OT: Where can I meet a female companion with similar interests and personality /in person/?

[Ben Wong]

Hello Brolin,

I showed your post to a few geek girls and asked them what advice they
would give.  I'm CC'ing the list with their (edited) responses because
I have a hunch that there are more "Brolins" out there.

Ben

_______________________________________________

Overall, my advice isn't profound - but simple.  I would recommend he
think about what things he likes that he can share with others.
Surely there is some activity/event/gathering that he feels
comfortable in - and surely there must be girls there.  I am always
amazed at the meetups that exist for all kinds of unusual interests.
Generally, I feel (and have seen others) find it easiest to meet new
people and open up when there is common ground.

Amy

__________________________________________________

I don't think I have any advice that is worth passing along to Brolin.
He has Asperger's and will struggle with social interactions.  It's
not hopeless for him, but he needs to find a way to meet other women
who have similar struggles as him.  He needs to find someone who
understands and admires his attention to details, for example.

I think he probably already knows this, so I wouldn't have any new or
different advice for him, unfortunately.  I hope he is in therapy for
his Asperger's and can learn to live on his own!!  (That's step one.
Girls and dating come after that.)

I have a lot of sympathy for those on the autism spectrum because of
my niece.  Social interactions are so hard for them!

Mary Beth

__________________________________________________

[Commentary by Ben: I agree with MB that Brolin needs to find someone
who admires the traits he has, but I don't think that it will
necessarily be someone with similar struggles.  It could be someone
complementary, someone who will balance him.  I know a few geek guys
who have found that their soul mate is a spiritual, intuitive,
earth-mother-type, well grounded in her body and emotions.]

__________________________________________________

Wow. Two thoughts come to mind:

1) It sounds like he has no in-person friends. I think that you
need to get the hang of friendship before you can have a romantic
relationship. Also, once you have friends, some of them know
geekgirls, and you can meet them that way. He might have good luck
with local gaming groups or conventions (Comicon, Defcon, PAX,
JavaOne...).

2) I'm not sure how well his Asperger's is being treated. That's
going to be a prerequisite for a relationship, like hygiene. If
he's always feeling overwhelmed and unable to make choices, there
might be a medication that could help.

Good luck to him. I realize it must have been very difficult for
him to ask for help, and I hope he continues to try.

Jina

__________________________________________________

After reading Jina's email, it occurred to me that you probably could
craft a nice email to him with some friendly advice.  He definitely
needs to be in treatment for his Asperger's.  After a brief search on
the internet, I found www.grasp.org which is geared towards adults on
the autism spectrum.  This site could help him find therapists or
others who can help him.

By sending his long email, Brolin has indicated that he needs help and
that his life is not what he wants it to be.  Getting treatment can
help him live on his own and feel better about himself.  And, getting
better connected with support groups and adult autism networks, he
might be able to meet a girl whom he could date.  But, it's one step
at a time for him.  Treatment and support groups first, girls second.
:)

Mary Beth

__________________________________________________

Hi Brolin,

My friend Ben forwarded my your post, and I have many thoughts about
it. Some are in direct response to questions you pose, and some are
responses to what I perceive as the underlying context. If my
perceptions are wrong, I apologize. Hopefully some of what I say will
be useful to you.

As a woman with a background in philosophy and computer science, I can
definitely say that there are women who relate to your interests and
personality. I am older than you, but there are women your age who
love xkcd, and share your other interests as well. Are there as many
women as there are men who overlap closely with your description?
Unlikely, but that's not a problem. A good relationship is one where
each person "gets" the other enough to appreciate them and relate to
them, but where they can also learn from their partner's different
interests and ways of thinking.

So how do you meet women with whom you may be compatible? Well, it's a
question of luck, but only in the sense that you make your own
luck. On any given occasion when you try to meet someone, it may well
not pan out, but the point is to increase the frequency of such
encounters. Joining local groups which interest you, and attending
local events is a good way to start. Online dating sites may be worth
exploring as well, especially if you feel more comfortable expressing
yourself via the keyboard.

