Coummunication - for older aspies

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I've never been able to communicate most of my ideas to my friends, especially the ideas that define my personality. Up until recently I had kept up a shadow of a social life, but every time I go out with friends is basically a performance and I realize now that I don't think I have the energy or desire to attempt it anymore. Always what ends up happening is either my company loses interest in what I have to say, or I end up just conforming to "normal" conversation. So what's happened is that I've been basically isolated for the past five or so months. I want to ask if anyone has experienced a moment like this, and if it really did mark a change in their lifestyle from then on, or if they eventually got over it.

ill tell ya when i get over that hump... i'm right at the cusp of it atm

This is how I felt, until I met a certain group of friends. Maybe it was just shared interests, maybe they were high on the scale, whatever. But it all felt really great interacting with them. It was just natural - plays on words, jokes, everything made sense. Now I'm back without this.

i stayed isolated for years until i decided to make a radical change. things were not getting any better for me and the horrid breakup of now a year ago was just torturing me with nothing to keep me really truly busy.
so i started socializing with people with my exact same interests through the meeting site meetup.com.
i also found a pagan community center that catered to my spiritual side and started hanging out there.
now sometimes i get to talking about my interests with people, and other times i just sit and listen. but the people have the same interests i do, so i don't have to worry about not clicking on some level.
this has really increased my quality of life.

and to think about it, maybe a number of these specialized groups are started by aspies.

One can easily fish for common interests by using smalltalk, but if what you have in common is very limited, it's never going to make for a very fun conversation. The great ones will come with people who think like you, and share at least something like your personal obsessions.

For me, someone who is extremely specialized within the IT field, that's a tiny, tiny subset of the population. It may be that a quarter of the people in my specialization are aspies (seriously, there are a LOT), but, in my town of 15,000, there are probably none at all.

But at least I know that it can happen. There are people in Silicon Valley who I've had totally great conversations with. And while my wife may find my specialization boring, she is a computer scientist who thinks very much like I do, and that counts for a lot. Now my only challenge is finding people worth talking to who are outside of my front door, but not ridiculously far away.

I go through bouts of it and it's usually when I'm stressed by something else in my life like work, parents, etc. I only have so much energy to go around socially, so if it's used up somewhere else, there is nothing left for friends. I just went through it for a year. I'm starting to come out of it now. My friends have dealt with this for years with me so they know this is how it is and they don't get upset by it. They know that eventually I show back up and we just go back to the way we were.

I know some on here advocate forcing yourself. You have to see what works for you. That has a boomerang effect on me where if I continue to try to give even a little to that, I go into overload eventually and shut down to the point where I can't even function at work. That's why I won't do it, but you have to find the method that works best for you.

Once you know you are an aspie, you can just be yourself and describe your aspie behaviors to others. Some will run and some will stay. From the ones that stay you can build friendships. And for the rest? Who remembers the rest?

I am an older Aspie and I have t agree that friendships have become more difficult as get older (I am 45 now). When I was younger, I could easily find a wide range of 'friends' to satisfy my interests.

As I get older I find it harder to keep friendships because people (NTs) tend to focus on family, work and children (all being things that I do not have) and less on philosophical matters, politics, etc that I tend to get obsessed about. This means that our converations end up boring each other and not seek each other's company.

I mean how many times can I sit and listen about their kids and what their kids do, and what they did on Sunday with the kids... While when I try and have a serious conversation about the war in Iraq, they feel I am fanatic in my views and too paranoid about Bush wating to control all the oil in the world... As of a year ago I have more or less ended all conatcts because they (myso called friends) have slowly stopped calling or inviting me out.

I have slowly realized that I am happier without them and I feel less frustrated and less anxious than having to wear a 'mask' to please them and ask them polite questions and behave socially as they expect me to etc.

So yeah, my computer and people I talk to on line (mostly other Aspies by now) are my new best friends (so to speak)

Star

I made a change after I got sober(I drank to try and socialize and be part of a group)I continued to try and socialize for a year after getting sober,because the "mental health professionals" said it was important).I eventually came to the conclusion that it wasnt very important for me and stopped trying to fake it.I am a lot less stressed and happier because of it.I still have one friend who is always mad at me for ignoring him for months a a time but seems to forgive me,once I reach out again.

The hardest thing for me right now is maintaining contact with my adopted moom and my bio sisters.I do need to keep some connection but procrastinate for months at a time and they are hurt by this,sometimes.I think of them often but just have no drive to call them and they mistake that for apathy.(especially when it takes me several weeks to return their calls.)

