Making and keeping friends

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Hello everyone,

How to make friends has always been something I have never really understood. I have always preferred my own company but have always longed to have at least one good friend that I can relate to and count on. I observe others around me that seem to have a solid network of friends around them to provide them with support. I have never understood how that feels. To this day at the age of 40 friendship has been missing for so long. It feels life is leaving me well behind. I would like to know what is the best way to go about making friends and how to keep them.


I have always strived to be a good person, follow the rules and do the right thing. I never followed the group think culture, being eccentric and odd, so I was always a target for the bullying predators. When I was a kid I couldn’t wait to become an adult because I thought adults don’t get bullied anymore. Of course bullying continues it just becomes more sophisticated, subtle and more dangerous. Many school bullies remain so as adults perfecting their craft. Bullying has continued into the workplace and neighborhood at times.


My attempts to make friends have left me feeling more alone and confused. I can never put my finger on what exactly I am doing wrong. I seem to get negative feedback from people by the way they treat me, so I become even more focused on my actions and become more self conscious. I have always found I got on better with females as friends and had some sort of friends many years back. In saying that I think I could best benefit from male friends of my own ilk. I made the effort to join a club with one of my hobbies, so there has been a few times when I have had positive social encounters, but they are fairly limited and don’t seem to continue.


I would be interested to hear from others in a similar position who have managed to make friends.
What approach worked the best and how do you keep friends.

Last edited by Asperation on 15 Jan 2014, 2:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.

i feel for you. i have made one friend and kept her for 11 years now, all the other friends i made realized im weird and ditched me.

That's what happened to me around high school, the few sort of friends I had followed the crowd and off they went.

It is good you have had a good friend for that long.

The only way to get "typical" reliable NT friendships is by comforming to group-thinking - and that a lot!

If you did this you would probably realize you would rather be alone than live with the pain of conforming.

But genuine friendships with AS people are indeed valuable, but more rare.

I am very happy in a relationship for 6 years now, which mostly satisfies my need for other people, but yeah, so difficult.

I often read that aspergers have trouble to connect with other people, and I think that is just plain wrong. It is stupidly easy for me to connect to anything around me, its the neurotypicals who are unable to connect to me. And a one way connection just opens the door to abuse and negative feelings.

I think the best way to make friends is with activities/hobbies, so a common ground is already established.

I don't really mean NT friendships, I think friendship with an NT would be an exhausting effort. I can't see that I could ever surrender to the dreaded group think which is the essential part of group acceptance. Genuine AS friendship is rare of course, I'm still not sure how to be a friend but know I need one, you can see why they are rare then I guess, but as you say valuable too, so worth pursuing.