Quote:
Originally Posted by Serpentine Leaf
Please never let yourself believe that you are fundamentally flawed. What we tell ourselves about ourselves has a huge impact on every aspect of our lives. There is no person on the planet who has no strengths and no weaknesses. Yes, you are an Aspie-- that's just a label for a way of thinking and of perceiving and experiencing the world in a way those under the label of NT or ADHD do not. Different is not flawed, it's just different.
You'll undoubtedly do much better in a different environment. And not everybody is a highly extroverted, binge-drinking a-hole. The situations you're forcing yourself into are full of them, but isn't your cup of tea, so I urge you to just try something else. Forcing yourself into a bad fit is only going to cause further damage. I learned that lesson the hard way many times over. It pains me to see others making my same mistakes.
It takes time to find a good fit, but please have patience. Sometimes it all comes down to time and location. May I ask when you will be leaving for school abroad? That will be something to look forward to and prepare for. Maybe you can start looking to see what groups are available in the new area. Novelty can inspire new hope when it's been lost by long, bad experience.
Don't worry if people don't like it if you won't reveal personal information. People who object to that are only seeking information about you for their own ends. You discover a lot about who a person is by how they respond to your boundaries. Those who refuse to respect them will never respect you. Those who are okay with it are the people you'll be able to spend quality time with. The only way to have a healthy relationship is to set healthy boundaries early on. Another lesson I learned the hard way, many times over.
Naivete is part of being on the spectrum. Some people will try to take advantage of that. You've experienced bitter cruelty, as have so many others. Women on the spectrum face much higher risk of sexual violence than NT women. So many on the spectrum, of any gender identity, become embittered after repeated traumatic experiences and come to believe that everybody is like that. Not everybody is cruel. Not everybody is judgemental. Please remember about sample bias. You do need to keep alert, but please don't slip into misanthropy and paranoia.
The general culture of a place is important. And I've read a lot of articles about people on the spectrum who could not find successful relationships until they moved away, sometimes to other countries. Don't beat yourself up over not finding anything in such a toxic environment. You see who few others are succeeding either.
|
I see what you mean about the gatherings with very extroverted neurotypicals. Couchsurfing was another one that I used a few years ago, but stopped. It was similar to meetup.com, except it seemed less organised. For now, I am seeing if there are forums in Europe to connect over there. There are travel sites like TripAdvisor, but from what I see there, it seems to be just for travel advice rather than meeting people.
I plan to apply to universities in Italy. I plan to take the CEFR C1 or C2 Italian exam at the institute here sometime as well. I know Italian, but I am not at the highly advanced or near-native level yet. I also have to get all of my documentes officially translated and certified at the Italian embassy. Since Italian bureaucracy is notoriously disorganised and slow, I probably would not apply until the intake for autumn 2020 or autumn 2021, at the earliest. I also have to gather funds from working a bit to pay the tuition. One good thing is that the tuition is very cheap compared to here, at around 2000€-3000€ per year, even for foreigners. Italians actually consider this expensive, and often get their tuition at 1000€ or less per year due to receiving discounts based on income.
I dislike using stereotypes, but the oft-repeated stereotype is that Italian women are more caring and not as judgemental as their Anglo counterparts, for example in USA or Britain. Of course this is very general and not all are like this, but I do think that the general culture of Mediterranean Europe means that they most likely would be at least a bit more open to me compared to here at home. From my travels there, I do not get the feeling that the vast majority of women there would make the "L" sign with their fingers or call me names like "virgin loser" like here.
I stopped talking with people who keep pestering me about the details of my personal life. I remember how some people when I just had met them, they would get irritated then ask me again, trying to guilt me by saying, "Why can you not just answer the question? What are you hiding?" or call me rude or whatever. I am not sure why, perhaps my lower self-esteem back then, which caused me to believe that I was obligated to answer their questions no matter how invasive or embarrassing. There are basically four types of questions that you get asked here when meeting people. The first one is the obsessive, "What do you do?" as in what is your job. The second question is, "What is your race?". The third is questions about your relationship history and the fourth questions about your sexual history. Right now I often refuse to answer all four.
My only reference whom I know is both female and has Asperger's in person is my mother. Over here, I do not remember ever meeting a woman who displayed obvious Asperger's signs. That might be because I could not read them properly or they might be masking them. In any case, my mother told me that in her early to mid 20s back in the early 1980s, dating confused her a lot because it took her a long time to figure out that men just wanted to get to know her to eventually have sex with her and then leave. I think that they call that the "pump and dump". A neurotypical woman would probably pick up on those bad vibes much quicker than she could. So I can see what you mean about ASD women having problems with relationships like that.
I have to remind myself to not be paranoid, that is true. I have had some bad dates, up to now haunting me. Like when on Valentine's Day 2016, a 28 year old woman whom I had known for since we were both around age nine since we are both chess players asked me out to dinner. It was obvious to the both of us that we had liked each other for over a decade. Due to San Francisco extreme flakiness, I asked her the night before to confirm our plans. Then she said that actually she had changed her mind and had decided to go with some other guy. I felt emotionally devastated and internally was hurting a lot since that day, to the point that I felt sick to my stomach and almost vomited from the feeling that I was not good enough as a guy. Up to now, I get doubtful if any woman does ask me out that she will not do this same switch thing that she had done to me in 2016. It is hard to erase that memory, but I keep having to try.
You make a good point about change of scenery. I notice that some of my friends and acquaintances from years ago found girlfriends in very short time frames after having moved away permanently to somewhere else, whether a different state or a different country. I have heard stories of people who live in San Francisco who have been single for a very long time, i.e. decades, but find partners in the first week after moving away permanently to a different place. Perhaps the environment is simply more fruitful elsewhere.