Jack Ross

Here are some personal characteristics I have that I wonder if others have also had: 1) Romance seems to be made out of two things, friendship and sexual attraction. But when I experience friendship and sexual attraction at the same time, romance fails to appear. 2) Love is a negative word, a synonym for hate, rage, and a thousand other negative emotions. To me, love is the kind of thing you would do to someone you wanted to destroy. There are personal reasons for this that I will not go into. Related words like caring, understanding, friendship, sexuality, communication, and similar words are all positive, which is as it should be. 3) My friends describe marriage as having a stabilizing effect on their lives. When I think about marital relationships, I feel destabilized, as if I am trying to put the wrong ends of two magnets together. 4) Romantic literature seems silly to me. Why go to all that trouble and create so much drama? 5) Flirting is silly. It is indirect. It is hard to decipher because the rules are unwritten and change from time to time, place to place, and person to person. Flirting creates dangerous situations because it's often hard for me to work out what a woman is doing when she is flirting, and if I get it wrong, things can go badly. I never flirt back. She often thinks I am rejecting her. 6) Having a family is a great thing for others to do. I have no desire to be a parent. I don't see parents doing anything that looks fun. 7) I like living independently. Having someone constantly sharing opinions, telling me what to do, and subjecting me to criticism, would be exhausting, especially if there is no hope of escape. I need space. 8) I have wanted to find a woman to have sex with. Probably this would occur over weekend visits, maybe once a month. 9) I am not a closeted homosexual. One woman I went out with subjected me to an odd, and invasive, test to see if I was. I wish she had asked me directly, and then I could have told her straightforwardly. 10) I am not cold, a psychopath, a manipulator, a player, an exploiter, etc., I just am interested in sex and friendship at the same time, and not into romance. 11) The best way to win me over is to discuss scientific data with me. Data is nice because it is a fact, not an opinion. Facts can be neutral, and therefore are a safer way to start a conversation. I met a woman who I am very attracted to over a discussion of carbon-14 mass spectrometry and low temperature oxygen plasma. She is married and lives 1300 miles away, so of course it went nowhere sexually. The last woman I met who was like her I met 10 years earlier. We discussed classical music all afternoon. Though we're friends, she's not interested in sleeping with me. 12) I am not afraid of commitment, some women I have been friends with for over 20 years. 13) I come from a family that is about 60% high functioning autistic. Everyone forgets what they're doing, is always 2 minutes late to meetings, forgets important items when traveling, gets worked up about topics of no importance, and has difficulty communicating. 14) I have tried putting a description like the one above into a dating profile on Match.com and similar websites, but I get no meaningful responses. One response I did get was from a woman who wanted me to join her to "drink beer and talk dirty." I told her no because that didn't sound like much fun. I'd rather discuss science, classical music, academics, literature, and similar things. Does any of this sound familiar?

Has anyone managed to have a sexual relationship despite being aromantic? If others have accomplished this, maybe I can, too. I have always been sexually attracted to women my age. I have also had women friends. But when I try to do anything, it falls apart. Although women expect romance, I am not interested in romance at all. Friends, yes. Sex, yes. Mixing the two to make romance? No. It doesn't work at all. The interaction goes like this: 1) I say to her: I like you. 2) She says to me: You like me? Well, let's see some romance. 3) I say: Huh? 4) She says: You don't like me at all. 5) I say: Untrue, I do like you. 6) She says: You must want to just be friends. 7) I say: No, I was thinking more along sexual lines. 8) She says: Well, show some romance. 9) I say: Huh? 10) She says, exasperated: We can be friends, but I am going to sleep with Mr. X over there, who can understand me. This has been going on for decades. Has anyone broken this endless loop of frustration? How did you do it?