I don’t think I ever did dating. I found a human I liked, claimed them, and got married.

My partner is the best friend I’ll ever have, and someone I want to hang out with every day. I’m lucky that they feel the same way about me.

Go out, enjoy yourself, hang out with friends if you want, and you might end up keeping one. Your partner should be someone you can be around every day, through their best and their worst. Where better to start then as friends?

Even though I am aware of sounding incredibly cliché and cringe: The more you try to force it, the less success you’ll have. Forget personality types. Forget ‘effort’. People seem to instinctlively know when you’re not having a good time or when you’re outside your comfort zone. So have a good time first, and look for a mate second.

(Also, I am aromantic, so my sack of advice is probably worth only the sack)

I (AuDHD diagnosed last year) am very glad that I met my wife (NT as far as we know) in the 90s. I think that was a more forgiving time. Since i’m completely clueless in regards to flirting, non verbal signals and reading between the lines, my (now) wife had to basically ask me to kiss her for me to realize that she might be interested in me. So I can’t really give advice other than: be friendly and wait for the rigth person to choose you. Regarding personality types I can say that I’m often indecisive and tend to overthink things while my wife is very practical and a bit dominant. It works rather well for us.

The advice about not looking for love is good but incomplete. I think that some people (myself included) have to put some thoughtful effort into dating if they want a partner. For others, it comes more naturally for one or two simple reason(s): they have a wide social circle and/or they have lives that consistently put them in contact with a lot of other people. In a lot of ways, it truly is a numbers game.

Since I’m not one of those people, I took a systematic approach to dating and sought to replicate that network effect while still staying true to myself. I upgraded to the paid version of Scruff (I’m a gay man) after realizing that it was far easier for me to make friends than date where I was. The immediate goal was not to find a boyfriend, it was to practice chatting with men in a platonic manner. The secondary goal was to make a friend or two. I made a goal of chatting with 4-5 people each week.

In the meantime, I started delving more into my hobbies by taking classes and going to meetups because they exposed me to more people. Also, hobbies are a good source of conversational topics.

After 3-4 months of doing this, I received a message on Scruff at 2:00 one morning. My sleep schedule at that time was messed up, so I was actually awake then. I looked at his profile and saw that he was interested in maps (one of my special interests). So I responded and we just hit it off. If you’ve ever met someone and just clicked with them, you’ll understand what I mean by that. We became good friends within a month or two, then things got a little more serious. The downside was that he was literally on the other side of the continent and we both had careers that were dependent on our locations, so we agreed to keep things platonic. We met in person the following month and found that the attraction was still there, only stronger.

We’ve been together for over four years now and have lived together for 3.5 of them. He also has ADHD, which is probably part of why we get along so well. Perhaps I just got lucky, but if I hadn’t pushed myself to socialize with others (I consider text-based conversations to be a form of socializing), we would never have met.

tl;dr: The closest thing there is to a magic formula is to be kind, interesting, and interested in other people. And “interesting” means different things to everyone, but in my experience, hobbies and special interests tend to be a bit of an advantage. Also, a good first step is to widen your social circle (use your favorite search engine to learn more about the weak ties theory, if you want to nerd out about how that works…this is also a good start: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpersonal_ties).

What kind of things have you found to be sticking points?

If they’ve generally been the same sticking points across many potential partners, here’s my 2¢:

• Principles - IMO I find that us neurodivergents can be really principled, it may help to try and seek someone who shares the same strong values as you for whatever it is that matters the most to you

• Something continually drawing you to a particular personality type, you could try and meet people in unusual situations or different environments/contexts instead to try and shake things up. If you’re using an app, scrap your current profile and make a brand new one, hopefully that should give you a more varied choice of potential partners IMO

Some people are skeptical of personality tests and personality traits (I’m not, having witnessed most of these traits and their quirks firsthand). You could try taking a personality test to figure out what kind of people you’ll get along with really well, helping you on your way to finding a partner.

This might sound very cinicall, but I gave up on dating neurotypicals entirely. The “gap” is just to large for me.

Now I exclusively date other neurodivergent people and this was the best change I made in my life. Not having to constantly explain some “weird stuff” I do or why some thing matter more then others is a reliefe. Not being forced to justify ones own existence to a partner takes a lot of the strain away.

Even better sometimes when we both care about a certain thing others would find strange, it’s a rare moment of understanding we seldomly get to share with neurotypicals, like really nice clothing texture, a pleasent sound, perfectly marching colours, or a random buildings symetrical features. And when we go out together and it just gets to much, wanting to quit and go home is nothing that needs to be explained or justified.

The best part is that the other often also questions very basic parts about themselves, leading to deep and revealing conversations. Since they too often seek out more knowledge about existing in this world, I don’t feel bad for sharing doubts about myselfy because I never fear these things being invalidated.

