Friends who don't invite you places

Page 2 of 2 [ 24 posts ]  Go to page Previous  1, 2

countzarroff
Velociraptor
Velociraptor

User avatar

Joined: 27 Sep 2008
Age: 35
Gender: Male
Posts: 401
Location: Massachusetts

16 Dec 2008, 3:28 am

ThisUserNameIsTaken wrote:
So, TC, now that you know my experiences with this kind of situation, allow me to give you some advice: Those people aren't really your friends. They're acting friendly to you now and pretending to like you because they don't want to have to deal with any awkward drama and tell someone to their face that they don't want to be around them. Mark my words, however, that once they're no longer forced to be around you they will abandon you almost instantly. I wouldn't give up though. Just keep forcing yourself to socialize in order to get practice and keep an eye open for things you're doing that are off-putting to people (for me the major thing I noticed was that I had a bad habit of cracking a lot of bad jokes). Personally I'd look at your current "friends" as the ideal practice since you've got nothing to lose. That way when you try making new, better friends you'll have a greater chance at success. And from personal experience I would recommend trying to make friends with people who have similar personalities as your's. With aspies this usually means other aspies, geeks/nerds, or immigrants/foreigners (since their displacement in a foreign culture makes them more open-minded than the natives).


Finally somebody gets that! There are two basic kinds of rejectors, in-your-face, which are easy to point out, and the cowards which don't like you but are afraid to tell you so because they fear your reaction. As I said before, people who don't invite you to s#$% are not your friends.



Crocodile
Velociraptor
Velociraptor

User avatar

Joined: 27 Jul 2008
Age: 32
Gender: Female
Posts: 403
Location: The Netherlands

16 Dec 2008, 1:34 pm

I often find out my firends did something together without me. All of them, the entire group did something like having a party or viewing a movie, without inviting me, or mentioning it. Sometimes I find out, and then they respond very vague, as if I'm a ret*d. It is very disrespectful and it hurts.


_________________
Christians believe in The Holy Bible, Muslims believe in The Qur'aan and I believe in Mother Goose's Tale.

I GRADUATED WITH THE HIGHEST GRADES OF MY YEAR!! !! !


EnigmaticPhilosophy
Raven
Raven

User avatar

Joined: 13 Dec 2008
Age: 37
Gender: Male
Posts: 118
Location: Los Angeles, California

01 Jan 2009, 10:04 pm

I suggest you do what I did during my first semester: just go on about your business.

Don't even bother trying to make friends at all. I have found from my own personal experiences that doing so only equates to wasted time and energy.
I just let people come to me, then I converse with them and observe their behaviors/mannerisms, and then determine from all that whether or not they are worth my time.
Fortunately, I have managed to gain some friends from this, but only because I made sure through observation/conversation that we have enough in common with each other to make it work.

While it sounds rather cynical, this approach did work well for me.



ThisUserNameIsTaken
Blue Jay
Blue Jay

User avatar

Joined: 30 Nov 2008
Age: 36
Gender: Male
Posts: 96

02 Jan 2009, 12:19 pm

EnigmaticPhilosophy wrote:
I suggest you do what I did during my first semester: just go on about your business.

Don't even bother trying to make friends at all. I have found from my own personal experiences that doing so only equates to wasted time and energy.
I just let people come to me, then I converse with them and observe their behaviors/mannerisms, and then determine from all that whether or not they are worth my time.
Fortunately, I have managed to gain some friends from this, but only because I made sure through observation/conversation that we have enough in common with each other to make it work.

While it sounds rather cynical, this approach did work well for me.


I would suggest not doing precisely this. Even though making friends tends to be a soul crushing effort for aspies and you will probably want to give up many times (I can certainly relate to all this) it's important to hang in there and keep trying. Socializing is an art and even though you can learn a lot of them through rote memorization you'll always still need to practice to get the finesse needed to be successful (just like how you can know all the techniques and details about painting but if you don't have any practice your paintings aren't going to look very good). I think that a lot of aspies "grow out of" AS in their late teens/early 20's but still struggle with the after-effects of AS; namely that after a lifetime of social rejection/ostracizing and being slow at learning social skills we're pretty far behind the curve when we grow up. As a result the only thing that's going to better your social skills is practicing. At first this is always a painful experience since you're still going to be oblivious to a lot of things. However, keep forcing yourself to be social and sooner or later you'll begin to improve. And don't just passively engage in social situations, but rather actively pay attention to what others around you are doing and what you're doing. Look out for things that you're doing which are off-putting to other people, things that you could be doing better, things that other people do, the way conversations flow, the language people use, etc.

I'm suggesting this from personal experience. As I already said in my last post in this topic I've had some issues with friends before. Even after that really big letdown in college though I kept at it. Whenever someone would invite me to hang out or whenever I would happen across someone I knew I would stop what I was doing and make myself hang-out. I'd have to say that even though there were let downs the result thus far has been worth it. I'm definitely a lot better at socializing than I was two years ago when I started college and as a result I have a good group of friends now with whom I have a lot of fun hanging out with.



