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Want to retreat but know that wouldn't be helpful

Stripymouse

Hi!  Everything that is happening in life, both personal and in a wider society view, is causing me to want to retreat, forget it all and just be alone.  However, overall that's not what I want!  I can be a very social person, albeit in small amounts, and I want to have friends and be accepted.  I struggle with this so much and don't know what to do about it.  I've tried to be a good friend to people over the years and have been supportive and interested in them etc yet something about me still seems to mean I end up mostly on my own.  Anyway, I welcome anyone with advice or just sympathy or anyone who wants to make friends! 

Parents

  • 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.

  • in reply to 🐝 Bees 🐝 (they/them) Autism resources in bio #stoptheshock #NothingAboutUsWithoutUs

    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!

  • in reply to Stripymouse

    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.

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