Of course, sooner or later you need to meet people face-to-face. In
your post you said, "I am too shy and self-conscious in public." I
suggest that instead you say (and think), "I am shy and self-conscious
in public.", or "I would like to work on becoming less shy and
self-conscious in public." It's just a statement of how you perceive
your internal state when you are engaged in public interactions. It
makes it more difficult to pursue interactions, but it does not make
it impossible. When we think or know that we are strong in some areas
and weak in others, it is tempting to go with our strengths and avoid
our weaknesses. That tends to just aggravate our weaknesses. We do not
have to be great at something in order to participate. I have a friend
who is 5'4" and loves playing basketball. She's never going to be the
best, she's never going to dunk, but that doesn't mean that she
doesn't get to play the game.

Almost everyone experiences some shyness and self-consciousness with
public social interactions, it comes with the territory. I recognize
that severe shyness feels different than mild shyness and that it is
unpleasant and difficult. My point is, it is not insurmountable.
Moreover, some shyness and social discomfort can be a good
thing. People who seem very confident and smooth usually come off as
suspicious. In my experience, people with decent bullshit detectors
have no interest in people who are smooth. Rather, they are attracted
to people who are genuine.

I would also suggest reading one or two of the books produced by John
Gottman's group at the University of Washington. Unlike many books on
relationships and communication, their books are actually based on
well designed empirical studies. They provide many important insights
on how to communicate effectively in all sorts of relationships.

I like your use of the phrase "priority inversion". I've often
suffered from that myself, and know lots of other people who do as
well. When it comes to taking care of yourself (exercising, eating
well, getting good sleep, getting out and meeting people), success has
almost nothing to do with willpower. Rather, it's all about
establishing habits. Good habits take conscious decision making out of
the process, because conscious decision making is where we tend to get
overwhelmed and undermined. When establishing a new habit, keep it
small at the beginning. For the first couple of weeks, it's not about
seeing how much you can do, it's about ingraining the habit. Think it
would be no problem to start walking a mile a day? Commit to walking
around the block for two weeks. Want to eat better? Don't make it
dependent on doing a ton of research first -- begin by making one
small change that you already know you should make. Research in
parallel as you continue to make changes.

Oh, and I love computers as much as anyone, but I've never seen anyone
who ends up being happy when they spend nearly all their time in front
of one. Give yourself a break. Take care of yourself. Think about
getting a massage once in a while -- human touch can be very
restorative and grounding. Seriously consider meditating. Meditation
has been shown to have many benefits, from improving mood to improving
focus. Five minutes a day could make a big difference.

Some of my suggestions may seem random, but I hope at least some of it
is relevant. I wish you the best of luck!

Melissa


__________________________________________________

Summary.  There's a lot of good advice there, but, if I may take the
liberty of mangling the geek girls' words, I think the major points
are: Treatment first, girls second.  Practice friendships.  Join a
meetup within your comfort zone.  The more social interactions you
have, the greater your chance of success.  Fight priority inversion
with habits.  Network with other autism spectrum adults, e.g.,
grasp.org.  Look for someone who likes you, not is exactly like you.
(To which I add, Sometimes men are from Vulcan and women are from
Betazed.)  Read John Gottman's books.  Ground yourself with meditation
and human physical touch.

