finding the nuclear option.

Peter said:

No councillor can help me. No program of inner healing or self-reflection can fix this mess. I need my circumstances to change.

Have you tried a psychotherapist specialising in autism to work through this? I think you will find this gives way more results than changing your circumstances and expecting something different.

If you change the circumstances, will you be a different person? I suspect not, so why would you expect this to change things?

Change comes from within - in your case you need to learn how to make connections that are meaningful to you, otherwise you are just a name, a piece of data that people would remember rather than a person they care about.

My thoughts would be to start making a positive difference in other peoples lives. Start volunteering for a charity to help those who really need help. Also learn some basics of social interactions to help you understand what is going on around you.

That is a meaningful thing to do and something that is likely to result in people connecting with you and remembering you in the present and in the future.

Iain said:

If you change the circumstances, will you be a different person?

That makes no sence. I mean actually I will. I find that me around other nerds who share my interests and sence of hummer is almost a difrent me. That's been my experence. It's part of being an extravert I think. Social interaction recharges me, if it's meaningfull in nature. But even in general if you said to a quadrapleagic, 'will your life really change if you could get up and walk, you will be the same person,' they'd say of course it would.

Iain said:

Change comes from within - in your case you need to learn how to make connections that are meaningful to you, otherwise you are just a name, a piece of data that people would remember rather than a person they care about.

Change comes from taking action. Either my action or someone elses. All the mental gymnastics in the world won't help unless it leads to new courses of action. For instance I've tried volenteering. I never really got close to the volenteers. I got closer to the people I was helping but that was a very unequal relationship. Not really a good basis for a frendship.

I'm open to the idea of a specialist in autistic therapy but it's a mute point because A) I don't know where I'd find one and B) I don't have the money right now.

Iain said:

If you change the circumstances, will you be a different person?

That makes no sence. I mean actually I will. I find that me around other nerds who share my interests and sence of hummer is almost a difrent me. That's been my experence. It's part of being an extravert I think. Social interaction recharges me, if it's meaningfull in nature. But even in general if you said to a quadrapleagic, 'will your life really change if you could get up and walk, you will be the same person,' they'd say of course it would.

Iain said:

Change comes from within - in your case you need to learn how to make connections that are meaningful to you, otherwise you are just a name, a piece of data that people would remember rather than a person they care about.

Change comes from taking action. Either my action or someone elses. All the mental gymnastics in the world won't help unless it leads to new courses of action. For instance I've tried volenteering. I never really got close to the volenteers. I got closer to the people I was helping but that was a very unequal relationship. Not really a good basis for a frendship.

I'm open to the idea of a specialist in autistic therapy but it's a mute point because A) I don't know where I'd find one and B) I don't have the money right now.

Peter said:

beyond my controle no doubt.

Not so mate.  Read below !

Iain said:

I'm sorry if that wasn't what you were after - I took the "ideas?" part to mean you were looking for input. I wasn't aware of the back story you have now furnished but will temper future input with this in mind,

Sorry I didn't mean to come off as harsh. I'm just tired of rehashing old arguments and hearing the same 'advice' over and over.

Iain said:

From what I have experienced the key seems to be not just holding onto the past things that made you happy but constantly looking out for new things to experience, subjects to explore and people to know - that constant renewal of the joy of living makes all the crap that goes with lifes difficult times tolerable.

I don't disagree. But those 'new things' that catch my interest seem to turn up less often nowerdays. a side effect of being forced into a more insular life by circumstances beyond my controle no doubt.

Peter said:

You may call that growing up I call it losing what makes you special and I’ve known some special people and it’s so heartbreaking to see them lose that magic quality

This is a big part of the journey through life for NTs and for many NDs too - it is easy to loose yourself in the "responsibilities" of everything from further education, jobs, mortgages, children, looking after elderly parents, looking after a partners failing health, getting old yourself etc.

From what I have experienced the key seems to be not just holding onto the past things that made you happy but constantly looking out for new things to experience, subjects to explore and people to know - that constant renewal of the joy of living makes all the crap that goes with lifes difficult times tolerable.

Peter said:

You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know, you’re just offering solutions that I already know don’t work.

I'm sorry if that wasn't what you were after - I took the "ideas?" part to mean you were looking for input. I wasn't aware of the back story you have now furnished but will temper future input with this in mind,

You know I might be immature but what I find really immature is people who can’t bring themselves to be honest about not wanting to be your friend anymore. Who leave you in limbo making you trying to guess if they really are busy or distracted or if it’s just that they have grown apart and have decided that they no longer have a place for you in their life.

