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?
i have had four friends in total since 13, none of whom i can talk to: 3 are just people who insisted on following me around and have since been diagnosed with autism, none of whom i can talk to about how i feel but i can hang out with them occasionally and none of whom is emotionally attached to me; the fourth is someone i've stayed in touch with online, to whom i can talk about what i can't to the other three (cultural stuff - the others don't know what 'philosophy' means let alone want to discuss Diderot) but no discussion of anything else eg emotions. He's not autistic but gay but comes from a country where that's very dangerous, so he detaches emotionally completely from everybody, a sealed room (he has intimates, but i'm not one of them). I don't personally call one facebook message every 3 months or one meetup every six interrupted by shouting matches much of a friendship, but i am exceedingly grateful to their existence at all and work hard to keep it, although the emotional attachment is low. I've never been in a relationship, autism made me frigid and i can't show or discuss emotions, so that's never happened. 45 now, for survey purposes nb youngsters get help so this shouldn't affect people diagnosed under 26