Friends, wanting isolation, loneliness

Nice.  Would need more bedrooms, though!

Vigur would suit me:

Private islands for sale

That friend I met up with on Saturday is, interestingly enough, very definitely a spectrumite!  It takes one to know one.  She's very much like me: lives alone, very socially anxious, gets very obsessed about something for ages and ages - so that it's all she's interested in - and then just drops it for something else.  Just meeting her on Saturday, I could tell how anxious and awkward she felt, being in a cafe with other people - more so than I was.  Also, she just comes out with stuff - loud enough for others to hear - that most people just would keep to themselves.  I was tucking into my meal and she was going on about the menopause, and how she still gets hot flushes, and how she's found out she has endometriosis... and I'm thinking 'I don't really want to know this!'  I asked her once, when she was talking about her social anxiety, whether she'd ever thought about if she might be on the spectrum.  She said she thought she was and had done for years, but it didn't bother her.  She scored 36 on the test, anyway.

Isle of Aspie ... Amberac. I'd be up for a tenth :) .... www.zoopla.co.uk/.../48766923

Yes I can identify with most of what you say. I have a difficult (high? low?) boredom threshold & I used to love the original Sonic the Hedgehog game on Sega - no faffing about with defining characters, no strategy to plan, just press start and run, jump & kick stuff!

I would actually be up for the odd coffee & meet-up (me & them, me & wife & them, or me & wife & their partner). But I *very* rarely get someone asking me. I offer and offer and then give up - I take it that people aren't interested. And yet, when people comment on me as a person, all I ever hear is that I'm one of the nicest people they know!

Yeah, Isle of Aspie sounds fun :-)

I'm with you on most of Number One.  I can't say I really feel isolated or lonely, though - maybe because I've spent much of my life preferring my own company, and have never really been bothered about friendships.  The understimulation or boredom can be an issue, though.  I usually try to deal with that by immersing myself in my interests - pretty much all of which don't require anyone else's input, anyway.  So... writing, reading, watching movies, playing computer games occasionally (nothing big - just Solitaire or Crazy Golf or something; I'm not interested in stuff that has hundreds of levels, RPGs, etc).  I usually find enough to keep me going.  Writing, especially, is good because it means I can drop out of 'real life' and engage in a story.  I also enjoy making memes with Gimp, or using it to create pictures.  I could use my time much more productively than I do, I know.  I could try learning a language or trying to make head or tail of quantum physics... but my concentration level with those kinds of activities is very low.  I just get bored too easily.  Generally, anything even remotely creative is usually a good way of keeping boredom at bay.

On Number Two.  Well... I know there are people who like me.  One or two of them drop me a text every now and then.  I met up with a friend on Saturday for a coffee.  We keep in touch by text, too - but I hadn't actually seen her for over a year before that.  We spent about an hour together and caught up a bit.  I regard it as a friendship because we go back a long way and have kept in touch.  But it's not what most people, probably, would think of as a friendship.  We don't meet up regularly.  We don't go to each others houses.  We don't do activities together.  At the same time, like you, I do like being around people - at least, for short periods of time.  As long as I know them and can feel comfortable about them, and as long as they can accept me for who I am.  My niece and her family are like that.  We're easy together, but they understand when I say 'I think I should be heading off now' - generally between one and two hours.  At work, I have no choice but to be around people all day.  There are staff I feel comfortable with, and those I don't.  With the service users, on the other hand - even the most challenging - I'm always in my element.  I think maybe it's because we are often like grown-up kids together.  And there's unconditional loyalty.  No back-stabbing.  What you see is what you get!  Also, they're vulnerable, so I identify on that level.  They bring out the best in me.

Having said all that... I, too, have people who've said they count me as a 'friend'.  But they don't really feel like it.  It's more like an acquaintanceship.  And quite often, I won't hear anything for ages.  Same with family, too.  I usually make the first contact about something.  I think, maybe, it's because friendships require a level of maintenance that I'm simply not up to providing.  I can't be doing with regular meet-ups, parties, nights out, networking, etc.  I suppose being a loner by disposition, and enjoying nothing better than to be alone for hours or days, means I've perhaps lost (or mislaid) the skills needed - if I ever had them at all.  I look at my brother, who's my polar opposite.  Hates being alone.  Is always out meeting up with friends.  Still has friends stretching back to his schooldays almost 60 years ago.  If ever he needs advice on something, or a job doing, he has a friend to go to.  A friend built his conservatory.  He gets a lot of business work through friends.  He can do it.  I can't. 

Wouldn't it be great if a large group of us could crowdfund to buy ourselves an island - just for Aspies!  Then we could have all the friends, and all the isolation, we needed! 

Just me fantasising again!

Hi,

This is my first day as a member and I'm going through the process of diagnosis of my austism now. Weird at the age of 38. So I don't think I can be of enormous help to you other than this.... I am familiar with what you are saying in point one, and point 2 is certainly a feeling I experience regularly. I think it's to do with being goal focussed in our mindset - so finding shared goals with other people generates the interaction. Also, you're definitely not the only one who feels this way. Perhaps knowing that gives reassurance - I'm just sorry I don't have the answers as to what to do about it yet for you. 

I'm done with Christmas Cards said:

if I don't put the effort in, I'm alone. It's like I'm always the one chasing.

This is very common these days. People's lives have become so much more complicated and stressful that all they want to do is stop and veg on the sofa. The motivation to contact others has disappeared.

I have a friend who travels all over the world for work and even though he sometimes contacts me to meet up, he never follows through. I last saw him in 2017.

I have all the time in the world so I accept that I have to make the effort. It's not that others don't want to meet up, it's just it's they're too knackered to make the effort and need someone else to do the organising for them.