The mature way to end a friendship would be to say something like “I am sorry I used to really love hanging out with you and I know you’re a really great person but I’ve drifted away from the kind of things we used to enjoy together and I don’t think I’m the same person you used to hang out with and I don’t think there’s space for you in my life anymore like they used to be so I’m probably not going to be hanging out with you anymore.”

only once have I had a friend break of contact with me in that way. An online penpal I met on a nerdy anime forum many years ago. Do you know what? it was tragic and heartbreaking but it was as heartbreaking to watch her get to the stage where she did that anyway. It happened after she had kids. For a long time now her job and her marriage and worries about adult life had been slowly diminishing her dreams and her sense of fun and they’d been put on the backburner one after the other.

But when she had the kids it was almost like she became a different person. Her view points gradually and subtly began to become less liberal. She stopped talking about the things she liked, she no longer had any time to discuss science or politics or anime or anything that she used to enjoy. She stopped talking about her dreams about the things she’d like to do or had hoped to do or had hoped might happen one day.

You may call that growing up I call it losing what makes you special and I’ve known some special people and it’s so heartbreaking to see them lose that magic quality. To watch people lose their individual quirks and their aspirations to be something different and simply settle into becoming a cog in the social machine. It is heartbreaking.

And this is why I do not want to ‘mature‘ I see it as a form of identity death as losing what makes you special. I need to find friends who can accept me as ‘immature’ if that’s the terminology you want to use.

So when I say I find your responses a little condescending what I mean is its pretty condescending to assume I was somehow unaware that a lot of my problems relate to my friends growing old and growing apart from the things that made us good friends, the things I saw in them that made them special. That and the difficulty of making new friends with a similar outlook after you leave that world of study behind for the world of work.

You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know, you’re just offering solutions that I already know don’t work.

Peter said:

for me, 'acting my age,' would be masking

Then this may be the root cause of the reason you find people move on but you remain behind is possibly your lack of maturing when they do - you are no longer thinking in ways they relate to so you are no longer relevant in their world:

Peter said:

The people I thought I would grow old with when I was younger will forget me, many will not even hear of my passing when it comes. They have their wives, husbands, serious others, a few of them have 'besties' of 'bffs.' Platonic friends they seemed joined at the hip to. Evidently, they all decided that shouldn't be me. Many have just disappeared

You also point out that all these people decided they don't want to be friends - this sounds like a pattern which was why I "condescendingly" suggested there is probably something you are getting wrong in the commonly understood social connection interactions.

I was working from the info you gave and not judging you - merely highlighting what I thought most likely to be what is most likely to give you results when you focus on them.

no offence but I find your asertion a little ... 'condecending.' I have a very good hypothasis for why she told me to stop talking to her. She no longer wanted to be my friend. I wasn't letting the contact drop so just ignoring me wasn't going to work. Neurotypicaly she couldn't bring herself to say she didn't want to be friends anymore, especialy knowing I was depresed and strugeling my self. So she invented an excuse that made her seem like she wasn't being mean or rejecting me, leaving the door open to resuming contact when she was less stressed when she had no intention of doing so.

Meaningfull conections were more plentiful when I was young and hung out with more young people. I remain very imature in my interests and tempriment and the opotunity to be around people like that has dried up. Again perfectly functional hypothosis. You say it's not masking but for me, 'acting my age,' would be masking.

50£ can be a lot of money for some people. But in a month after I've got some things out of the way financially it may be less money.

Peter said:

Change comes from taking action.

I was referring to change in your ability to find meaningful connections.  By moving to a new place and acting in the same way you are unlikely to make much of an improvement, but changing how you behave is much more likely to make an improvement on how people interact with you. The behaviour is the "within" part I referred to.

I'm not talking about masking, but looking into why you are having people tell you to stop talking to them.

Peter said:

They told me to stop texting / ringing them because I was stressing them out. 2

Understanding the rules of the social contract of neurotypicals is most likely to help here and working through where you are failing these with a therapist is where you will find ways to adapt.

Finding a therapist is pretty straightforward - have a look on https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/counselling/england?category=autism

They typically charge in the region of £50/hour so you can budget for this - I think they quote their rates in their profile.

Armed with this self knowledge and understaning the rules better it should be much easier to go out and socialise.