How come some aspies have friends and others can't make any

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I had a what I thought was one real good friend for 31 years and I seemed to have lost that person and have no idea why- so were they reallt a friend in the first place. Still have loads of trouble making friends-not for lack of trying.

I think it depends on each situation, actually. Some people who aren't as hampered by AS probably are closer to the norm on the friend scale. I, however, have never had any friends, just acquaintances. Reasons why? Severe health problems, lackluster appearance, verbal abuse and bullying diminishing my confidence, depression, and living in a small redneck town.

Agreed, same here. I don't talk to people anymore because I simply don't know what to say to them. I function on a different wavelength than most people and it's hard to find topics of common interest. If I do mention the things I'm interested in, I go on far too long about it and end up boring people. I don't share personal info with people I know in real life because they always somehow try to use it against me sooner or later. People tended to approach me more often when I was younger (and better looking), but now that I'm approaching middle age, it's much more difficult to meet others.

My least favorite saying of all is " just be yourself!" Every time I'd be "myself" I end up alienating people faster than if I just kept my mouth shut. Not only am I a chronic loner, I tend to be very opinionated as well, and it's hard for me to keep my opinions to myself because I blurt things out when it's probably more prudent to stay quiet. So, as a result, if I'm around people who do not agree with me ideologically, I usually piss them off within a few minutes. Such is my life. I don't get along well with women, either, even though I've tried more times than I can count. Men tend think more logically, as do I, and I do not know how to deal with emotional people (which many female NTs tend to be). Most of my close friends have been male. Today I have several acquaintances, but no close friends. I don't talk to my family (parent, siblings) about my problems because they always lecture me and I don't want nor need to hear it.

a lot to do with social environment, in some societies, people will automatically shut you out if you walk or talk diffrently than them. or have diffrent interests than them. some people will decide to never have anything to do with anyone who has a diagnosed disabilty. i think the main goal of mainstream society has become not to be a good person, whos nice to people who are diffrent, but to becoome exclusive and concieted, and exclude those who dont meet your high standards.

sometimes its nothing you did.

In response to face of boo, I don't think Asperger's is a social construct. It really annoys me to hear these comments from people who don't have it and don't understand what it's like. I had no idea I had Asperger's until by coincidence I talked to someone online with Aspergers about my difficulties and amazingly, he actually understood what I was talking about (I didn't know then I had it or anything about it, I just knew that for once in my life somebody else actually GOT it and I wasn't just weird or crazy... that was huge). After reasearching Asperger's and much thinking about it I realized it fits me exactly. It explains a lot. It is not because I mimic other people with Asperger's or try to fit into that, I don't know anyone with Asperger's in real life, and most of the people I know have no idea what Asperger's is (so I don't go around telling most people I have it because it's even more confusing).

Back to the issue of making friends:

I think sometimes we try to be friends with people who will not get us, or not understand us, or don't want to be friends. For me being a friend is pretty intimate and most people do not want that level of friendship, they just want an acquaintence, to chit-chat with, have fun with, and never talk about anything serious. If there is trouble or the other person has a problem, they don't want to be involved, or to talk about anything serious. To me this is not a friend, and frankly I have no use for these people.

I have had a number of friends in my life, but not many at one time. It's not because I don't like people... I get lonely and I really need human contact to feel happy and people to care about and who care about me. It's just hard to find the genuine thing. It would be a lot easier if I didn't care about people and could live alone in the woods by myself but that doesn't work for me.

On the other hand I am shy and introverted and I don't like to be with a big group of people at once, I prefer to be with one or two people. Even with the friends I have we don't do things in a group and most of them do not know each other and are not friends with each other. When you get in a group of people it gets a lot more complicated, and you cannot have the close connectoin, unless everybody there is also really close friends (which is not only even rarer, but it also changes the type of interaction in a group and I don't like it as much).

The friendships I've had that were successful generally just clicked from the get-go. I don't know why. It was often initiated by the other person, and we just got along. There are a lot of people that I dislike for various reasons (dishonesty, lack of authenticity, certain types of negative behiavor) and for those people I tend to distance myself from them fairly quickly. A lot of people don't want to be around me either, becuase I make them uncomfortable presumably because of how I don't act how they expect, even if I'm trying hard. Sometimes I get comments that I seem to be looking down on people or something, or I talk in a strange way, etc etc. There are other people I wouldn't mind being friends with but they have no interest whatsoever in me. And then there is the even small category of people I like who also like me. I've found that if I push and push to be friends with somebody who doesn't want to be the kind of 'friends' I want, it is doomed to fail. The ones that work (usually but not always initiated by the other person) usually work early on.

