Dating advice

Ollie said:

Any advise please on what works for someone that lacks social skills? 

I would probably say that if you want to engage in social intercourse and meet people socially then learning social skills would be the most logical choice.

It is a big task and one that takes a long time to learn but you should be able to learn the "rules" and be able to identify the main cues in a few dozen hours of effort the be able to develop further by slowly engaging socially as your capacity allows.

There is quite a passable guide to some techniques to do this here:

https://sachscenter.com/autism-social-skills-activities/

If you lack any meaningful social skills then you are likely to be very difficult for a neurotypical person to tolerate for long as we will often make them feel uncomfortable and really struggle with the basics like conversation and expectations of responses. 

You can restrict yourself to neurodivergents like yourself but we can also be very hard to get along with due to our learned behaviours, defence mechanisms and limited capacity for dealing with difficult things.

So in essence if you want to fit in enough to fit in to the NT culture then learning how is the most logical way.

The NT pool offers almost 50 times more people to choose from so it is the logical choice .

The one other big advantage of learning how to socialise is that it is a skill set that translates to so many other aspects of life, such as family, work, dealing with people professionally and even making friends. 

This may not work for everyone as it depends on your capacity but if you look at the bigger picture of the benefits then it can be worth the effort.

Ollie said:

Any advise please on what works for someone that lacks social skills? 

I would probably say that if you want to engage in social intercourse and meet people socially then learning social skills would be the most logical choice.

It is a big task and one that takes a long time to learn but you should be able to learn the "rules" and be able to identify the main cues in a few dozen hours of effort the be able to develop further by slowly engaging socially as your capacity allows.

There is quite a passable guide to some techniques to do this here:

https://sachscenter.com/autism-social-skills-activities/

If you lack any meaningful social skills then you are likely to be very difficult for a neurotypical person to tolerate for long as we will often make them feel uncomfortable and really struggle with the basics like conversation and expectations of responses. 

You can restrict yourself to neurodivergents like yourself but we can also be very hard to get along with due to our learned behaviours, defence mechanisms and limited capacity for dealing with difficult things.

So in essence if you want to fit in enough to fit in to the NT culture then learning how is the most logical way.

The NT pool offers almost 50 times more people to choose from so it is the logical choice .

The one other big advantage of learning how to socialise is that it is a skill set that translates to so many other aspects of life, such as family, work, dealing with people professionally and even making friends. 

This may not work for everyone as it depends on your capacity but if you look at the bigger picture of the benefits then it can be worth the effort.