dating

My body language announces my distrust of people. This obviously makes it tremendously hard to start new relationships.

If you’re used to only dating women or girls and nonbinary people and only being in straight-passing relationships, it can feel daunting to think about dating guys.

Finding it tough to discover single people in your traditional social outings? Speed dating could seemingly function as a remedy. Lisa Laman checks it out and reports back.

If you have a pass/fail mindset about dating, you might end up labeling almost every dating experience a failure. But what you think is failure can actually be a dating developmental task accomplishment.

Things can and sometimes do go badly on dates. Let’s look at just some of the various ways a date can go wrong and ways to deal with these problems.

Thanks for your question and for sharing so much with us. You ended your question with "What am I doing wrong?" I wanted to start by inviting you to consider all the many, many things you are doing to make your life better: being open with the people in your life about your identity, going to...

If I could pull a “Letter to Me”… what would I communicate to teenage Lisa? What important thoughts about dating, relationships, life, and anything else would I say to my younger self in a letter?

Many social norms, macro or micro, can make it seem like the ideal — or even only! — time to start having dating experiences is in high school. You may get the message that doing it any other time, even just waiting until you’re in college, puts you at some kind of disadvantage. To go against that grain may inspire some social judgement of you and, at least in my case, leave you wondering if you’re just fulfilling a harmful stereotype about what autistic people are capable and incapable of doing. Even if it’s impossible to remember amidst the din of outside messaging world, there is no one right time for dating. That’s as true for neurodivergent folks, including those of us on the autism spectrum, as it is for neurotypical members of the world.

If you’re like me, there are lots of questions that race through your mind when you prepare to go out on a date. Do I look polished enough? Am I going to click with this person? Did we pick the right venue to go out to? And then there’s the one question always gnawing at the back of my skull about my autism: can I be myself?

The author of the new book Heavy Metal Headbang shares some of how dating went for her while recovering from a traumatic brain injury (TBI) and has a little advice for those with TBI who are dating, and those dating anyone with a TBI.