tjr1243 wrote:
There is a lot of hype out there about how close social relationships are correlated with happiness. People who have more friends / close connections are happier.
Thus, even those of us on the spectrum are encouraged to try interacting with people, in the hopes that we will gain social skills and meet this universal human desire.
However, I'm quickly learning that this desire is not universal, but not sure how well most of us would do with no human interaction at all.
My theory is that for those of us who have failed so far and have at least 30 years of failure to show for it - there comes a point where it is counterproductive to keep trying. Simply because, the human interaction we do get if we DO try, is mostly detrimental.
In other words, I believe that being around people does me more harm than good, because I simply don't get enough acceptance from others.
A minority may like and accept me, but I've never enjoyed a close relationship, so the gains would not be worth the upsets.
What do you think? Do you think that for most of us on the spectrum, it is better to hide most of the time?
I don’t think it’s bad for us at all. Negative interactions are negative for everyone.
Other than family members (but I’ll exclude them for the purpose of this post) there have been no-one IRL I have felt very close to, felt like were my friend.
In the 3 different daycares I went to there were children I got along with better than others, but there was only one other child I can say I actually liked. In my preschool years I called the ones I played with playmates, all the rest were simply ‘children’.
In elementary school I was into activities for the sake of the activity itself, not for the children involved. At that age you could have changed the children I played with with other children, robots or anything else, and it would have made no difference for me, because it was all about the activity or game for me. In elementary school I thought children I occasionally played with during recess or at the off occasion after school, were friends because we sometimes had fun together, and I had no other words for them, as I thought of playmates as something younger children have. But playmates were what they were. I played with them when they started a fun game (and allowed me to join, which was most of the time; only occasionally would they shut me out, and ironically they would usually shout the rhyme about how no-one else could join when I was just passing them and had no intention of joining them), and in the school yard I left the minute I was bored. (I didn’t just leave if it happened when we were together after school though.) I had no emotional attachment to them.
In junior high my perceptions changed somewhat. I sought out specific individuals. There were a few girls who used to claim that we were friends. I had fun with them in school but lacked the wish to be around them in my sparetime and the attachment I felt to them was very weak, no more than people would feel for a friendly acquaintance. It was the typical aloof interaction really, in for the fun, out the rest of the time. They must have known that at some level, because it did make them upset at times and I didn't understand why. Now I get it but I couldn’t feel what I didn’t feel, I wasn’t deliberately not feeling the same way. I never meant for them to feel bad!
In high school there was no-one I was close to. The same holds true for my adult years.
There were plenty of people in school I liked well enough. With that I mean that I could have fun with them and liked interacting with them, but I didn’t truly care about them. I wasn’t attached to them, despite some of them claiming to care about me (in junior high).
But despite the lack of emotional closeness on my part, I still very much benefited from the interactions. They brightened my school days and the school years, and the school years I remember best and with most joy are the ones where I had classmates I liked and got along with and was in touch with throughout the day, which means 5th-9th grade mostly.
When I weren’t in touch with them in school I sometimes missed it, but I rarely thought of them outside of school, and it never came with a wish to be together. It was just reminiscing.
In the years I didn’t have that kind of relations, I wasn’t miserable for it, but I was happier in the years when I did. And if I ever get employment, I would hope to have that kind of relations with my colleagues as well because it makes the day go faster and it makes me feel better.
For me, those relations never extended to me wanting to spend time with them outside of where we knew each other (school), so when I was invited to get-togethers I seldom wanted to go. I was always talked into it which made them say I played hard to get, which I didn’t, I just wanted to do my own stuff, but caved when they got upset. I was never miserable when I got there and I never regretted going, but it just wasn’t my first priority. I wasted so much time on school as it was, I just wanted to spend my free time on my interests and my pets. Looking back I wonder why they wanted me to come at all, I sure wasn’t very likeable.
I never put in much effort at all. It was pretty much down to them.
When I started going on different forums in my early 30’s I had the same relation with people there at first. Plenty I liked but none that I was attached to. I liked interacting with them and I had fun playing forum games with them.
Then over the course of 2010 and onwards some online friendships developed. I found that the difference between interacting with acquaintances and friends was like night and day. I had never thought playing games with people could be so much fun! I had never thought I could care so much about people I wasn’t related to! I had never thought interactions could feel so wonderful! I had never in my wildest dreams thought that people could matter so much to me...
I still have a hard time connecting to people and it’s a rare thing that I do, but when it does happen, it tends to happen pretty quickly, and the ones I do care about, I care about deeply, which greatly surprises me. I really thought that it was a part I didn’t have, a switch that wasn’t turned on in me, and I thought all the talk about the importance of friendships were exaggerated, until I experienced it myself. I can’t even begin to describe what it means to have someone you trust, someone you can confide in, someone you want to spend time with, someone you don’t have to pretend around. Another thing I could never have predicted was the difference between having fun with friends versus having fun with acquaintances.
To put it in words all aspies will understand: it’s like the difference between enjoying a special interest and a random okay interest. It just makes all your interactions with them so much more enjoyable and emotional.
I never would have thought it made such a difference. I’m so aloof and asocial I thought I had social anhedonia. It turns out I don’t when it comes to the right people.
I’m still not social. I don’t need
people, but when I have friends I need specific
individuals. I prefer solitude to people in general. I prefer those few I like to solitude. I never miss having people around, but when I’m not in touch with specific individuals I miss
them.
Of course, it’s hard to keep them. Over the last 3 years there have been 7 people I have considered my friends. 6 of them aren’t currently in my life and 5 haven’t been for more than a year. I have learned to never expect anything, never take anything for granted and just enjoy what is while it lasts.
I noticed that some posters mentioned only wanting to interact with other aspies. I can’t say that I necessarily find aspies easier to understand than NTs. It’s only a matter of
what part of them I can relate to. I’ve come across both aspies and NTs I can’t understand at all, and I’ve come across aspies and NTs I can relate to in varying degree. I conclude that neurology is only one of many aspects of what make us who we are, and that alone won’t make me click with someone.
16 Dec 2013, 7:37 am
