Much of the advice men receive from women is essentially neurotypical social advice. It basically comes down to “don’t be autistic”.

It often comes down to things like:

• Be socially smooth

• Read subtle cues

• Don’t be awkward or weird

• Make natural eye contact

• Pick up on flirting signals

• Escalate at the “right moment”

• Don’t appear creepy or overly intense

• Be confident but not arrogant

• Be spontaneous

• …

Or contradictory advice like “Just be yourself. Just don’t be creepy.” In practice what gets labeled as creepy is often social miscalibration (awkward timing, unusual eye contact, missing cues, intensity…). Many of those behaviours overlap with traits common in neurodivergence. So the advice ends up meaning: be yourself, but only if your natural behaviour already fits neurotypical (NT) norms.

None of this advice is malicious. But it assumes a baseline of intuitive social processing that not everyone has. For many neurodivergent (ND) people (autistic, ADHD etc.), these skills are THE areas that require the most effort and conscious learning. All those pieces of advice together, that sounds simple to NT people, comes down to: “Just be socially fluent.”

There is also a gender dimension here. ND is still diagnosed more often in men, even though many researchers suspect that women are underdiagnosed because they tend to mask social difficulties earlier and more effectively. Social expectations for girls often push them toward careful self-monitoring and emotional attunement from a young age. As a result we see that ND women often become skilled at masking. Since a lot of them aren’t diagnosed, they go through life assuming they are NT, but they just have always felt “different” from a young age. Having to mask from a young age to the point where you’re in denial about your own ND “weirdness” is brutal in its own way. These women often suffer from perfectionism and are incredibly harsh to themselves. They always had to fit in, and they pushed themselves to fit in.

On the other hand, ND men are more likely to appear visibly socially atypical, to visibly stand out, to not adhere to the expected social norms. When dating advice is built around NT norms, it can unintentionally become hostile or discouraging for people who struggle with those norms.

You might expect ND women to be more empathetic towards the struggle of ND men, and many are. But not all ND women. Because the underdiagnosis of ND in women leads to internalized ableism. Many people who have spent years adapting to NT may end up reinforcing those standards themselves, simply because that adaptation became necessary for social survival. “If I did it, everyone else can do it as well.” I can’t prove this is universal, but when I reflected on my own thinking I noticed that I had internalized NT social standards and repeated them as dating advice without questioning them.

As a woman who only realized she was ND in her late 20s, I’m reflecting on my past dating advice, as well as my own internal self talk. As soon as I became more accepting towards my own ND quirks, that I tried to suppress my entire life, the more I seem to find the repeated advice we give men harmful as it carries a subconscious bias. I had my own struggles (masking can be exhausting and psychologically costly), but gender roles likely pushed me to develop stronger social masking earlier. In that sense it may also have protected me to some degree. Men by contrast often seem to be judged much more harshly by women when they fail to meet those same social expectations.

So the issue isn’t that women are intentionally giving bad advice or that social skills don’t matter.

The issue is that most mainstream dating advice assumes a NT starting point and that assumption often goes unexamined. Recognizing that bias doesn’t mean abandoning social norms entirely. It just means acknowledging that some people are navigating the dating world with a very different set of constraints.

In some ways the social bar really IS higher for men in dating, particularly when it comes to social performance. In more conservative cultures (or even a lot of western cultures still, but I wouldn’t say everywhere to the same degree) men are usually expected to initiate, read signals correctly, escalate at the right moment and avoid making women uncomfortable at the same time. Those expectations rely heavily on intuitive social calibration. When someone struggles with that the consequences tend to be judged more harshly in men than in women.

Many NT women aren’t attracted to ND men and that’s fine. Attraction isn’t an entitlement. But we should be honest that much of mainstream dating advice for men assumes NT social intuition as the baseline and that repeating the same NT dating advice over and over can be harmful for ND men’s mental health.

ND men are allowed to be themselves and should look for partners who genuinely appreciate their quirks. People tend to glow when they feel confident and comfortable in their own skin. Conventional dating advice probably sounds like a scam to many ND men because in a sense, it is. “Hide who you are to attract people and only be yourself once the relationship is established” is not a healthy strategy and most women do not want that either. ND men likely need more personalised advice and may have to look for a more niche group of women. The reality is that not everyone is attracted to ND traits, and that is unlikely to change as long as society continues to value NT traits more highly, which creates a subconscious preference for them from an early age (somewhat similar to how cultural standards shape attraction in other domains, like how the male gaze works).

ND people may have to accept that their dating pool can be smaller, but that is not necessarily a problem. Many ND individuals have strong capacities for deep and meaningful connection. It often starts with valuing your own quirks and strengths rather than trying to erase them.

TLDR:

Most dating advice for men assumes neurotypical social calibration. That creates a structural bias against neurodivergent men: the advice basically boils down to “be socially fluent.” Repeating that advice endlessly isn’t helpful and can be damaging to mental health.