No friends

Hi Hope,

I can relate to your difficulties in acquiring friendship. This is an issue I am facing on a regular basis, not to mention how I feel about myself negatively by speaking to people in general.

I'm always open to speaking with people and am fairly lonely myself so feel free to drop me a message

I have never had much of a problem with making friends, but I have issues maintaining them. When you have friends there's all this pressue to 'hang out' and see them for no apparant reason and I've never much wanted to hang out for hanging out's sake, so I lose touch with people and then's they're not interested when I ask them if they want to come and see a play with me. I don't want to go round to someone's house twice a week to talk about nothing, I find it tedious and pointless. I want people to share experiences with, like going to gigs and travellng to new places. I have a husband for that now but when I was a teenager and in my early twenties I saw a lot of bands and theatre productions on my own. 

I know a lot of people through work, amateur dramatics, and various other groups and clubs I belong to/have belonged to in the past but none of them are people that I can confide in. They are people to go to the pub with or see a play with, not people to talk about my problems with. 

The worst thing was when I got married. My husband has a lot of family and a lot of people he has been close friends with in the past that he keeps in touch with. I probably had 2 friends of my own to invite. All the others were either shared friends we met through the same am dram group or my husbands friends that I get on quite well with. I went through all of my aquaintences and there was hardly anyone I felt close enough to invite, because they might think it was weird that I would invite them, or that I didn't know them well enough to really want them there on a day when I knew I'd feel really vulnerable. 

I don't feel that I'm missing out because I don't have friends (of the 2 mentioned above one has moved away from the area and the other I have grown apart from recently, so I really don't have any friends now!). I see enough people socially. My social limit generally has a shelf life of about 3 hours anway, if I'm with the same group of people for more than that I start feeling like I need to escape so I start to shut down and stop communicating. 

Hi my name is Henry and I think alot like you in that I only do things that I want to do and once it has been done I lose interest.

I would like to know if you have and ways of dealing with this issue.

i've never had a relationship, i'm frigid, and i've never had close friends as an adult, although i have a few not close friendships - eg a man nearby who keeps wanting to have sex with me, i don't but we meet for a couple of hours' boring conversation once a fortnight because we're both desperately lonely

nb i love smalltalk and excel at it, it has rules, i can do it. I hate being on my own and love being in company, i'm not autistic that way at all, i just can't manage to get anybody to want to talk with me. Back when i had interests, i never found anybody who shared them, and i've dropped them all now, i have none.

This may sound rather "sad", but some of the best aquaintances I have had, over the years, have been the office misfits and wierdos. We are perceived as flawed people by nts and so are many others around. I no longer seek the company of the popular people, they can pick and choose. 

I often try to talk to people who are avoided by others. It has many advantages. They expect less from others and are more tollerant. They can more easily be approached alone. They too can be feeling lonely and appreciate the company. I have heard some strange tales and ignored much prickly behaviour, but when you get beneath the crusty exterior, there may be some likeable qualities.

There is an old saying,"a friend in need, is a friend in deed". This can be taken many ways, but I think that if someone really needs something from you, they are more likely to return the favour. It doesn't always work, but friendship takes practice. If you practice on less popular people, there are less repercussions of failure, and sometimes unexpected rewards.

Hi Yes, I do recieve alerts. I often check my emails on my phone when I am out and when I have an alert from here I read the email but If on my phone I don't follow the link. This then means I don't recieve the next update alerts. This may have been what happened. That or I checked on my phone whilst out but forgot to reply when I came online. Either way I apologise.

I did look for nas groups, there is a socialising group near me. I think they go out for a meal together once a month or something like that. But I am reluctant to attend it as I am not sure it would help. There is I think a course I could attend, but I couldn't afford it. 

I don't know about council services or Mental health. I hadn't thought to check with them.

What you have sounds good, I would find that helpful.

It's very frustrating being told i'm rude. I have never intentionally hurt or upset anyone and I don't like to think that I have done that. I try not to say much and when things like this happen It knocks my confidence and I end up going silent. This will go round in my head for a while now.

T

tlc,

You should have received an email alert when a thread, that you have contributed to, has a new reply? Do you get these sometimes?

So it sounds as though you need some coaching with how to go about this and to learn how to understand what people mean when they tell you that you are rude. Is there a NAS adult group local to you? Does your local mental health trust or local council provide support services for autistic people? My local trust is actually very good and they will provide one to one sessions to discuss any issues I have like this. They also run group sessions about how to get on better with the condition. They are very keen to help keep people in work and off benefits so there is a healthy bit of motivation for them to help people like us.

recombinantsocks sorry I have only just noticed your reply.

We all started on the same year so they have known each other just as long as they have known me, but of course they speak more than I do.

I don't speak much and often when I do I say the wrong things. Just today I was informed that someone thought I was rude... this was because I was very direct about a concern I had. I thought my point was honest and valid (it probably was). However it waI was told it was considered rude because I didn't "dress it up". I am not sure I understand what that even means...

I was told to think about how I would want people to be with me... I said I wanted people to be honest and straightforward and thats how I try to be with others.

I don't want to invite them round as I am not sure how that would turn out... I can't imagine there reactions or if they came I am not sure if they would be comfortable. Or how to entertain them.

Making friends certainly isn't easy.

T

I have no frends and my family is not close to me

Hi Marjorie, 

Yes I find the small amount of social interaction with my few friends is rewarding. It helps that they're nice understanding people.

Tlc said:

Where I am living now, I have aquantances (people I see at work/voluntary groups) but I have not been able to make any freinds.

