Love Shyness and Involuntary Celibacy
Love Shyness and Involuntary Celibacy
Just to note: This topic is not strictly related to autism, but many autistic people happen to be affected by love shyness and involuntary celibacy. I will also post this in the loneliness and social and anxiety forums, since this topic is related to those issues as well.
Love-Shy is a subset of Social Anxiety Disorder, this is the wiki definition: love-shy people find it difficult if not impossible to be assertive in informal situations involving potential romantic or sexual partners.
Celibacy (from Latin, cælibatus") is the state of voluntarily being unmarried, sexually abstinent, or both. Being involuntarily celibate means you are not celibate by choice, and wish to be sexually active with other people, but find it hard, difficult, or impossible to do so.
Many autistic individuals struggle with involuntary celibacy. They wish to have meaningful and successful sexual and romantic relationships with other people, but find it hard, difficult, or impossible to do so. There are many reasons for this.
One is autistic people lack the social skills necessary to both interpret and respond to the sexual signals of other people, as well as the ability to give off the signals necessary to sufficiently attract the people they wish to have sex with.
Autistic people generally have trouble with reading social cues. They also have difficulty with being able to give off their own social cues so that people understand where they are coming from. In addition, autistic people generally have a certain degree of social anxiety which inhibits them from expressing themselves to the fullest in social situations.
Love shy people tend to desperately want the affection, romance, and sex that an intimate relationship offers them, yet they are unable (currently but not necessarily permanently) to form these intimate sexual relationships with others. They may try exceedingly hard to have romantic relationships and sexual relationships or encounters, but it never seems to work out. Often, they may have brief encounters with the object of their sexual interest, but these encounters do not end up leading to sex. The encounters that are not brief but extended often end up in the so called friend zone relationship, where the object of the love shys desire pins them into the category of only being friends (a.k.a. we dont have sex and never will). This friends zone is exceedingly hard to break out from, especially when the love shy person finds it so difficult to express his romantic and sexual desires and needs to the person of their interest.
Love shy people are often very loving (and i mean VERY). They also are highly affectionate. The main issue that they have is there is a discrepancy between their desire for a sexual relationship with the person of their choice and their ability to successfully convey that desire to the person of their interest.
So it stands that in order to break out of the loveshy circle, there are a few basic things that the loveshy person must accomplish. I will list these now:
•the love shy person must further enhance and develop his social skills, particularly the ability to convey their romantic and sexual desires and needs to the person of their interest.
•the love shy person must carry out these skills in the real world.
*the love shy person must focus on the enhancement of the self in all other ways that promote their ability to successfully attract, seduce, and have sex with another person.
I purposefully omitted gender specific terminology in this post to keep from grouping people into categories they need not be grouped in. Love shy and involuntarily celibate people come from all walks of life and can be any or no gender and also have any or no sexual orientation.
Thats all folks. Thank You.
-by Bramble Larson
@BrambleLarsonFrisch
I understand and sympathize with all of this but wonder if there's another term you might use other than "friend zone" because it has been used most frequently in a negative sense especially amoung males who only seek attention from females in sexual or romantic sense and have troubles accepting someone as a friend and respecting them as a fellow human being. I'm also sure that people who are autistic despite their frustrations do enjoy their friendships and for the most part would not terminate the friendships if they found out their non-platonic feelings were not mutual. I'd call it just being suck in a loop of misunderstanding or miscommunication. Friendship should always be thought of as a good thing even if it's not always a stepping stone to something further.
Hmm I just had a thought which made me wonder if there's any dating services specifically designed for people with autism and other people who run into similar difficulties socially...Not so that they'd only be seeking each other but just services for everyone that incorporate extra help for members that have indicated they need it...
@CoinFountain
I understand and respect your viewpoints. I do agree that the term "friend zone" has a negative connotation and stigma to it. A better word might be a "forced non-sexual relationship". That more accurately describes the type of relationship that it is.
@CoinFountain
There is nothing wrong with desiring a sexual or romantic relationship, even if that is the only thing that you desire out of the relationship. Autistic people do not have trouble respecting someone as a fellow human being, even if the only thing they want from them is sex. They are generally kind, sympathetic, I disagree that friendship should always be thought of as a good thing. Most "forced non-sexual relationships" should be terminated if the other person does not desire sex with them.
Dating websites do exist for Autistic people. Some dating websites do exist that are sensitive to the needs of love shy and involuntarily celibate people. All you have to do is search for them online.
@BrambleLarsonFrisch
One thing we agree on is that friendship shouldn't be forced and it should be terminated if either of them don't desire to stay friends. Friendship should never be forced. I'm sorry you mistook my mention of respect to imply that people with autism have any lack in that regard. I was speaking of most people who use the term "friendship zone" who generally don't want friendships with women specifically because many men have been raised in a far too misogynistic upbringing that doesn't regard women valuable as more than sex or romantic objects. It's good that you've omitted gender from your original post because none of this should be gendered and the term "friend zone" being targetted at women so frequently is rather unfortunate because it leads some women to assume the people using that term are not worthy of a second glance because of all the misogynists who keep coining it. It spoils the term for people who mean well and aren't misogynists.