A lot of friendships I have had have failed over time. There are numerous reasons for this and sometimes I don't know the reasons. I think in the past a lot of reasons have been I have been too blunt, in telling people what I think (including about their actions which I don't agree with or feel compelled to warn them about), or I am too pushy in that I want a closer relationship and that person doesn't want that or they just want to keep things "light" (this is what I've been told by those willing to explain). In retrospect these make more sense and I've tried to improve on it over time, though a less close friendship is much less satisfactory for me especially for the amount of work that goes into it.

This is something I've been working on all my life, with a lot of mysteries as to the failures and a few successes. Being friends with someone and letting them in means opening yourself to the pain that comes along with it. I don't think having a lot of friends should be the goal (friend to all is a friend to none), you just need a few friends if they are good ones but sometimes good people are hard to come by.

Special interest groups are not an answer for me... I rarely make friends with people based on their interests... it's about their character. Also being in groups is uncomfortable and rarely lets you get to know the real person, you have to have personal time for that.

One final note: I've had a lot more success over my life being friends with people of other cultures. I suspect this is because they don't have the same expectations that people of my culture have regarding my behavior (much as you might automatically apply leniency in your mind to someone from another country who doesn't speak/talk/act quite "right"). That's just a theory.

I find the topic of this thread difficult to answer though here is my response.. I feel that some people in the spectrum have managed to acquire the adequate social skils over time which would allow him/her to facilitate a friendship which might have the potential of being long term.. I'll admit everyone varies in terms of social skill level in fact, I do okay in some ways but, I simply do have substantial skills at this moment to make things work out yet, I'm learning as best I can wholhearteldy my response be...

From my extremely limited personal experience, taking into account myself and the two aspies I've ever known irl. (These other two people were never my peers (one indirectly was) but I know a bit about them now.)

All three of us have this in common: we somehow manage to blunder our way through a social life. Notice the emphasis on blunder. I think what sets us three apart is this:

We're all intelligent and reasonable looking.
We all led really weird lives. (Really, really weird. I'm talking illegal underbelly/extreme life choices in general.)
We did just "put ourselves out there", and we failed OFTEN.

I know for a fact that all three of us look ret*d sometimes. I definitely don't get out like I used to, but the days I did I made huge mistakes all the time, and lived almost constantly in regret. But I know us three all just tried to make the best of what we had, tried to be ourselves, and somehow our respective sub-culture choices allowed for us to co-exist with them.

I think the only way I personally survived was because I had one friend to anchor me socially, and so never felt the anxiety of wondering if I belonged in that sense. I kept screwing up but somehow that place was still there for me to try again. It mystifies me still. I think it is a self confidence thing though, to get back up and try again, and to be able to put up with all the NT boring stuff, so you can get to the creamy fillings of rare smart/fun people. I know I had to learn to be very confident, to seek out the kinds of interactions I wanted, and cope with the inevitable exclusion from the simple-minded cliques. Although the exclusion is mutual, it still hurts a bit, because they form the majority of any social group.

I highly recommend seeking out "freak" and "nerd" cultures. I love my goth people. A great deal of them are very clever despite their emotional beings, and all kinds of freak types gather there to belong. I look kind of normal next to the guy who wants to be known as Rita, or the man on a huge med script who ALSO drinks... and being smart sets me apart from the more vapid people in a good way instead of a bad way. I definitely noticed that with more "normal" sub-cultures being intelligent is NOT a good thing at all, but with the goths I get at least some respect for that... instead of disdain. It's still hard, and I have no close friends. I know people must think I'm pretty weird for that reason alone.

One of the best lessons I learned is to just never bad mouth anyone, ever, not if you want to hang out there. Talking about almost anything is fine compared to saying anything bad about people, when you yourself have no idea what's 'acceptable'.

Oh and a lesson from Dexter's last season (and somewhat from the Complete Guide to Asperger's): Dexter's neighbor pushes kid in pool, everybody laughs. Dexter pushes kid in pool, wife yells at him and people shake heads. Don't try to be like them. Everyone knows you're different, so go ahead and just be different, and try to do it in an admirable way. That's my advice, anyway.

OK, so I came on a little stronger than I should have in a sensitive topic like this. Big deal. No, it's not impossible, I'm just bothered by the fact that many people give up because they can't click with anyone. So you may never find a few good friends in a day or a week or a lifetime, but what use is it to complain if you don't put yourself out there and do it?



Oh please...so because your repeated attempts didn't work means that it doesn't work for everyone? Yeah, my response may very well be a stock response, what were you expecting then? I'm not going to sit here and say that "autism is the reason why I can't have any friends". A poor reason if you ask me and I'll probably get a lot more criticism from this post now, but I don't care. Too much negativity here so I'm done with this thread.

