I am a 29-year-old man who has never been on a date before, and am looking for advice on how best to move forward in this area of my life. Sorry for the novella, it's a trademark of mine at this point.
I am neurodivergent, officially diagnosed with ADHD but also likely autistic. These conditions have significantly impacted my life, causing me to struggle in areas which others did not and causing my life's trajectory to deviate from the average individual in my age bracket. In addition to poor academic performance and social success, they contributed to me developing a very low self-esteem, and coupled with a crippling fear of rejection that prevented me from pursuing girls/women altogether.
As I approach 30, I see that these self-esteem issues have been detrimental to me and I am no longer willing to be ruled by them. The sting of rejection can never exceed the existential pain of not having tried at all, and looking back on the years wondering how different my life could have looked had I not allowed self-defeating attitudes to hold me back. Despite my lack of dating experience, I have not become embittered towards women or fallen into 1nce1/r3dp111 rhetoric - but I do carry a major sadness within me, stemming from a recognition of all the lost years that can never be returned. There's a newfound sense of wistfulness I feel in the sight of girls in their teenage years or women in their early-to-mid-20's, whereby the members of this demographic have lost their individual qualities and have come to symbolize their age group as a whole. They provide a reminder of what the females around me looked like back when I was younger, ones whom I might have actually been able to enter a relationship with had I pursued them back then.
If it's worth mentioning, my body language enables people to recognize that there's something "different" about me even before we exchange words. So even though I dislike identifying with ADHD/autism/neurodivergence, and generally avoid mentioning these in social settings, unfortunately other people can clock me as an oddity regardless.
My first preference is for neurodivergent women, as a result of forming a few Platonic connections with such women the past year and observing myself to feel an unspoken connection with them unlike what I've known with any neurotypical women. I was surprised at how comfortable and normal I felt around them, and now believe the happiest relationship I can be in is with a neurodivergent partner. However, these women are such a small percentage of the general population, and the subpopulation of those women who are in my age bracket, near me geographically, match my physical preferences and share my values is even smaller. So I am still very interested in dating neurotypical women, but wonder if I'll ever able to connect with them to the same degree as I do neurodivergent ones.
I don't want to ramble any further, so my broad question is whether there is literally any advice that would be particularly relevant for someone of my background - that is, someone whose life experiences diverge from most of his same-aged peers, both in the sense of neurodivergence and also a turbulent academic and career history.
If more information about me is needed, please ask it in the comments and I'll try to answer it (so long as it doesn't breach anonymity or exceed what I'm comfortable sharing publically).
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