Want to retreat but know that wouldn't be helpful

I always want to make new friends, the issue I have is I suffer from time blindness and if I go through a very busy patch, even long standing friends can expect to get just a short check in at most every 3 weeks - 3 months, so maintaining friendships with people who expect a lot more or erroneously take it personally as some kind of rejection has often been a breaking point of those friendships. The plus side I suppose is I'm low maintenance and only expect the ocassional prod in return, I don't expect friends to put their own stuff on hold for me, it's just pick up the chat whenever you get time kinda deal.

Hi!  Totally agree with you but didn't realise it was a problem before!  I'm the sort of person that once I'm friends with you, you'll always be in my heart even if we don't speak that often.  I think the problem is that everyone has different expectations and in a friendship you sort of have to figure it out amongst you what you expect from the other person and what works for the friendship.  I don't feel like many other people are willing to work on a friendship in this way and most of my friends once they moved to different towns just seemed to make other more local friends!  If a friend really needed me I would be there for them but other than that your time scale of between 3 weeks and 3 months (and sometimes even longer!) sounds reasonable.  I've no idea what other people think of this.  I hope that my consistency is that I always will reply no matter how long it is and when I do reply I put a lot of thought into it!

Hi!  Totally agree with you but didn't realise it was a problem before!  I'm the sort of person that once I'm friends with you, you'll always be in my heart even if we don't speak that often.  I think the problem is that everyone has different expectations and in a friendship you sort of have to figure it out amongst you what you expect from the other person and what works for the friendship.  I don't feel like many other people are willing to work on a friendship in this way and most of my friends once they moved to different towns just seemed to make other more local friends!  If a friend really needed me I would be there for them but other than that your time scale of between 3 weeks and 3 months (and sometimes even longer!) sounds reasonable.  I've no idea what other people think of this.  I hope that my consistency is that I always will reply no matter how long it is and when I do reply I put a lot of thought into it!

Oh absolutely, I do have a friend who I've known for 20 years but she knows what I'm like and because we've always had non NT conversations I think I was lucky enough to just go "oh hey I'm metaphorically snowed under so lets just chat again in like 3-5 sundays from now". And it's fine. Works for her too because now she's started her own family she's also free to drop off the face of the earth for a bit and just get back in touch when she actually has a break.