--Ben



On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 1:12 PM, Brolin Empey <brolin at brolin.be> wrote:
> Hello list,
>
> Like most of the members of this list (AFAICT from the first names I
> recognise as sex/gender-specific), I am male.  I am 22 and still live with
> my parents.  I have never lived away from my parents.  I am planning to hire
> a support worker to help me live away from my parents (I have another
> meeting later today) because I continue to indefinitely defer trying to live
> away from my parents.  I named my form of procrastination “priority
> inversion” because what is, in practical terms, my lowest priority, becomes
> my highest priority.  For example, I choose to spend my free time playing
> with my computers, including my FreeRunner, instead of learning about human
> biology and/or nutrition, which will affect me every day of my life, and at
> least trying to live away from my parents.  When I say I play with my
> computers, I do not mean gaming:  I almost never play games anymore.  Even
> when I decide I want to play a game again, I spend all of my time reading
> about games, viewing screenshots and videos, and trying to decide which of
> the endless games I should play (or rather, obtain if I do not already have
> a copy and make work on my PC) instead of actually playing a game.  I feel
> like I am always overwhelmed and/or overloaded with information and
> stimulation in the Too Much Information Age.  I always feel like the NET
> Effect is that there is Never Enough Time because time flies faster than
> ever because I am always overthinking, overwhelmed with overchoice, etc.  I
> recognise my mind is a word and pattern recognition engine, which is
> constantly adding new stimulations/experiences to its database.  I have
> Asperger’s Syndrome, but can function much better, at least in terms of
> interacting with people in person, than when I was in high school, for
> example.  I used to often feel like I had social anxiety disorder because I
> would get so anxious and/or worried even when calling someone on the phone
> (on my parents’s landline because I did not have a cell phone until 2008)
> that I could not speak clearly enough for the person on the other end to
> understand me, so I would always have to repeat myself at least once for
> every turn of the conversation.  I am a purist and have been called the most
> pedantic person in the world by Jamie Zawinski, of Lucid Emacs/XEmacs and
> Netscape/Mozilla fame. :)  Imprecise usage and redundancy bothers me even if
> know what is meant from the context.  For example, I am bothered by people
> mentioning a “standard” transmission in a vehicle (it is a manual
> transmission.  Standard depends on the vehicle.  Automatic is standard for
> some vehicles.), calling an LCD monitor (a flat panel) a “flat screen”
> (high-end CRTs have flat glass too!), common redundancies, such as PIN
> number, ATM machine, LCD display, people who assume all cars use crappy
> gasoline engines and use fuel-specific terms, such as gas station (it is a
> service station), gas tank (it is a fuel tank), gas pedal (it is an
> accellerator), gas pump (I have used a diesel pump at Shell that told me to
> “select octane” instead of “select ctane” (sp?) or “select fuel grade”.  My
> car has a diesel, not gasoline, engine.  I have been highly influenced by my
> father, Brian Empey.  Brian is a Professional Engineer (Electrical
> Engineering).  He founded Technical Solutions Inc. (Techsol) in 1996 with
> his second wife (my step-mom), Karen Empey (nee Schellenberg).  Techsol is
> an embedded computer hardware company specialising in Linux on ARM
> architecture.  I am very fortunate to be able to work at Techsol.  I am a
> Linux + Windows System Administrator/Web master/IT person/general computer
> person.  I think my responsibiles are more important than my title(s).  I
> know I am very dependent on my parents, but at least I own my own car (which
> I bought from my dad), have a Class 7 driver’s licence (the Novice stage of
> the Graduated Licensing Program in British Columbia, Canada.  I live in the
> Lower Mainland of British Columbia, Canada), my own credit union account,
> debit (Interac) card, MasterCard credit card, personal cheques (not
> checks!), which I almost never use (I think I have written a total of 3
> cheques in my life), cell phones (Nokia 6103b + FreeRunner), PayPal account,
> domain names (brolin.be + others), Virtual Private Server (VPS), which hosts
> my personal Web site, PCs and peripherals, far too many original/boxed PC
> games, which I almost never play anymore, bicycle, ... I am definitely a
> relatively rich/wealthy person in Canada and extremely wealthy compared to