EnigmaticPhilosophy
Raven
Raven

User avatar

Joined: 13 Dec 2008
Age: 37
Gender: Male
Posts: 118
Location: Los Angeles, California

03 Jan 2009, 3:06 am

ThisUserNameIsTaken wrote:
EnigmaticPhilosophy wrote:
I suggest you do what I did during my first semester: just go on about your business.

Don't even bother trying to make friends at all. I have found from my own personal experiences that doing so only equates to wasted time and energy.
I just let people come to me, then I converse with them and observe their behaviors/mannerisms, and then determine from all that whether or not they are worth my time.
Fortunately, I have managed to gain some friends from this, but only because I made sure through observation/conversation that we have enough in common with each other to make it work.

While it sounds rather cynical, this approach did work well for me.


I would suggest not doing precisely this. Even though making friends tends to be a soul crushing effort for aspies and you will probably want to give up many times (I can certainly relate to all this) it's important to hang in there and keep trying. Socializing is an art and even though you can learn a lot of them through rote memorization you'll always still need to practice to get the finesse needed to be successful (just like how you can know all the techniques and details about painting but if you don't have any practice your paintings aren't going to look very good). I think that a lot of aspies "grow out of" AS in their late teens/early 20's but still struggle with the after-effects of AS; namely that after a lifetime of social rejection/ostracizing and being slow at learning social skills we're pretty far behind the curve when we grow up. As a result the only thing that's going to better your social skills is practicing. At first this is always a painful experience since you're still going to be oblivious to a lot of things. However, keep forcing yourself to be social and sooner or later you'll begin to improve. And don't just passively engage in social situations, but rather actively pay attention to what others around you are doing and what you're doing. Look out for things that you're doing which are off-putting to other people, things that you could be doing better, things that other people do, the way conversations flow, the language people use, etc.

I'm suggesting this from personal experience. As I already said in my last post in this topic I've had some issues with friends before. Even after that really big letdown in college though I kept at it. Whenever someone would invite me to hang out or whenever I would happen across someone I knew I would stop what I was doing and make myself hang-out. I'd have to say that even though there were let downs the result thus far has been worth it. I'm definitely a lot better at socializing than I was two years ago when I started college and as a result I have a good group of friends now with whom I have a lot of fun hanging out with.




Different strokes for different folks, I guess.
What works well for me may not work well for others.



soljaboi51
Snowy Owl
Snowy Owl

User avatar

Joined: 7 Dec 2007
Age: 32
Gender: Male
Posts: 147
Location: Seattle, Washington, United States

03 Jan 2009, 4:29 am

Yep thats pretty much been my whole high school experience so far.



rabbit90
Pileated woodpecker
Pileated woodpecker

User avatar

Joined: 21 Nov 2007
Age: 33
Gender: Female
Posts: 176
Location: Australia

03 Jan 2009, 6:43 am

Yes this always happens to me. But in all honest it doesn't phase me too much. I can generally fairly easily find a few new superficial "friends" for the time being.

Also I don't really like going out with other people too much as 1. I don't generally like them and 2. What they do and like is boring.

But what does irk me, is when they try to hide it from you. :evil:



go_around
Blue Jay
Blue Jay

User avatar

Joined: 31 Dec 2008
Age: 41
Gender: Female
Posts: 78

03 Jan 2009, 3:43 pm

Yep, that happened to me in college, especially in the first few years. What always bothered me the most was that I couldn't quite figure out why I was so upset to not be invited to do things that I probably wouldn't have enjoyed much in the first place. I think it's mostly what others have already said - no one will just be honest about what's going on and tell you to your face that they don't want you around. I don't care if people don't like me, but I hate having to guess about it!

For me, it turned out that some of those people just plain weren't really my friends, and others were my friends but had pretty much just assumed that I wouldn't want to do certain types of things with them, so they only invited me those things they thought I would actually go to (for example, a movie marathon but not a kegger). It took a while to figure out which was which, however, since people who don't actually like you won't play their hand openly and will get pissed off if you try to (and possibly try to sabotage your other friendships by telling people how you were so blunt and such an "as*hole" to them).

From my experience I think your best bet is to just start initiating yourself. If you invite people to a movie and they make up some kind of lame excuse then they're probably not actually your friends. If they go or can't go but actually try to arrange an alternate time or movie to go to, then they probably aren't intentionally blowing you off and you should continue to try to hang out with them. It's probably also a good idea to try to meet other people (through clubs or whatever). I've definitely noticed that people are more likely to want to hang out with you when they see that you are liked by others, so having different groups of friends makes it easier to ensure that you get enough invites to satisfy your social needs without driving any of them crazy by ALWAYS wanting to hang out with just them.