Friendships and relationships amongst autistic people

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Do the difficulties autistic people face double when they try to establish meaningful relationships among themselves, or is there more understanding (not mutually exclusive options I suppose)? Are such social links likely to be more than ephemeral and develop long-term?

Curious to hear of your experiences, as my own relationships with people with ASD crumbled about the same way other ones did.

i was very fortunate to finally [after 5 decades] find a compatible group of people in my olympia square pegs aspie meetup group finally i can say i belong among the others, that they are my peers and that i am not out of place. i didn't believe that this would ever happen. but as john lennon said, "life is what happens when you've made other plans."
we are all male and mostly single, 'cept for one [just legalized] married couple. i finally have a venue for my uncensored thoughts, with these nice people. finally somebody understands me and accepts me.
TheValk, can you tell me what do you believe caused your relationships with spectrum folk to have crumbled? just curious.

That sounds wonderful, auntblabby.

I started the discussion to help me find out. I think it may be related to how for a long time I wanted to convince myself I am and will definitely be acknowledged as belonging to the surrounding, and failed to understand what exactly was going wrong. Perhaps if I verbalise what I already know (or store more information about how relationships between people work out) or focus on this knowledge, I will be able to be more successful, but I remain clueless. The outcome is always the same - everything just cuts off and you find yourself alone.

I once had a good friendship with a person that I know has Autism, and I have a good friendship with a person I think has Autism.

well you would think that having a friend on the spectrum would be good-that they would understand your difficulties and not be critical of you but that is not always the case as I found out-I give people on the spectrum more latitude than NT's but I wasn't afforded the same courtesy it seems.

I had hoped [assumed] that others on the spectrum would be like me, but of course that's not always the case - I find there's often a clash in AS/ASD 'types', although I prefer talkative confident social NT's as friends...AS/ASD folks with those traits tire me out very quickly, and frankly annoy me greatly. Quiet AS/ASD folks I get on better with initially, but my personality is naturally outgoing and confident (it's just the ASD hides that at first) so when I find quiet AS/ASD folk I find often as we get to know each other our personalities just don't gel. I also find the whole 'high-functioning'/'low-functioning'/autistic/asperger thing divides us, people seem so caught-up in who can 'function' better it means that if you struggle, even in just one area, you're instantly ruled-out as a potential friend or looked down upon.

There's definitely an "opposites attract" element to autistic-NT relationships. My best friend is my polar opposite. She goes out clubbing and has always been very popular. Even with that massive disparity in social habits, we actually get along really well. I was the maid of honor for her wedding and we're still close like sisters.

As far as romantic relationships go, I'm actually dating an aspie right now. Before that, I would've never thought I could date another aspie for your same reason, but so far it seems to be working well. Even though we both have Asperger's, he's still somehow my opposite. I suppose he's a bit more extroverted and talkative.

i am very thankful that there are no braggarts nor hip-hoppers in our group, i think those two kinds would drive me away after a while.

I've noticed that the aspie people I know seem to make friends with each other and get along no more or less frequent/better/worse than with NTs. However, I've noticed that my family members who are aspie brothers can't seem to get along very well at all even though they're very much alike. It could be just a being brothers and being alike thing, but I feel like it could also be from having too many of the same interests and being competitive about them.

I don't think it's impossible for autistics to be friends with other autistics, or for autistics to have other friends. I do think it is harder for them in general though.

My best friend is an Aspie and hanging out with him is how I eventually realized I was too. My other best friend (his wife) has ADHD. I don't have a lot of NT friends. Most have some form of autism, bipolar, ocd, etc.

I have friends on the spectrum. Their presence is largely preferential to NT adolescents.

I get on well with most Aspies, however, the unintentionally rude, arrogant, overly judgemental kind just aren't compatible with me. I think it takes an extremely tolerant and patient person to deal with them.

I know many people on the spectrum who prefer having friends on the spectrum and get along well with them. However, the downside I have seen to this is the issue of hierarchies. Sometimes, the people who have higher social awareness tend to reject and even bully people on the spectrum with lower social awareness. One girl with AS I know does this quite a lot and it's really tough to get her to stop. It's hard for her to at least understand where they are coming from.

Even though I have good social awareness, I try to establish a connection between as many people on the spectrum as possible because I know how it feels to be left out.