Published on 12, July, 2020
Are there any other people on this forum with Asperger's who literally have no friends at this point in time, and that includes being in a relationship?
I have had friends before, but not since I was 11 years old, and the friendships I had as a child usually broke down after only a few weeks. I have a history of struggling to maintain friendships, although they were enjoyable while they lasted, but once I started secondary school, making friends became completely insurmountable. I became a loner, the kid no-one talked to, and I amused myself. Not that I really minded this at the time, because I had my own interests to fall back on, and I soon came to the conclusion that small talk was too difficult, pointless, and often boring. Why bother with something that is so difficult and made me feel so stupid and tense?
However recently I have started to question whether or not I should try and make friends again. I do like company, and I don't want to spend my life alone. I want to have a soul-mate, someone I can enjoy life with, and go places with. However I need a lot of time alone as well - this is my conundrum.
Is it normal within the world of AS not to have any friends at all? At school I was excluded from friendship groups because I did not speak enough, or was too clingy!. I tried my hardest to fit in; I took on the quiet 'good girl' persona, but this did not work, so I became troublesome and annoyed people to get some social feedback. Obviously this just meant that I was singled out as weird and strange, but no one told me how to navigate the social world (I was not diagnosed until I was 21).
Although I was lucky in the sense I was not overtly bullied (I was just a loner and removed myself from the crowd), the experience of being alone while other girls chatted and laughed together has left me with an inferiority complex. I often feel diminutive both literally (I am very small anyway) and figuratively; there is a feeling that I am diseased, dirty, and completely unlikeable. Most of the time these feelings are repressed, but theu come to the surface from time to time - a legacy of social exclusion.
Am I the only one who has not had a 'friend' since childhood, if at all?
A lifetime of wonderings, thoughts, feelings and experiences. Reflections. Friend - "ship"; a vessle, the deep feeling of movement within...yet stillness, likened to the eternal moment. I have no friends, or should I say no friends have me? Yet, everyone is potentially my friend. In our deep sense of compassion and caring who would we deny? Trust is the biggest obstacle to that spiritual feeling of connectedness we desire and need to feel with other human "beings". I feel first to know ones' self and be a friend to the self makes way to be a friend to other. I have many friends, but to the depth of relationship that I may feel the freedom to sit in silence and have the inner knowing and be totally confident in that friendship eludes me.
It has been a long hard road, but one I am gratefull I have journeyed. I believe as auties and\or aspies have an incredible gift of feeling and experiencing the living of life at the core of our being and beyond. We make wonderful friends. I listen to everyone hear share and it is on a very intimate level full of caring and compassion...love. I have gone the camut of making myself over, reinventing myself to no avail. I have come to love and appreciate the different of myself. There is a certain feeling of joy in coming to have the confidence and belief in yourself that you may do things on your own and enjoy meeting new people that are in the least where you want to be doing what you want to do. I often hear people speak of what they hate, and it is inhibiting. Where is the potential for friendship in that? I would love to one day meet someone that I may truly bond with on all levels. I feel the greatest eperience of living life for me is to walk this road in love with other.
To Hope...you are already a wonderful loving friend to somene, they just have not realized it yet. It is very heart felt to communicate with all of you, a long time searching. Thank you.