No friends

Tlc said:

Where I am living now, I have aquantances (people I see at work/voluntary groups) but I have not been able to make any freinds.

These aquantances make arrangements to meet up at weekends/go for curries together and I am not invited. They talk about these events often and just yesterday over lunch 3 of them made arrangements to go out.

I don't know why I am not invited, maybe it's the inability to do small talk that makes me an outsider. Sometimes I want to ask if I can go with them, but I don't think thats the right thing to do.

I know the feeling! Have the 3 of them been friends for a while? If you are seeing them regularly then you could ask them all round for dinner? How would that feel?

Hi Helen That is so true, but it can be very rewarding. We don't need much social stimulation, bu we benefit from having some.

Hi Tlc. I think some small talk is needed. I watch people to learn about them and their interests, and I also watch the news, read the local paper, and learn bits about lots of different subjects. This gives me things to talk about. Watch the weather forecast, we brits talk about the weather. I used to unobtrusively listen to other peoples conversations. Butting in is not liked, but you can revisit a subject with someone later. I find chatting in a group quite hard because I cant work out when it's ok for me to speak, and I hate the all eyes on me feeling. So I try to find a person on their own or just 2 people.

You don't have to talk about the nonsense other people talk, just try to be interesting and brief. Leave pauses for people to reply or change the subject.

The other trick is to ask questions, nt people love to talk. Just nod and smile and absorb things. It's an intetesting world full of knowledge, so broaden your interest base. We may never be good at it, but we can learn to get by.

Remember that they may think we don't like them, if we don't speak to them.I

Where I am living now, I have aquantances (people I see at work/voluntary groups) but I have not been able to make any freinds.

These aquantances make arrangements to meet up at weekends/go for curries together and I am not invited. They talk about these events often and just yesterday over lunch 3 of them made arrangements to go out.

I don't know why I am not invited, maybe it's the inability to do small talk that makes me an outsider. Sometimes I want to ask if I can go with them, but I don't think thats the right thing to do.

It is not nice to not have freinds but I can't give any advice about how to make them. I just hope that you can find at least one person you can connect with.

T

NAS18906 said:

You have to do a bit of probing and you have to allow yourself to be probed a bit in order to find out who you are compatible with.

Is this the point of small talk? i.e. you use polite small talk to begin to explore whether you have things in common with someone.

I have a small circle of people I see occasionally and belong to a walking group, where I chat to people for a while as we walk. I also take part in a sport, via a club, and chat incidentally about that. I spread myself thinly because experience has shown me that I annoy people. If I only see people quarterly, they are more tollerant/forgiving and we can happily do it again in a few months. I'm comfortable with that. I would hate to go shopping with the girls etc I'd rather go alone. I have a long suffering husband, but we do plenty of things apart, all the rest of my family live elsewhere.

Hope said:

I have many acqaintances from voluntary work and social groups, so I do have a bit of a social life, but it is hard to take the step from acqaintance to friend. It is not clear when someone becomes a friend because adults do not approach someone and say 'would you like to be my friend'. Children play games, adults are expected to talk, and building a conversation involves mental effort - it is tiring.

I think you need to find people who share your interests. When we were children we (perhaps this was an aspie thing?) would say "will you be my friend?". Children would also say that "you're not my friend anymore". As an adult, my best friend at work hasn't agreed to any such contract. We just meet for lunch in the canteen everyday and discuss the things we are both interested in. I think we worked out by trial and error that we were similar, we are similar in psychological type, we both have a scientific background, we are both interested in the technical side of work and we both struggle with the social side. You have to do a bit of probing and you have to allow yourself to be probed a bit in order to find out who you are compatible with. It takes a lot of trial and lots of errors but unless you make a small opening gambit to enough "strangers" then you can't be "in it to win it". Does it help to think of strangers as people you just don't know very well and that all of your possible friends are currently in the "stranger" category. Stranger doesn't mean "nasty bad man", as we were told as a child, but it means that they are "known unknowns". We know that we don't know whether we would like them.

Its very liberating to stop concealing your Autism. I genuinely dont care what negative opinions the ignorant might hold about me...I live my way, and accept only friends who like who I actually am rather than what I can present myself as.

