Contrary to belief, I think a lot of us with autism want to reach out for friendships and relationships. The statement I’m about to say isn’t meant to be rude, it’s just an unfortunate social fact I’ve had to learn. I can start to get someone to like me, I can start making friends online and off in my hobbies and interests but it doesn’t last. I don’t know if there are unspoken social rules that I break. I’ll always have this awkward air about me and it stings. I’m a really cool person if people would give me a chance. Maybe I’m ready to admit I’m not ready to put in the work relationships take, but I have before with other people and sometimes it feels like I’m doing all the work.
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I don’t know if I have autism or not. It might just be anxiety or depression. I just never feel comfortable socializing. I know what to do and I can pick up on most social cues I think. But I never want to. It seems very scary and intimidating to me.
My brother has Asperger and he is more social than me lol. He has always been into niche center of interests and developped decades long friendship in related social circles.
But he has come a long way so I am very proud and happy for him.
This happens to neurotypicals too my dude. People just suck they vanish or abandon you for no rhyme or reason other than they don’t want to put the effort in for others, but expect others to make an effort for them.
Not sure of they are autistic or not ( probably not ) but I have several friends that are pretty awkward and some even straight up weirdos , but I love them all none the less .
Some people are assholes ,some people you just met in the wrong place and the wrong time , but there are many good people who would love to be your friend , undoubtedly it’s harder with autism but it’s a skill like any other and you will get better at it of you practice.
I think a lot of autistic individuals learn pretty young that they just don’t click with other people for some reason. Like for me, the way I describe it is that with most people, it’s like we’re on opposite sides of a glass wall. I can see everything they’re doing, but I can’t understand what they’re saying. It’s not exactly a great analogy, but basically it just demonstrates the fact that I feel like there’s often something I’m missing when it comes to other people, like we’re not on the same wavelength somehow. And it’s difficult, because it makes the rest of social interaction challenging. If they upset you, how do you know if what you got upset about is something that’s socially acceptable to bring up? Worse still, will you make everything worse if you do bring it up? I became quite conflict averse as a teenager because every time I tried to bring up issues with my friends, which I still don’t really know if they were considered social acceptable or not, I would somehow make things worse. I’m not sure what would happen, but even if we were just having a discussion, all of a sudden something I said would cause the other person to get very mad at me.
I don’t remember enough about these conversations to be able to make a judgment now if I was being reasonable or not, but it’s taken a lot of learning as an adult to try to get past it. As I’ve learned, the thing you’re upset about doesn’t really need to be socially acceptable for you to be able to bring it up, but it’s also a good idea to pick your battles. And so on and so forth. Also, your boundaries don’t need to be considered socially acceptable for you to have them.
I think if it feels like you’re doing all the work in the relationship, whether platonic or romantic, it’s time to move on and find somebody else. And making good friends is kind of a numbers game, which I think a lot of people, neurodivergent or not, don’t actually realize. People ask me how I have so many friends, because I do have several different friend groups. These are sometimes people who I know don’t go out much, don’t communicate online with others, much, etc, and they alway seem kind of surprised when I tell them that I’ve literally met hundreds of different people in real life and online, but of course you don’t click with most people you meet, or even if you are friendly, you still probably won’t end up becoming friends, because that’s just the way it works.
Many of my real life friends are people who I first met online, because that’s how I’m comfortable breaking the barrier. It is possible to find friend groups in your area online, but it takes a lot of work and to be honest you won’t find it right away. It kind of has to happen organically, and you can’t really force it. In a local server of mine, I’ve seen people come in and try to kind of force their way into making friends? I don’t really know how to explain it, but basically they were kind of pushy and it was clear that they were lonely, but the way they went about trying to make friends put people off, usually because they were pushy. You kind of have to go into it with the mindset that you may end up being friends with these people, or you may not, and that’s cool. One of my favourite people right now is somebody who I met in a Discord server through someone else I knew, and when I first met him I thought that he was quite stuck up and kind of an asshole, to be honest. But time went on and we gradually interacted more and more, and we have such a good rapport today. But it took literal months, and to be honest, the only reason that this happened is because I stuck around the server and was interacting with other people, so we were able to sort of have those organic interactions that led to us becoming friends. If that hadn’t been the case, I really don’t think that we would have ever become friends.
Okay, I kind of went off on a tangent there. I’m not really sure what my point is, and I will add that. I do know people who do put quite a bit of effort into making friends, and it doesn’t really seem to stick. Sometimes there are reasons for that, like I knew somebody who really did want to make new friends, but she found it difficult. We were friends for a while, but the reason why I ended up eventually breaking off our friendship was because she didn’t seem to respect my feelings. She would say offensive things and then try to brush it off or not accept that my feelings had been hurt. To be honest, I wasn’t that upset about the things she was actually saying, although I didn’t really like them; I was far more upset by the fact that she absolutely refused to acknowledge that I had been hurt by those things. It’s one thing to say something that you don’t realize is offensive, but it’s quite another to just straight up deny that the other person was offended. Literally, all I wanted to hear was a sorry, and maybe for her not to say those things again. What happened instead was a gigantic argument, and the friendship ended. From what I saw while I was friends with her, I would not be entirely surprised if many of her other friendships ended due to the same reason. (I am aware of that this is considered offensive to say.)
I also have a theory about that though, and that’s that some people find it really difficult to apologize because they believe that by doing so, they are admitting or acknowledging that they are a bad person, because doing bad things makes you a bad person, right? But no, that’s not actually it at all. Taking accountability is hard. But, to be honest, refusing to take accountability is far closer to the actions of a bad person than just apologizing and moving on. (I will also add that if you feel like you are constantly apologizing to your friend, that’s also probably a sign that you’re not in a good friendship. Either you guys clash or they are unreasonable. Some people just aren’t compatible.)
Phew, apologies for the long post. I grew up undiagnosed autistic, and I have spent a gigantic amount of time researching and learning about social situations.
Sometimes Autism is just unfiltered honesty. They’re like a normal person except they 100% only do what they actually want to unless they’re actively forced to do it.
Whereas normal people build up years of stress by constantly doing stuff with long term gain that they don’t like, and practically only so that…
* They’ll do things that their conscience or social pheromones tells them they SHOULD do,
* They can retire when their body is used up and their happiest days are long gone,
* They think they will be happy because other people doing the same things have a shared experience or something.
And hey, neurotypics can be so versatile. Maybe some of them really are happy. But I think a lot of people are just hiding their cries behind a smile. They don’t enjoy life that much but they keep doing “stuff” to occupy themselves.
I am not particularly happy but I am absolutely living through my ego. I pursue shit that no one has told me to do. It’s because I wanna do it. Me and no one else.
Agree. You’re right that we can learn the initial steps to connect, I’m particularly good at listening. People connect easily with me when it’s one on one and my main role is to listen. I can say the right thing for a day or even a season sometimes. But, and it’s a big but, I always end up offending them or they offend me and I guess I don’t deal with that in a way that allows a friendship to continue.
I’ve given up trying to have real friends. I hope you crack the code and find some great friends who love and cherish you.
Thanks everyone!