That means there's plenty of places to hang-out in a low-stress group environment to practice social skills and - maybe - meet someone to date.   Smiley

    The formal dating scene is just too narrow and too stressful to bother with.