I think I find friendship hard work because I am very self conscious and worried about commiting a faux pas. I am not sure what the other person might be thinking of me, and I am constantly aware of the fact that I am acting a part and struggling to repress the 'Asperger side'. Everything feels fake and contrived, but at the same time I am aware of what is expected and I don't want other people to think badly of me.

I do not have a very strong need to make friends, but I do crave a soul-mate who I can do things with on a regular basis. I think the hardest part is getting to know someone - maybe the feeling of acting a part fades with time as you begin to feel more comfortable in the other person's presence.

I have many acqaintances from voluntary work and social groups, so I do have a bit of a social life, but it is hard to take the step from acqaintance to friend. It is not clear when someone becomes a friend because adults do not approach someone and say 'would you like to be my friend'. Children play games, adults are expected to talk, and building a conversation involves mental effort - it is tiring.

I had a good social life at one point but my social circle broke down when my first marriage broke up. My social life was based around her and my former friends, some of which had paied off with each other. My ex was with one of my former friends and I was gradually ostracised from the group. I moved away and met some friends but, since I remarried and had a daughter, I haven't mixed socially much. With a lot of travel through work, it has been hard to meet people regularly.

Fortunately, as well as being married, my daughter has now grown up and we are still really close and talk about just about anything. Nevertheless it would be nice to be able to have a proper conversation with someone other than my immediate family. I live too far from my extended family and in-laws to have regular contact.

If you do some kind of recreational activity outside the home, you could take incremental steps in friend making by essaying a greeting/leave taking ("Hi Bob/Catch you next week Bob), to establish basic mutual familiarity, leading up to, after a few repitions, a possible short discussion of some aspect of the shared activity such as "Hey Bob, where did you get that [item of equipment]" or "Hey Bob can you show me the proper technique for..."

I can relate to Azalea's post quite a lot. I try to be this caring bloke, have a strong need to be that way, but I end up being taken advantage of because of that caring attitude. People end up expecting far more than I can give, the strain gets to me and I end up pushing them away. Part of it is because I can be a bit of a berk at times and sometimes crack under pressure but I think the main problem is being 'too nice'. 

Longman is right in that there are different concepts of 'friends'. I think many aspies feel like most NTs have got loads of friends and easily make them, but I'm not so sure. Most of those 'friendships' are very superficial and don't always last very long. It does get very lonely though sometimes

I don't really have friends "IRL"... I talk to people online but don't really confide in people or particularly notice if they aren't around except for rare occasions, and then when whatever I wanted them for has been satisfied, I'm usually no longer interested. I am friendly with a few people at work, but I don't socialise with people outside of work in the same way I seldom socialised with people outside of school. I don't go out with people, I've never had a relationship (I don't want one) and I guess friendship is a fairly alien concept, partially because I think my autism makes me somewhat selfish- I am only interested in other people when I have some kind of goal... like, I read a news article I want to share, then once shared I lose interested in them. Most people don't appreciate that kind of thing.

Hi Hope,

I think it depends on what you mean by friends.

Friends are usually described as people you can confide in, share your troubles with, ask favours of, go on holiday with, people with whom you have common interests and activities, can laugh with and cry with. That's my impression anyway.

I don't think I've had that kind of friend. However I know lots of people, some better than others, usually based on and restricted to some kind of commonality, but I couldn't decribe them in relation to the previous paragraph. My mobile phone is off most of the time, and only has numbers of close family, with whom I mostly communicate by landline. I don't have a network of people to justify daily use of a mobile phone.

I have people I correspond with a lot. At times I've known people who'll give me lifts or help out. I have a big Christmas card list, mostly people I've not met for decades.

Where it gets me hardest though is I don't have anyone, except close family, I could call on for help. That's partly down to me. I think more people might help if I was better at asking. I'm not good at social interaction, and am wary of getting involved. So that's my fault I guess.

I think friends like NTs have is hard to achieve. It needs that ability to share a private joke or opinion or spin on life. I don't think autistic spectrum lets you do that.

I'm probably lucky. I get involved in a lot of things outside, including voluntary work, especially regarding disability, so that gives me a circle of acquaintances. It just doesn't give me NT type friends.

Don't know if that insight helps, but its my perspective.