When Flirting Isn't Fun
How To Deal with Neurodivergence and Dating Ambiguity
How are we supposed to enjoy something when we know how it ends?
I know so many people who have been chained to the wagon of “ambiguity” in dating, dragged across the floor with it, and wondered where they went wrong. Yet, people keep prompting you to trust the process. It’s like playing Russian Roulette.
At least, that’s how it can feel for an autistic person who is used to serving as merely everyone’s ego boost in the dating market.
If you’ve been the girl who guys flirted with but never claimed publicly—if you’ve been the ego boost, but never the partner—I get it. When someone is ambiguous with their plans for you in their life, it can be extremely triggering. I’m not referring to a personal experience, mind you, but I listen to my friends lament about modern dating, and it’s infuriating.
To friends, you’ve described yourself as someone who has never really had a man pursue you clearly and consistently, despite getting flirtatious attention and experiencing mutual chemistry. I’m not talking about feeling like there’s something there. I mean, other people telling you there’s something there, and you secretly already knew because of your intuition and pattern recognition. However, for you, the flirtation has always ended the same way: They choose someone else.
If you’re the kind of person I’m talking about, the following is probably true:
Men stare at you wherever you go.
Someone hits on you every other day if you spend a substantial amount of time around people.
Friends notice when there’s chemistry between you and someone else.
You have proof that to many people you’re attractive and/or compelling.
You either have never been in a relationship or there have been very few.
I’ll be honest: It was difficult for my black-and-white thinking, rather, my autism, to grasp the concept of ambiguity in dating. The reality is that no one is entitled to being chosen at any point in time. That being said, so many people use that moral standard to manipulate people into dynamics that will eventually harm the unsuspecting party. In other words, players are gonna play.
Some people genuinely enjoy flirting as play or for social connection. However, for some of us, that hasn’t been our experience. Some autistic people, for example, don’t seem to enjoy flirting for its own sake. Flirting, in this sense, is meaningful because it represents the possibility of being “chosen.” When it doesn’t lead anywhere, it feels like the flirtation itself was almost a cruel setup.
Being autistic tends to mean, for some of us, noticing everything. We are sensitive to relational energy, but we’ve repeatedly been placed in ambiguous, non-structuring dynamics throughout our dating history. Many of those past dynamics—if not all—have ended traumatically. (And, yes, ghosting or bread-crumbing can be traumatic.) For this reason, flirting has become emotionally expensive. Flirting feels like co-signing ambiguity, and ambiguity is exhausting for us. Not only is it exhausting, but it leaves us with a deepened wound of “almost being enough.”
I don’t think the problem is flirting: I think it’s a lack of healthy flirting. Secret partners, mixed signals, unavailable people, or people who weren’t treating us well flood our dating history. If that’s the case, our brains may have learned that chemistry and uncertainty go together in the harshest way. We may’ve learned that not knowing where you stand or where you’re headed comes right before the heartbreak—— and for some of us, that’s the only outcome we’ve seen. We have never seen it end well, cleanly, or without some level of manipulation.
The reality is that bad actors are everywhere, and we cannot control them. We can, however, control how long we entertain them. Balance is the key—not sabotaging before we know if they’re “the one,” and also not assuming they are. Many of us need to shift success from “This has to end in a relationship” to “I’m learning about this person and letting them learn about me. We’ll see what happens.”
I know that sounds simple, but it’s actually very difficult when you’ve had the kind of history I’ve described. “Almost” can be even more triggering than rejection. That being said, your past is not your future. Your future is still unwritten.
Even if our brains have had almost no experiences to contradict that painful narrative of “I’m just an ego boost,” we still have time. We are allowed to take on a new identity.
Ambiguity has a cost, but certainty does, too. Could you be certain that someone isn’t your soulmate because they went on a date with someone else in the beginning stage? Could you be certain someone is a bad match for you because they waited a few hours during their work shift to text you back? No, you couldn’t possibly.
In addition, we are so used to pattern recognition outside of ourselves—whether or not someone likes us—that we have lost touch with the patterns within us. We yearn for people we may not even like!
All of this to say, I urge you to do what feels good to you, flirt because you’re cute, and not care whether or not you are someone’s perfect latte concoction. Someone wakes up every morning craving you, but that’s beside the point. Make getting to know people—and becoming acquainted with yourself—fun. You deserve to have fun.
It’s hard to hope for a future you’ve never seen before, but you’ve got to. You’ve just got to.
-CM
Relate heavy to this