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Why is it so hard to make friends if you try so hard to fit in?

NAS67092

If you put a lot of time and effort into making friends and other people say you are so sweet and nice but don't tend to develop close friendships with you, what can you do? I feel like people still don't want my company because 99 out of 100 people find me uninteresting and extremely boring. My interests and their interests are so different but what can I do? I don't want to pretend I care about stuff I don't know anything about. I have tried to broaden my horizons. Instead of gaining interest in new things, I've even lost interest in what I used to care about. As you get older, things can get lonely even without autism. I wish there was a way to meet like-minded people in person instead of feeling like the odd one out in social situations. Sometimes I observe how some NTs who put very little effort into friendships excel at maintaining friendships. I always try to do so much for people, I am a real people-pleaser and in a way, they like me but not as a friend, I am more of like a co-worker who helps them a lot but they wouldn't want to spend their free time with me. I have also noticed numerous times with many people that I have great one-on-one conversations but when another person arrives, the conversation continues between those 2 people with me being marginalised and eventually left out of the conversation as if I was only good to talk to when there isn't someone better around. I still don't understand why these things happen. I have always thought people like to be pleased and never argued with. I often bite my tongue and allow others to have things their way. What is good enough if that isn't?    

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  • I don’t think people like to necessarily ‘be pleased and never argued with’. Also I’m not sure how to organize my thoughts so I’m just going to list my thoughts and hope that gets the point across:

    1) that psychological study where people are more likely to like you if you ask them for a pencil first. People like to occasionally be kind and with what you described it seems like they don’t necessarily have that opportunity.

    2) how would you feel if people treated you that way? If they just tried to please you, you couldn’t really have much of a conversation with them unless you somehow find a way to speak more openly with them

    3) if you consistently give people things they may stop viewing you as a person and more of a tool

    4) if you talk about your interests and someone zones out, that means you might not be a good match so just try to find someone else rather than forcing it.

    All of them except 3 have been confirmed by other people in my life when we’ve talked about this and when talking about 3 they usually say that it’s less about me and more about the other person.

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  • I don’t think people like to necessarily ‘be pleased and never argued with’. Also I’m not sure how to organize my thoughts so I’m just going to list my thoughts and hope that gets the point across:

    1) that psychological study where people are more likely to like you if you ask them for a pencil first. People like to occasionally be kind and with what you described it seems like they don’t necessarily have that opportunity.

    2) how would you feel if people treated you that way? If they just tried to please you, you couldn’t really have much of a conversation with them unless you somehow find a way to speak more openly with them

    3) if you consistently give people things they may stop viewing you as a person and more of a tool

    4) if you talk about your interests and someone zones out, that means you might not be a good match so just try to find someone else rather than forcing it.

    All of them except 3 have been confirmed by other people in my life when we’ve talked about this and when talking about 3 they usually say that it’s less about me and more about the other person.

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