Can an aspie be happy in life without pursuing friendships?

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Is it possible for someone with asperger's to live a fulfilling life without pursuing friends and actively avoiding making new friends because of social anxieties? Is it possible for them to live a happy life if their only friends are those in their immediate family?

I hope so. I think for a man a job is the most important thing. Everything sort of flows from there. A man is his job or becomes his job you could say. I really don't think it's possible for a man to be happy and fulfilled without a job no matter what relationships he has. Sadly I live in a high unemployment area.

My job is what actually led me to suicide years ago. I still do the same job, but you can say I'm now a "broken" man, like a rodeo horse. I've given in to the fact that I'm doomed to that stupid job. I also have no friends at all. Not one. And I have no family members near by. I'm as lonely as they get. I don't even know if I'm looking for happiness. At my age, and after what I've been through, the most important thing is being domiciled.

Why not?

I think some individuals here on WP said in their posts that they were happy without friends. But I don't know exactly what their situations are or if they really meant it. For me, it's impossible. I surely can survive without friends, but cannot "live happily" that way.

Yes, I think you can be happy without friends, if that is your personality and you occupy yourself with work, study or the pursuit of an interest. Sartre wrote "Hell is other people". Some people are happiest being alone in a cabin in the woods or basically shut in. I think happiness comes from yourself anyway, you can be happy despite other people or you can put distance between yourself and others if you are happier alone.

I'm not certain if I can be happy without it as yet. I currently don't have much dealings with other people outside of work. I pursue my interests and hobbies on my own. I don't crave for the company of others. I hope I'll be able to be perfectly comfortable by myself for the rest of my life, but I can't predict that I will. Perhaps my attitudes will change over time.

I'd imagine so...
I'm at my most content when I'm not interacting with anyone in any personal sense whatsoever (so I can completely dissociate myself from... myself, essentially). Funnily enough, I'm screwing that up just by being here and discussing things... but doing messed up, self-destructive things like that is pretty much par for the course by now. I set out what I need to do in my mind, and then I do something that completely messes it up... because success is overrated or something. I dunno. Because nothing, probably.


... Happy?
...... Family?
Ew.
Happy is overrated. Happy, from what I vaguely recall from dim and distant memories where I was capable of something roughly approximating that, is something that interferes in the dissociative process. As for family... they're a nuisance, but at least I find they're willing to take more social abuse than most folks, which is some relief. As I told my boss at work earlier after my sister phoned me: "If you hear me being that rude to someone on the phone, it is family."




I take it you failed...
... I mean on account of you being alive enough to post that.
I don't generally believe in poltergeists, but sometimes I do worry if everything I know is wrong. I have a persistent irrational fear that the impossible might actually not be so.

I'm gonna say no, with a caveat. If you've ever had friends or any kind of relationship, you'll want them more, and if you cannot get them you'll be unhappy. But, if you've never had them or have only limited exposure to them, then you won't have a baseline to compare your life with. This is my problem now. I'm really no "lonelier" than I was 5 years ago, but because 3 years or so ago, I had a period where I had a social group to belong to and hung out with people like 4-5 nights a week, I now am unhappy. I'll probably never really experience something like that again, but that's my baseline.

It also depends upon how much you're exposed to other people and what they have. If you lived in like Africa and all you had was a CRT TV, and everyone else around you had CRT TVs, then you'd feel fine about owning said CRT TV. But if you came to America with the same CRT TV, you'd feel terrible because you'd see everyone else with giant LCD TVs.

So if you can avoid ever experiencing relationships, and avoid seeing the relationships in the world around you, then you may be successful. But this is very hard.

I neither want nor need friends. I don't have them (at least not living in the same state) and don't even know how to make them. Having a friend would be bad if they kept expecting me to go out of the house and do things. Most of the time I'd rather just stay home.

Yes it is possible, I am living that life and have lived that way life for a long time.

Life is good and I even talk to myself!

Sometimes I dream about having a best friend to share all my thoughts with but I realize I am too picky and it wont happen any time soon.

Not every friend is going to exept you to go out. I have friends that don't expect me to go out with them, go shopping with them, etc.

I'm kind of torn between the two. When the two friends I hang out with are out of town (most of the year) I wish they were around so I had something to do but when they're in town (this past month for the holidays) I wish they were gone because the pressure to hang out with them causes considerable anxiety. In a perfect world, they'd give me an exact schedule, weeks in advance of the days and hours we would spend together, always followed by at least two days of alone time. I hate the *phone rings at 8pm: Hey, want to hang out at 9?* thing. It drives me INSANE. As a kid, I used to dream about being a castaway and living alone on an island, left to my own devices. As an adult, I'm convinced that that'd only lead to happiness if I had a functional ferry to take me back to civilization at least a few times a year. So I guess, no, I wouldn't be happy nor would I feel completely fulfilled without friendship.

I personally think a person can be happy without friends. I think life is easier and maybe even more fulfilling with a couple goods friends though. I think it depends on your beliefs. I like to think that if a person is totally grounded and self-satisfied (realizing that you have flaws and accepting them is part of it) with themselves, then friends are just the 'icing on the cake'. I think you should feel whole by yourself. You shouldn't need other people to "complete you".
That said, it does seem to be pretty difficult to achieve.
I think the desire for friends sometimes stems from jealousy. Like,"Wow, look at all the friends she has! She seems so happy. They all support her".
Then again, some people's personalities seem to require friends.

If you haven't tried to pursue a friendship yet, you just haven't found a friendship worth pursuing.

And as for the question itself, I'm not sure.

But it's certainly better than pursuing a friendship that isn't worth it.