I think each of us have to find the right level of contact with people.It's nice to have some other people who care about you but they need t be people who dont mind my need for solitude...it's not easy for some people to understand.

I do think the "mental health professionals" get too caught up in this idea that "you need to socialize to be happy" idea. Actually, it doesn't make me happy. It's work. Some people are interesting enough to me in one way or another to make it worth the work and fatigue it causes me and others are not. Even with the ones who are, I have to limit how much contact I have with them or I get overwhelmed and lose what really makes me happy which is pursuing my own thing in total silence. I think it's funny that they think they can just take out a cookie cutter and way you NEED to be like this. I don't NEED to do anything. I know what makes me happy. I've only known about AS for months, but I have friends of over 40 years and they have done just fine accepting this about me. I have friends that I've had ten years or less and it's the same. They just don't rely on me for day to day contact or even week to week. They know exactly how I am and they have long since gotten over it and found other friends to fill that need for constant attention.

Should I drug myself to fulfill their version of me? No. I like myself exactly the way I am. They can't give me a drug to read faces or eyes so they have nothing to offer me.

ZanneMarie that's pretty much how I feel. It's always been a struggle for me to make and maintain friendships, and I've always managed to do it out of some compulsory idea that it's what I "should" do. Usually it makes me happy for about the first few weeks (sometimes not even that) and then my enthusiasm tapers off and I'm overwhelmed by how little we're able to actually able to communicate. It's not that I don't like talking to people; in fact it's pretty much the exact opposite, actually. It's just that as far as I know, the people I'd really enjoy having friendships with haven't been invented yet, or something. And the more I try to force it the more I notice it chiseling away at my self identity. I'm at the point right now where I just want to freaking be me. I don't know how much I ever did enjoy the people I was around. I think I enjoy the concept of people but not the individuals. I don't think tricking myself into thinking I'm socially healthy is... healthy. All it does is make me confused. There's a difference between maintaining social skills and being cordial to people on a daily basis, and investing too much of yourself into people that aren't willing to understand you.

The vast majority of people don't really have ideas. They don't want to listen to, nor talk about, your ideas. If you look at it in terms of temperament theory, Keirsey calls these types Guardians. They generally don't want to talk about anything that can’t be ascertained by the senses or are established facts. Any of the other types whose primary mode is Feeling will want to discuss everything in terms of how it makes them feel. You need to determine if you are more conversant through feelings or through thinking. The vast majority of Aspies are Rationals (iNtuitive Thinkers, paradoxically called NTs!). They are the real idea people who mainly want to talk about their ideas and special interests. Some are Idealists (iNtuitive Feelers) and those are the ones who are in a state of constant hurt, IMO.

So instead of thinking, "why won't my friends listen to my ideas?" you should turn that around and find some who would be compatible with the way you express yourself. You can use Myers Briggs theory as a paradigm to sort people and then tailor your communication style to their type. The easiest way to for an Aspie to make friends is to find people with a similar interest. There will be only a few special people in your life that you can really share your ideas with. The majority of friendships, whether AS or NT, are on the most superficial level based on tit-for-tat. Aspies lack the genetically programmed instinct for tit-for-tat relationships and that is the crux of the problem.

My whole life has been like this. I've never been able to fit in. And the fact that I don't have friends, I have nothing to talk about when I do meet people.

Mal,

What has always worked for me and may for you is to find people for different interest and really only talk about those interests when we are together. So I have some friends who are writers and we talk about that and only anything else we have in common. I have some friends who are like me politically and that's all we talk about. I have some friends who really have wide variety of intellectual interests so I can actually talk to them about any obsession I currently have and they will run with it because even though they are NT, they are very intellectual and like to learn things. They even want to know all the details. I guess I have special interest friendships. LOL But, that works for me and it might for you. Maybe that's why they are tolerant of me disappearing for long periods. Maybe they think I'm involved in another interest for awhile. Whatever it is, that really works well for me. We never meet and just chitchat. I don't have those kinds of relationships.

Zanne

I don't know if this is what you mean or not, but I used to regard language as a thing you were supposed to do, that needed to conform to certain rules and such, but I did not communicate what was inside me with it, at least not nearly often enough. It did change after awhile.

yeah it's harder to make friends when we age; younger people have the advantage because of their youth and life events, but it is still hard for them too i'm sure.
i'm thinking about doing some volunteer work.