The most difficult part might actually finding other neurodivergents, but it is worth the effort for me.

I tried briefly when I was younger. Never went well. Then I randomly met someone online and we had a long-distance toxic relationship on and off for about five years. I’ve been single now for about four years and am as lonely as I am terrified of trying to date again.

Honestly, I’m not even sure I should ever bother dating again. Going through therapy now, and I almost feel like my pursuit of a partner has been more like a search for a caretaker. Who would want to be in a relationship with someone like me? I forget basic things constantly, I’m broke and can barely work, I’m prone to extreme depressive episodes, my anxieties regularly control me, I have difficulty trusting people outside of my immediate family, and I’m not even physically attractive.

I’m “working on myself” through therapy and all that, but I doubt I’ll ever be in a position where I am worthy of love. It’s even less likely I’ll get to a position where I can convince someone else that I’m worth loving.

I can’t get past hating myself long enough to see if anyone else out there doesn’t hate me too.

I tend to get along with people who studied psychology, for some reason.

Simple: I tried. Didn’t work, I don’t anymore.

Got lucky and met my partner when I was 18. First long term relationship and still going strong 12 years later. We’re both neurodivergent but didn’t figure that out until a few years ago. We bonded over our interests and still do. Our dates are so much fun and we enjoy doing everything together. We also have very compatible values and even though our communication isn’t always great, we always find a way around it because we’re both really committed to understanding each other’s feelings.

As with most relationships, the “secret” is open and honest communication. It’s of course not a secret, but it is often not what people try initially anyway. I think too much of the rest of life is about the opposite that it just starts to feel wrong to be vulnerable and honest with someone. In our specific case, one of the parts of being open and honest is that we are not going to know if someone is trying to be subtle. But having a daily discussion or if you prefer to keep things spontaneous, pushing a little deeper anytime an opportunity comes up to be open with each other can help if you both feel comfortable doing so.

I have mostly only had success with dating apps, for me specifically eHarmony, I’m sure other dating apps work too, but I liked that one best when I did my research 10 years ago. I don’t know if it’s still the same. I had technically had a relationship before using a dating site, but I wasn’t aware I was in a relationship, so it didn’t go super well. Dating sites are good at making sure both participants are aware they are intending to start a relationship with each other, hehe.

You will definitely immediately cut your prospects by starting out openly and honestly. Listing your known faults, and looking for other people who have done the same. But once you find them. The resulting relationship will feel alot better. Plus, by finding someone with faults that don’t bother you, or that you are ok working with, you will have found someone that meets more of the positive traits you desire that is still on your overall level.

To give an example, most people unfortunately consider having children to be a big negative for dating prospects. It doesn’t bother me at all, so it dramatically helps me to find a much better person than I would otherwise be “worth”. I’m sure you can think of things most people would consider to be a negative that you don’t. As weird as it is to think about people this way, it can be very worth doing.

And speaking of worth, there are lots of ways to improve your own worth. Common traits that tend to help are general “handiness” around the house. Alot of that sort of stuff is way more accessible there than you may currently realise. Being in-shape, but not “too” in-shape is generally a good idea, and also more accessible than you may currently think. And while it’s not true that money is the most important thing to most people, it certainly doesn’t hurt to have. But what’s more important is job security, knowing that you have a steady job, or valuable skillset that would land you on your feet no matter what is a huge boost on average in the long term dating/relationship “market”. But on the flip side, not having a job might be the negative that someone else is looking for in a partner. Having someone available to stay at home can be handy for someone that already has enough single income to support more people.

This is intended to be written as gender neutral, but I am a guy that likes women, so that is my base perspective, some of it may have unintentionally biased the advice.

I’ve been in a long term relationship for years and I don’t even know. I actually had zero interest in dating (still don’t actually, yes I know I just said I’m in a relationship) and am aroace. We’d been close friends for awhile and realized we were basically in a relationship anyway and decided to try making it official. And several years later we are living together and pretty happy (well happy in our relationship, life in general is sadly not as happy due to external factors). I still don’t understand flirting, or romance, but I like spending time with her and trying to make her smile. We are both almost certainly AuDHD, which I think helps us communicate with each other, even though we both struggle with communication in general. Like just say what you mean and mean what you say. I have had people get unreasonably angry with me for honestly answering a question they asked for an honest answer of. Like YOU ASKED!! It’s not my fault I did what you asked. If you don’t want to hear the truth don’t ask me for it, because I’m gonna give it to you.

I finally found someone compatible. She’s bipolar.
What makes it work is that she knows what not being neurotypical feels like, so there’s a lot more understanding and empathy than with all my previous partners.

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