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I'm really bad at staying in touch with family and friends

AJ

Content warning: loss / grief

So, as the title goes, I'm really bad at keeping in touch with family and friends. I'm not sure if this is an autistic thing (I'm awaiting assessment) although I'm sure this kind of struggle isn't unheard of in the autism community. 

I don't know why it is, but I can go for months without speaking to family and friends, even though I do care about them very much. I've lost many friends over the years and been berated by family for not keeping in touch, and it's not even that I don't want to stay in touch. There have been many times when I have tried to be more proactive but I eventually fall back into my default state; sometimes because the process of changing my ways is so exhausting, or perhaps I just plain forget or get distracted by other things that have diverted my focus. This type of reverting back isn't unique to this situation, either, literally anything I try to change about myself inevitable fails this way (even simple things like trying to remember to brush my teeth every day).

About 10 years ago my granddad passed away from cancer - we had known for a while that it was coming so it wasn't a shock. We were really close when I was younger, and he was responsible for encouraging a lot of my interests (especially trains and coin collecting), but I had not spoken to him for at least a couple of months and this absolutely devastated me knowing that I would not get to speak to him again.

He was the first of my close relatives to pass away, so it took me a long time to properly recover from that, and I vowed that this would never happen again. 

Now, today I received news that one of my nans has passed away, and while I am once again devastated I am really angry at myself because again I had not spoken to them in months and hadn't even visited since last summer. I forgot to visit them at Christmas and had to call up to apologise and promised to visit soon, then obviously Covid happened before I got chance to go around.

I like to stay in my own little bubble, but I am honestly sick and tired of this aspect of myself. I still have two grandparents in their 80s, and my parents are both in their 60s, nobody is getting any younger and I just don't know how to break out of this cycle.

Over the years this inability to stay in touch with people is the biggest problem I have that makes me stop and say "what is wrong with me?"

Parents

  • This is kind of a sticky one for me. I was undiagnosed through childhood and young adulthood, diagnosed 7 months ago at 51.  With the exception of my mother, and a few other relatives I was often treated like an outcast.  I was somewhat accepted as a child but from 11 on not so much. I was labeled “weird”,”awkward”, “sensitive”,”blunt” to name a few. I never felt like I belonged, even with my own 2 siblings, of which Ive lived 5 minutes away from over the past 30 years. We rarely make contact or see each other since my mother passed. They keep in touch with each other regularly but rarely include me unless it’s an emergency about our elderly father. I’ve told them about my diagnosis about being on the spectrum but that has not changed anything, if anything it’s seems to make them shun me more. But then again if they accepted me would I keep in touch with them regularly?? Probably not. As I prefer to be with my husband and kids, and my thoughts and alone most of the time. So that’s a hard one to answer.

    If it wasn’t for my routine of cleaning my fathers apartment weekly, I wouldn’t see him as often. 

    As for friends, I’ve rarely made any new friends since high school. Even then it was a small circle of friends. 2 yrs ago, 4 of us started a group chat that is still going. I’m the least to chime in, most times I’ll have to push myself to leave a comment. Not that I don’t care about them, I just don’t sense their need to hear from me, cause I’m good not hearing from them. I also have one on in one text chats weekly with a couple friends. It sometimes gets awkward but I’m glad it’s texting and not really face to face socializing as that would drain me. I’m married now for close to 32 years and my (non autistic) husband is really all I need. And I take alot of breaks from him too. 

Reply

  • This is kind of a sticky one for me. I was undiagnosed through childhood and young adulthood, diagnosed 7 months ago at 51.  With the exception of my mother, and a few other relatives I was often treated like an outcast.  I was somewhat accepted as a child but from 11 on not so much. I was labeled “weird”,”awkward”, “sensitive”,”blunt” to name a few. I never felt like I belonged, even with my own 2 siblings, of which Ive lived 5 minutes away from over the past 30 years. We rarely make contact or see each other since my mother passed. They keep in touch with each other regularly but rarely include me unless it’s an emergency about our elderly father. I’ve told them about my diagnosis about being on the spectrum but that has not changed anything, if anything it’s seems to make them shun me more. But then again if they accepted me would I keep in touch with them regularly?? Probably not. As I prefer to be with my husband and kids, and my thoughts and alone most of the time. So that’s a hard one to answer.

    If it wasn’t for my routine of cleaning my fathers apartment weekly, I wouldn’t see him as often. 

    As for friends, I’ve rarely made any new friends since high school. Even then it was a small circle of friends. 2 yrs ago, 4 of us started a group chat that is still going. I’m the least to chime in, most times I’ll have to push myself to leave a comment. Not that I don’t care about them, I just don’t sense their need to hear from me, cause I’m good not hearing from them. I also have one on in one text chats weekly with a couple friends. It sometimes gets awkward but I’m glad it’s texting and not really face to face socializing as that would drain me. I’m married now for close to 32 years and my (non autistic) husband is really all I need. And I take alot of breaks from him too. 

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