> less fortunate people in both developed and developing countries.  I know I
> should not complain because I am very fortunate;  I know my life could
> always be much worse, even if I lack much first-hand experience of how much
> worse it could be.
>
> Anyway, enough rambling.  I need to finally address the Subject of this
> message (I hope at least 1 person actually read this far!).  How/where can I
> meet a female companion in person with similar interests and personality?
> Someone who can appreciate my word associations, puns, sexual innuendo,
> jokes, purism, etc.?  Someone who can relate to and understand the computer
> humour in xkcd comics (I do not understand a lot of the math used in xkcd,
> but I still know relatively more about math than non-technical people
> because of my interest in computing and computer programming), someone who
> analyses everything as much as I do, someone who is interested by books such
> as Consciousness Explained by Daniel C. Dennet, (personal) computing
> history, computer art scenes such as the demoscene, The Scene (warez groups,
> etc.  even though I no longer use much unlicensed software because I prefer
> to support Free Software projects instead of using unlicensed proprietary
> software), computer music (module music, chiptunes).
>
> I have a tendency to isolate myself from face-to-face contact with my peers,
> even though I know meeting people requires being in the same place as them.
> I have few friends (well, at least peers) I know in person.  I choose to
> spend most of my free time at home, either alone or with my parents, instead
> of trying to meet new people in person.  I am too shy and self-conscious in
> public.
>
> Can anyone relate to me?  What should I do?  I know I have volunteered a lot
> of personal information in this post, but much of it is already publicly
> accessible for those who know my real/legal name and know how to use tools
> such as Google Search.  I have been considering writing a post like this for
> months (maybe already >1 year), but I ended up stopping writing early
> because I felt uncomfortable about volunteering so much personal
> information.  What do I have to lose, though?  I need to stop being so
> self-conscious.
>
> Why are most of the peers with whom I can relate well male?  Do females have
> the same problem?  Are there even any females reading this? :)
>
> Thank you for reading this far!
>
> Brolin :)
>
> PS:  As you can probably tell, I prefer to write properly (with correct
> grammar, spelling, punctuation, capitalisation, typographical quotation
> marks and em dashes instead of ASCII typewriter quotation marks and ASCII
> approximations of em dashes, etc.), even in informal contexts and for SMS.
> I also prefer to say SMS instead of “text message”, but you could probably
> have guessed that from my previous examples of my purism.  I also prefer
> logical, simple, and unambiguous ISO 8601 (e.g., today is 2009-09-10 13:37
> ;)) international standard date and time notation, especially instead of the
> illogical 12h time notation, which many people insist on using in fuzzy
> and/or ambiguous ways, such as “quarter to one” instead of “12:45” (24h).  I
> know HH:MM (00:00 – 23:59) can be interpreted as ambiguous 12h when the hour
> is <= 12, but I do not like to use HHMM (without the separator (the colon))
> because I prefer to separate the components of the time of day.  I
> originally used an ASCII minus character (‘-’) as a range separator, but I
> decided I should use gucharmap to copy and paste a proper en dash because
> otherwise I would be hypocritical for using proper em dashes but using an
> ASCII approximation instead of a proper en dash because I am too lazy to use
> gucharmap. (fail)
>
> PPS: As you may have noticed, I use the same convention as the C programming
> language for usage of single and double quotation marks.  C uses only ASCII
> characters, though;  I use both ASCII and Unicode (yes, I know Unicode
> includes ASCII) for e.g., typographical quotation marks and dashes.
>
> PPPS: I also highly prefer communities such as this mailing list, where
> posters use their real/legal names and are consequently accountable for
> their actions (messages) and write properly instead of e.g., Web bulletin
> boards frequented by the ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder), “tl; dr” (“too
> long; didn’t read”) crowd, most of whom use nicknames instead of their
> real/legal names.
>
> --
> Sometimes I forget how to do small talk: <http://xkcd.com/222/>
>
> “If you have to ask why, you’re not a member of the intended audience.” —
> Bob Zimbinski, <http://webpages.mr.net/bobz/ttyquake/>
>
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