These aquantances make arrangements to meet up at weekends/go for curries together and I am not invited. They talk about these events often and just yesterday over lunch 3 of them made arrangements to go out.

I don't know why I am not invited, maybe it's the inability to do small talk that makes me an outsider. Sometimes I want to ask if I can go with them, but I don't think thats the right thing to do.

I know the feeling! Have the 3 of them been friends for a while? If you are seeing them regularly then you could ask them all round for dinner? How would that feel?

Hi Helen That is so true, but it can be very rewarding. We don't need much social stimulation, bu we benefit from having some.

So often in my life I've found that people think I don't like them or that I'm being 'funny' with them and I seem snobby and standoffish. But I'm really not like that as a person, inside I'm a softie but that doesn't always convey on the outside. So at school and then work people have always thought I'm being rude and unfriendly. Once they've got to know me they realise I am a decent person. But there have been a number of occasions where people who I've worked with have just not 'got' me at all and I've been socially shunned. I've left jobs for this reason and have found my work life very difficult. I have quite specific requirements for a job such as not being able to eat my lunch in the canteen with other people. Even in my current job I'm always worrying what people think of me. Its very tiring always having to make sure you appear 'normal'.

Hi Tlc. I think some small talk is needed. I watch people to learn about them and their interests, and I also watch the news, read the local paper, and learn bits about lots of different subjects. This gives me things to talk about. Watch the weather forecast, we brits talk about the weather. I used to unobtrusively listen to other peoples conversations. Butting in is not liked, but you can revisit a subject with someone later. I find chatting in a group quite hard because I cant work out when it's ok for me to speak, and I hate the all eyes on me feeling. So I try to find a person on their own or just 2 people.

You don't have to talk about the nonsense other people talk, just try to be interesting and brief. Leave pauses for people to reply or change the subject.

The other trick is to ask questions, nt people love to talk. Just nod and smile and absorb things. It's an intetesting world full of knowledge, so broaden your interest base. We may never be good at it, but we can learn to get by.

Remember that they may think we don't like them, if we don't speak to them.I

Where I am living now, I have aquantances (people I see at work/voluntary groups) but I have not been able to make any freinds.

These aquantances make arrangements to meet up at weekends/go for curries together and I am not invited. They talk about these events often and just yesterday over lunch 3 of them made arrangements to go out.

I don't know why I am not invited, maybe it's the inability to do small talk that makes me an outsider. Sometimes I want to ask if I can go with them, but I don't think thats the right thing to do.

It is not nice to not have freinds but I can't give any advice about how to make them. I just hope that you can find at least one person you can connect with.

T

recombinantsocks said:

You have to do a bit of probing and you have to allow yourself to be probed a bit in order to find out who you are compatible with.

Is this the point of small talk? i.e. you use polite small talk to begin to explore whether you have things in common with someone.

I have a small circle of people I see occasionally and belong to a walking group, where I chat to people for a while as we walk. I also take part in a sport, via a club, and chat incidentally about that. I spread myself thinly because experience has shown me that I annoy people. If I only see people quarterly, they are more tollerant/forgiving and we can happily do it again in a few months. I'm comfortable with that. I would hate to go shopping with the girls etc I'd rather go alone. I have a long suffering husband, but we do plenty of things apart, all the rest of my family live elsewhere.

Hope said:

I have many acqaintances from voluntary work and social groups, so I do have a bit of a social life, but it is hard to take the step from acqaintance to friend. It is not clear when someone becomes a friend because adults do not approach someone and say 'would you like to be my friend'. Children play games, adults are expected to talk, and building a conversation involves mental effort - it is tiring.

I think you need to find people who share your interests. When we were children we (perhaps this was an aspie thing?) would say "will you be my friend?". Children would also say that "you're not my friend anymore". As an adult, my best friend at work hasn't agreed to any such contract. We just meet for lunch in the canteen everyday and discuss the things we are both interested in. I think we worked out by trial and error that we were similar, we are similar in psychological type, we both have a scientific background, we are both interested in the technical side of work and we both struggle with the social side. You have to do a bit of probing and you have to allow yourself to be probed a bit in order to find out who you are compatible with. It takes a lot of trial and lots of errors but unless you make a small opening gambit to enough "strangers" then you can't be "in it to win it". Does it help to think of strangers as people you just don't know very well and that all of your possible friends are currently in the "stranger" category. Stranger doesn't mean "nasty bad man", as we were told as a child, but it means that they are "known unknowns". We know that we don't know whether we would like them.

Its very liberating to stop concealing your Autism. I genuinely dont care what negative opinions the ignorant might hold about me...I live my way, and accept only friends who like who I actually am rather than what I can present myself as.

I think I find friendship hard work because I am very self conscious and worried about commiting a faux pas. I am not sure what the other person might be thinking of me, and I am constantly aware of the fact that I am acting a part and struggling to repress the 'Asperger side'. Everything feels fake and contrived, but at the same time I am aware of what is expected and I don't want other people to think badly of me.

I do not have a very strong need to make friends, but I do crave a soul-mate who I can do things with on a regular basis. I think the hardest part is getting to know someone - maybe the feeling of acting a part fades with time as you begin to feel more comfortable in the other person's presence.

I have many acqaintances from voluntary work and social groups, so I do have a bit of a social life, but it is hard to take the step from acqaintance to friend. It is not clear when someone becomes a friend because adults do not approach someone and say 'would you like to be my friend'. Children play games, adults are expected to talk, and building a conversation involves mental effort - it is tiring.