Trust issues (not sure if I posted to the right place??)

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I've been thinking a lot about trust issues lately. I've recently broken ties with who was my best friend, been kind-of reacquainted with a sister, and become highly suspicious of two friends of mine in relation to the break-up with that friend.

I broke things off with the friend because of his self-centred, manipulative behaviour and his refusal to even attempt to cooperate in finding a way of spending time together with me that wouldn't be difficult for me to handle. So far we'd met up twice a week for an average of 3 hours each time. This was always difficult for me in relation to my executive functioning problems and I told him this way back at the beginning of our friendship when this pattern was starting to develop in the first place, to which he had an extreme emotional response including swearing at me and sort-of threatening suicide, so being the kind of person who never takes suicide-related issues lightly, I was scared to bring it up again. I finally got my anxiety under so much control lately that I was ready to face him over the issue again and he threw an ultimatum at me along with a whole heap of manipulative tricks, and I ended it knowing I couldn't trust him.

The two friends I'm suspicious of are mutual friends who I know he went and talked to immediately when I confronted him. It was obvious from his raging and lying and self-victimizing etc. that he wasn't going to be saying anything positive about me to them - yet they never contacted me once to either ask for my side of the story, or let me know that they were just helping him deal with it, all the while making it deliberately obvious on Facebook that they'd been talking to him about the whole thing. I also know these two people, who are a couple, to be total gossips. So right now I really don't know whether I can trust them.

And the sister situation is related to how my whole family have basically repeatedly betrayed me during my life so far and how she sent me abusive emails and FB posts etc. in response to my AS and ADD diagnosis. My brother also sent me abusive emails back then and my other sister was in on the action but cleverly hiding behind the scenes to mind her reputation. Anyway, the sister I'm talking about here met me for a night out recently as she's been out of the country and won't be here again for a year and a half and so decided to meet up with me, and when we did she acted as if nothing had happened. I gather from this that everything with my family will be ok as long as I not mention or show AS around my family at all. So I can't trust them to be there for me like I've been for them, no matter how many years I wait for them to mature.

All this stuff, plus past events, including some abuse I fell victim to due to extreme naivety around social norms, have made me become very negative about, and suspicious of, people around me. I find myself almost looking for reasons not to trust people now. I guess having been so trusting before was because of being so naive and because I just didn't understand how to suspect anything other than honesty, or when something was or wasn't forgivable. I guess now that I've "seen the light", and come to understand more of what's acceptable to me and what's not, I find myself going to the opposite extreme and not trusting people much any more. This isn't good either though, opposite extremes never really are... What do you think? Are trust issues common among people on the spectrum? Have you been confused, manipulated, taken advantage of, or just been unable to say "no" when you were unhappy about something because you didn't know it was ok and right to do so?

Better to have no friends than toxic friends. Had two toxic friends when I was younger when I didn't know any better. Both were very stupid, always going out clubbing, looking for boys etc while I was the complete opposite. One of them tried to steal my current boyfriend and that was the end of our long friendship. The other one took the boyfriend stealing's side and that was also the end of our long friendship. They were both ugly on the inside and outside. Highschool didn't help either, as a result I don't trust very many people now

I agree, better to have no friends than toxic friends. Just because they call themselves your friend and call you a friend doesn't mean you should pretend to yourself that they're really being a friend! It's amazing what some of them will do, and how they'll expect you to be ok with it or even act like you've done them wrong by confronting them about it...

I guess I'm going through a rough phase because of realizing how naive I've been and finally sticking up for myself has brought some relationships to an end or made them more distant and superficial, and now I feel fearful about trusting others. I also hate not knowing whether I should trust certain people. I recently had a nightmare about not being able to trust my boyfriend and that makes me hate myself because I know he'd never deliberately do something to hurt me and I hate myself for dreaming about him in that way. I woke up feeling so upset and scared and I'm so ashamed that I haven't told him about the nightmare, even though I know it was just a dream and not real. It's making me agonize over whether or not to trust people and I've now started looking for reasons not to trust people. I feel like I'm trying to avoid being let down by just not trusting at all, but I know that that's not healthy and could damage any relationships I have that are still healthy. Very confused...

Time heals all wounds. I will trust more people in time if given the chance

You might want to get some counseling. Your issues sound similar to many NTs I know of with dysfunctional families, so counselors should have experience with that sort of thing even if they don't know AS/ADD.

Ya I have a great counselor, I'll bring it up with her. The place I go to for sessions is closed for a few weeks. It even felt better after talking to my boyfriend about it, although I didn't go into detail on the dream nor did he ask me to. I do feel it's linked with my AS problems though, like with the naivety, the black and white thinking, the difficulty understanding a person's intentions, the confusion over social rules e.g. appropriate vs. inappropriate behaviour from others as well as myself, the inability to pick up on sarcasm sometimes... I think that all adds to feeling like I need to watch my back all the time, or feeling worried about what I do and say much of the time, and I want to be involved with people who respect me along with my problems and cooperate with me when I need it. But I definitely agree that dysfunctional upbringing has had its bad effects too and it's left me confused about my relationships with family, and then there's also the fact that they simply broke my trust a lot and the fact that other people have broken my trust, with my understanding of what they were doing only catching up when it's too late.