Published on 12, July, 2020
This is a genuine curiosity I have. I've noticed from some posts and replies I've read that it sounds like some people here are friends with each other - I'm not sure what that means exactly, but let's say at least that those people seem to communicate with each other on a regular basis, maybe it means more. My question is how did these develop? When I consider the stages of making friends, in my life it seems to go:
So I always seem perpetually stuck at steps 1 and 3. I'm interested in other people's experiences.
You might find the advice here helpful:
Making friends - a guide for autistic adults
I'd also suggest keeping in mind that "friend" can be used as a term / label by some online forums and platforms without it necessarily having the same meaning as it would in normal, day-to-day life. So it shouldn't always be taken entirely literally - which, of course, we can be prone to doing.
For example: I doubt that every user of Facebook necessarily considers everyone on their friends list to be an actual friend (vs, say, acquaintances). This community is the same: we can ask others to be our "friend", but those personal connections may not actually yet be anywhere near the stage of a friendship as we might normally expect to use the term.
It is only recently that I have used the word "friend" to describe a relationship with some I know. For the past 20 years I would have used other labels - "colleague", "acquaintance", "someone my wife knows", and so on.
I've realised adult friendships are a lot harder than when I was a child, for a variety of reasons, but I have ideas stuck in the past regarding that. I'm trying my best to think differently about it so I can move forward.