Are you intimate with many people?

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I don't think it can be explained in just a few words, and I don't think its just a AS thing, its a personality thing as well.

Myself I've had 2 real best friends, one of them was NT, she came over one day with her dad (he was delivering some things to my grandparents), and then she came back by herself the next day just to see me, she is the one who initiated the friendship, if she hadn't done that we probably wouldn't have been friends. The other one was autistic, and in this case I initiated the communication (which I very rarely do), it was during the last month of elementary school, and she and her parents had just moved from another area and she was alone during recreation time and I went to her and started talking to her and we became friends.

Sorry, but that last sentence is grating on me, so I apologise for being pedantic here, but if I don't let the thought escape my brain it'll fester all night (don't take it personally, it's for my own benefit.)

What you are talking about is the adjective "intimate" (having a very close relationship) and not the verb "intimate" (to state...)

English is wonderful isn't it?

The whole paragraph was taken from Wikipedia. It's all part of my rant that Aspies have trouble being intimate. It's hard to closely follow other's lives, and care, and keep it all together, and be genuinely interested. I think it is a big difference, and not something therapy or drugs can change.

"Intimacy generally refers to the feeling of being in a close personal association and belonging together. It is a familiar and very close affective connection with another as a result of a bond that is formed through knowledge and experience of the other. Genuine intimacy in human relationships requires dialogue, transparency, vulnerability, and reciprocity. The verb "intimate" means "to state or make known". The activity of intimating (making known) underpins the meanings of "intimate" when used as a noun and adjective. The noun "intimate" means a person with whom one has a particularly close relationship. This was clarified by Dalton (1959) who discusses how anthropologists and ethnographic researchers access "inside information" from within a particular cultural setting by establishing networks of intimates capable (and willing) to provide information unobtainable through formal channels.[3] The adjective "intimate" indicates detailed knowledge of a thing or person (e.g., "an intimate knowledge of engineering" and "an intimate relationship between two people").[4]"

So many of us think... feel... that we are intimate with our pets. But we don't really dialogue with our pets. They don't actually know about our lives. We may feel intimate with family members (like I did with my daughters), but they didn't know about ME. My life wasn't transparent to them... an open book. I knew about them... and could "read" them up to a certain age.

Aha, it all makes sense now. Not that I disagreed with you in the first place (I forgot to answer your question, which itself did make sense).

For me the answer is none. I have my family, whom I tolerate. I have the people I work with, whom I barely have any contact outside of work.

I'm getting a cat

"Get a (sexual) relationship" isn't that hard... hormones are flowing. But keeping a relationship requires intimacy. It requires caring about how the other person is feeling and having those feelings modify one's behavior and goals.

Im only actually intimate with my imagnary partner, sadley I even have trouble talking tl my parents about real deep down stuff, so no real personn as to say of but if I had a real partner I would guess I would be very intimate with her.

same here. Me too. This is so important to me.

Going by your definition....... 1 person.

Going by the definition, only 2. No matter how many people I talk to, actually becoming close is a challenge.

One human, my life partner and my two leonberger dogs. I'm fine with that actually.

One person (my mum) that is it.

I agree. And to be honest, eventho he was not a saint himself, I think he always cared a lot more about me, than me about him , I really am not "the perfect wife". I wish I could love more.

Assuming I understand your definition)...I suppose I am intimate with my wife + 2 daughters.

I'm emotionally close to my Mom, and less so with my sister, but they're still the two people I don't want to imagine being permanently separated from.

In a more general sense, I have a few casual friends at my church, but we don't talk much outside of services. I still harbor very strong emotions for my ex-girlfriend as well, but my statements make almost no discernible impression on her. She doesn't call me voluntarily anymore, though I leave voice messages on her phone every few days. I also write to her on Facebook, and I know she reads them...but replies are extremely rare. It tears me up like crazy, too; I often want to just get her alone in a room, away from distractions, and make her realize how much her constant indifference hurts me. We spoke very briefly by phone 2 days ago, and she told me her only thought about me is not knowing what to say. I believed her at first, but now I think its mostly a cop-out. She's spent so much of her life shutting down her emotions to avoid pain, but it also keeps her from real, lasting trust with anybody.

It's not unusual for my phone not to ring, ever. Which suits me fine as my very limited social contact arrangements occur mostly through and in the company of my husband, an NT extrovert who loves talking 😊.

I'm not sure that I am truly intimate with anyone - the knowledge and understanding that people who are meaningful in my life have of me is fragmented, but as I am neither a puzzle to be solved nor a painting to be understood, the contemporary 3D communication is not likely to occur anytime soon.

I'm afraid I gave up on intimacy, on any level, a good few years ago.

One thing that did strike me though, when I last had a brief relationship with someone, was how often her phone (land line) rang. It was "only" six or seven times a day, but I still couldn't get my head round it!

I also recall noticing people in cafes, on buses etc, fiddling around all the time with mobile phones, while not apparently speaking into them. My assumption, for quite a while, was that these must be very unreliable devices which needed a lot of fixing or adjustments. Needless to say, they were texting.

I've still never had a mobile phone lol!