Friends or rather the lack of them

I can definitely relate to this, and the replies. I’ve always found socialising very exhausting and quite unsettling. When I was younger I needed a drink or two to be sociable. Then I met my husband and then I felt (with some relief!) that I didn’t have to try as hard to keep the friendships I had (they weren’t very close friendships in any case). 
But like you I feel a bit sad about this at times and wonder if myself and my husband might have enjoyed maintaining more friendships with people. But deep down I don’t think socialising with people like that was very enjoyable for me. I just didn’t want to, and found it too stressful. 
Sometimes I see people who I know to be quite unpleasant people who have a lot of friends - and that really confuses me! It’s strange.

Anyway - we are considering making some effort in terms of meeting a few people and maybe being a bit more sociable when we move to the new area that we have plans to relocate to. Not sure how we’ll go about this, but we’re considering it. Maybe do some evening classes or join a walking group or something. 

I find friendships extremely exhausting however I do have a couple of friends but I probably only see them a few times a year.

I can just about manage short socialising periods with my partners friends but this can leave me feeling exhausted and I find it so much effort and realise that I just can’t seem to manage this socialising lark like I wish I could. I do sometimes look at people and think, how do they have so much to talk about, how can they go about conversation so freely and with such confidence and conviction and I do at times feel a bit sad about it but I’m coming to the point of acceptance, that friendships to me are different to what i once thought they should be.

Ive only just been diagnosed with ASD in July, and I’m now realising so many things about myself and feel I can finally unmask and be me. Though this is coming with a huge amount of emotional challenges.

I’m finding a lot of comfort in this forum though even after only joining 2 days ago, I have realised that wow I really do have ASD and things past and present really are starting to make sense for the first time.

It's easer for Autistic people to make friends online. Even in my younger years when I had offline friends, my closer friends were at home online.

I have few friends or close aquaintances either, I find it amazing that some people are still friends with people they knew at school, I know nobody from before I move to the island.

But I do wonder if my lack of long term friends is because my life has changed so radiacally, so many times, it's like being reincarnated into the same body, each incarnation has it's own friends or lack of them.

I wonder how people keep up friendships over decades? Thier groups must be very forgiving of life changes and willing to let the person grow.

Yeh well I don’t drink alcohol so it’s hard to meet folks that don’t drink either I guess. Especially at my age wheee everything seems to revolve around drink. 

After my last disastrous attempt at socialising in 2018,typically so, I decided to give up on trying to socialise more. For whatever reason  the vast majority of people I've interacted with haven't liked me. I have no desire to subject myself to more cruel hurt and rejection. As it is with my mobility difficulties I couldn't get out to socialise even if I wanted to. I do better online than F2F with other people. FB=350+ 'friends' . X= 869 followers.  The more intelligent people are the less  they're likely to reject me for being 'weird'.

I can play the game and keep up appearances but there's just no connection, no spark. Truthfully I find interacting with people tiring and I prefer them at arms length anyway.

I suppose my fear would be that something happened in my relationship with my wife and kids and then I truly would be alone.

I understand the feeling. I've now accepted that I will never join those kinds of friendship groups you described (it really felt like work which doesn't feel natural). However, that doesn't mean I don't want any friends at all, I'm just not sure how to achieve that.

I've spoken with therapists in the past and we once touched on how I might have certain ideas of what friendships are based from childhood. If you think about it, in a school setting friendships are different because you're seeing certain people all the time, you're all doing similar things together, and so it just evolves that way. In adulthood that changes, you now have responsibility, age becomes irrelevant, the world is far bigger than you can imagine. Yet the unspoken rules of developing friendships as children still sit with me - I assume that it worked in the past, and I'm confused why it doesn't work now, or why no one explained to me it would be this different.

I have a couple of friends now which is good, and I'm trying to accept that I don't need big social groups to be happy. But I do occasionally still get those feelings or regret and isolation from time to time.

Ultimately, no one is there with us at the last garrison; besides God.

Friendship is hard work, and can overwhelm. My closest friend is an Artist fifteen years older than me. (My next group of men are twenty and nineteen years older) I was interested in older stuff, as a young boy. And, perhaps, I gravitate towards that era.