Reading romantic signals

The real-life dating boot camp that inspired Love On The Spectrum

- ELLEN BARRY

Thirty-six hours after dropping his date off at her Los Angeles apartment, Bradley Goldman was on a video call with his dating coach, breaking down the events of the evening.

For one thing, he told the coach, he had chosen the wrong venue for someone on the autism spectrum — a bar of the Sunset Strip hipster variety, so loud and overstimulating that he could almost feel himself beginning to dissociate.

Goldman, a tall, rangy 42-year-old who works as an office manager, hadn’t decided in advance of the date whether to mention that he had been diagnosed with autism or that he was working with a coach. So he deflected, and they found themselves, briefly, in a conversational blind alley.

“I struggle with how to disclose,” he said. “Do I say I am ‘neuro-spicy’? Or ‘neurodiverse’? Or do I disclose at all?”

His coach, Disa Jean-Pierre, was sympathetic. “You could just wait for it to come up naturally after a few dates,” she suggested.

Goldman thought this over. “I’m still figuring this out,” he said.

Nevertheless, it was a solidly enjoyable date, something he credited to the coaching he had received from a team of psychologists at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA.

He had avoided “info dumping” or making too many Jeffrey Dahmer jokes, and he had carefully observed his date’s body language to detect whether she was signalling openness to a good-night kiss. (She was.)

Goldman’s results would be entered alongside those of 56 other human subjects on a spreadsheet marked “dating history updates”, part of a three-pronged randomised control trial. Over the coming months, researchers at UCLA will mine the data to identify which approach is most likely to help people with autism find love.