I met L in a way that I should be proud of. She (L) walked into my favorite cafe and was reading a book and so was I. I introduced myself and we ended up talking for three hours. During that time L invited me to a concert with her friends. I bought the ticket then and there and confirmed with her that we could all sit together. To be specific, I ordered my ticket before hand while talking with her and was required to pick a seat by the ticketing application. I asked her how can I know if we can all sit together? And she said that her friends had agreed to buy tickets at the door. She may have forgotten that she said that.
As someone who has autism I noticed very quickly that she likely had it as well. She had issues with eye contact. She made very few facial expressions, and the conversation flow felt off and unnatural. I was actually excited about this because most of my past girlfriends have been on the spectrum like myself which actually made things easier so long as communication was honest and clear. In fact, I even asked her what her values were and she said “Honesty and communication”. I was very excited because those are some of mine as well. We exchanged instagrams and we messaged together the next day. I thought everything was going well. We even messaged throughout the week and shared photos of what we had done.
Flash forward to the concert. I sent her a message that morning saying that I would be early and asking if her and her friends would be willing to come early as well. I also sent another message saying that I get too excited when I meet someone and that we should just start as friends. She never responded. When I arrived early at the concert I assumed she would check her messages because she had invited me and that’s a normal and decent thing to do. She had told me they planned on buying tickets at the door and I wanted to make sure that everyone had enough seats to sit together so I bought extra tickets.
When she arrived I learned that they had already all bought tickets during the week. Directly contradicting what she had told me. Then when I offered to use my table because the tickets were already paid for she said she didn’t want to use them but rather wanted to sit with her friends. They weren’t even open to using the tickets I had bought because apparently that table was special. This was incredibly hurtful to me but I did a good job not being visibly upset with her and told her to enjoy the concert and left. I was incredibly hurt by her dishonesty and lack of communication.
In any case, I ended up sending a message to her afterwards saying that this was probably a communication issue and we could try again for coffee if she wanted. She said it wasn’t a communication issue and that she had never invited me. So she either forgot or that is some sort of symptom of some sort. I suspect the autism impacted her ability to recognize social norms such as, if you invite someone to a concert, you are expected to sit with them. Also, another part of the issue is that most people don’t get notifications from Instagram on their phone so she never had a chance to communicate with me. But also she didn’t have the same level of interest as me because she didn’t even try to check them.
In any case I don’t want to harbor negative emotions about her. I genuinely will never know what went on in her head because I’m not her. Here are my take-aways. Recognize that most people don’t get notifications from Instagram meaning that I should have lower expectations for responsiveness than texting.
I don’t ask for someone’s number usually because it can seem too private of a question. From now on I’m going to start by asking for someone’s number and ask if they are comfortable and if not suggest Instagram. In theory there is no difference between two types of messaging apps but in practice if someone doesn’t receive notifications then there is bound to be a communication breakdown.
“Can I ask for your number or would you be more comfortable using Instagram?”
So here’s what I will say the next time I am in a similar situation “Can I ask for your number or would you be more comfortable using Instagram?” The number is preferred because I really don’t want to not be able to communicate with somebody. That makes things ten times harder for me.
The other takeaway is that I should not be afraid to meet women spontaneously in a romantic sense. This could have worked out if I had been texting her not using Instagram. I am changing my mind about doing only friends-first. I will absolutely focus on making more friends (which I did with this one because I told her that before the concert). But there has to be communication or even being friends doesn’t work. So the phone number is more crucial than Instagram.
This experience hurt me badly and caused a lot of self-doubt and some very negative thoughts such as “I am not attractive” but if I weren’t attractive I would never have made it this far with her to begin with. I mean whatever she had to say about the concert we definitely talked for three hours the night we met. I need to ignore that lying voice inside of me.
Finally, I do need to focus first on making friends and on spontaneously meeting romantic partners only as a side or by product. I am still going to talk to women I’m attracted to but do so from a place of friendship and clarify that in person not as a message (which can obviously get missed) for example I could have said “I’m looking for a friend just FYI” before we said goodbye that first night.
In any case, She ended up sending me a nasty message at the end claiming she never invited me and that I had no right to expect that she would want to sit together which is simply untrue based on my memory of her words a week prior. I blocked her because I respect myself enough not to allow people who aren’t honest in my life. I wish all the best to L and I am thankful for what she taught me. L taught me that most people don’t get notifications from Instagram and that matters.
I am ready to move on.
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