How does one find a partner as an autistic straight male?
Hello,
First of all, allow me to apologise if the title seems like it's excluding some people. It's genuinely not my intent, but 19 out of 20 cases I read of autistic people managing to get into fruitful relationships are from women, and three quarters of the rest are from gay men, so it rarely ever feels actually relatable to me, and I don't know if it's because it's a different scenario or not.
With that out of the way, I came here to try to understand how this whole relationship thing works. I don't usually post here and I really don't like to feel like I'm lamenting my poor miserable self (woe is me and all that), but I've searched for the answer to this question for a long time and I don't feel any closer to it, so maybe someone else might know.
So, for the context, I'm (probably quite obviously hehe) a straight male, and I'm reaching 30 without ever having been in a relationship, or ever getting intimate with someone else, and the truth is that I neither really know why, or how to remediate that. At this point I've mostly resigned myself to accept it's just not going to happen, but my curiosity urges me to at least try to understand this.
First of all, how does one actually progress a friendship into a relationship? I seem to have no issue getting into friendships with women, and in fact in many circles I move in, women seem to naturally come to me and trust me (I've been told my presence apparently makes them feel safe). And yet none has ever indicated any sign of possibly being interested in anything beyond that. Is it possible for someone to somehow often appear as a valid friend to women but never as a valid partner? Are there specific personality traits that do that?
A second question that I have would be to know where single people actually exists? Obviously all taken people were once single people, and yet I just never actually meet anyone, male or female, that isn't currently in a relationship. The last time I met someone who wasn't openly either dating, engaged or married was more than half a decade ago. Where do these mythical creatures dwell then, I have to wonder? I have a hard time with very loud places with flashing lights, so places like nightclubs are about as comfortable to me as swimming in a lake of ammonia, but is it where all the single neurotypical people go to turn into non-single people? is that why I just cannot seem to meet those people?
Also, I'm wondering if there's an age where it can be "too late" to actually ever have a chance. As said earlier, I'm reaching 30 with no experience whatsoever. And something tells me that I'm already past the age where people experiment and learn about relationships, and now people my age would be looking for partners who already have some amount of experience and know what they're about and what they want. Am I wrong to believe that?
Thanks for any potential answers, and I'm sorry if this post might read like confused unreadable garbage. Putting my thoughts to text without rambling was harder than expected. I'm willing to clarify anything if anyone asks