I am horrible at having conversations which is destroying my dating prospects
I can sometimes tell that people are interested in me, like they’ll ask a question about something that I know they don’t actually care about but they wanna show they like me, the problem is, I answer their question then just don’t know what to say back. Like, I know I “should” then ask about them, but it feels so fake and dirty… I’m not actually interested in what this random person’s hobby is. I don’t think their baseball card collection is cool, I don’t wanna know more about their dog, but that’s what I’m “supposed” to do.
I know this sounds cold, but I just don’t care. NOW HERES THE THING, if I actually found myself in a future relationship with them I would care about these things in the sense I would wanna know what kinds of gifts and stuff I could get them, but as for just knowing? Like i just don’t care. AND I HATE MYSELF FOR THIS. I’m gonna guess this is linked to the rigid interests autism trait, and wow I hate it when it comes to this…
I think my best bet to find a boyfriend is through shared activities, because then we’re just enjoying each others company and getting to know each other organically, but the issue is my hobbies are almost exclusively for old people or women, and all the clubs/groups are all women or old people (I’m a straight woman).
Then I try to branch out to other activities, like board games, but it doesn’t work because I truly don’t care about them so it’s hard to bond with people in a club if you don’t even like the club!
I just want to skip the early relationship stage and get right into the calm and settled relationship stage.
I wish I could care but when I truly don’t care, pretending AKA masking just feels so fake. I don’t wanna build a relationship on masking, I want a relationship to be an ESCAPE from masking!!!! But that means if I don’t have masking to survive conversations then my dating life is basically DOA (masking in this sense is just answering the “right” way, like if he said “wow what are you knitting”, I answer, then ask back “what kinds of hobbies do you like?” He says “I like trains and sports” then me, who doesn’t care about either, will pretend and mask by saying “what do you like about those?”)