Last edited by eagletalon86 on 11 Jul 2010, 9:33 am, edited 2 times in total.

This year, I thought that I had something close to a normal social life. Outside of school, I only really hung out with one friend, and even at this point, I don't really even think he even wants to hang out with me given how manic I have gotten over the past months or so. I expected that I would have at least one group of people to hang out over the summer, but then it seems like they have either completely forgotten me or have isolated me from them because of some mysterious thing that I did or said. I feel like I should just give up on having a social life sometime and become a bloody hermit.

This year, I thought that I had something close to a normal social life. Outside of school, I only really hung out with one friend, and even at this point, I don't really even think he even wants to hang out with me given how manic I have gotten over the past months or so. I expected that I would have at least one group of people to hang out over the summer, but then it seems like they have either completely forgotten me or have isolated me from them because of some mysterious thing that I did or said. I feel like I should just give up on having a social life sometime and become a bloody hermit.

So let's see , your parents didn't notice something wrong about you, you didn't realize that there was something wrong with you ...and finally you found it out through an online friend , websites and online tests.

Look, I am not really new to this. I am not some "People who don't understand what t's like".

I thought at first that I have that unexplained mysterious Syndrome which is called Asperger , I embraced the aspie or HFA label for about ....3 years. Like you, I had no idea what Asperger either, I "found out" that I fit the description of Asperger without knowing anyone "with Asperger". The first time I knew about it was about some article and I found myself fitting the description:

- I didn't talk before the age 3 , my parents thought I was deaf or just ret*d.

-I was always alone at school, teachers noticed that.

-I even had a teacher who was used to yell at me because I wasn't used to look into her eyes when she addresses me (she thought I was being impolite)

-During the different stages of my whole school life I had zero to 1 friend.

-I was always extremely socially awkward, I had no social skills and still so.

-Never had a gf. Many girls at school thought I was gay because I was always indifferent regarding girls maybe because I
don't flirt and , I never harass (ie. back to high school, when some hot girl passes in the room, I am always the only guy in the room who makes no comment, in fact the guys are always surprised for noticing that hot girl who just passed)

-Struggled a bit in my studies.

-I had a serious brain-related disorder during my whole childhood ( abdominal migraine), it almost destroyed me.

-I have repetitive habits, very repetitive, sometimes I keep hearing the same song 10 times in a raw.

-I live in my own world, I have even my own imaginary world with fictive characters and fictive scenarios.

-I had insomnia

etc ...etc......etc......etc....etc.


So like you , I did online researches , I read the wiki, got involved into autism sites, autism/AS forums, did online tests (my score of the Autism Quotient was 35, I even scored very low in the EQ test), I even consulted a specialist who "confirmed" my AS through describing her my life, it wasn't a real assessment tho.

So what happened? Why don't I believe in AS as a syndrome anymore?

Simply because , till to this day , AS is not medically proven yet, it cannot be tested nor be medically detected. You might say the same about Classic Autism and most mental illnesses , but Classic autism's behavioral symptoms are too severe and abnormal to not be noticed, classic autism is certainly a mysterious brain disorder yet its biological reasons are still unknown.

It's not the same case with AS however, AS' "symptoms" are too subtle to be considered as part of some mental syndrome.

If you put a child with LFA in some room , everyone in that room will notice that this kid has something abnormal right away but if you put a kid with "AS" in the same room , no one would notice that this kid has something 'abnormal', they might notice him as a shy or isolated kid , like they would notice the troublemaker kid, the talkative kid, the hyper kid , the lazy kid ....etc.

AS is like that chinese teapot flying around the galaxy ,you can't prove its existence. It's like nationality ,it cannot be tested, but if one says they have it, then so be it. Nothing proves its existence hence I find no point to believe it.

Can yo scientifically prove me that you are more 'aspie' than me, grendel? Can you prove it that I am less 'aspie' than you? Can you prove it that Willard is more 'aspie' than both of us? You cannot.

There were often users here who tried hard to get an AS diagnosis after visiting dozens of psychiatrists (ie.the first one told them no AS and so they jumped to a second, the second told they have something other than AS , so they jumped to a third ......and so on , till one confirms they have it and give them the 'official' diagnosis) , I saw several such stories here and it makes wonder about the whole validity of psychiatry (psychiatry uses pseudo-scientific methods btw).


Willard said in some other thread that "Personality is neurology" , true that , then why AS can't be a some form of very undesired personality? A social construct? such as the tomboy, the nerd, the geek, the lazy or the overhyper?

Last edited by The_Face_of_Boo on 18 Jul 2010, 10:28 am, edited 2 times in total.

I would like to take this conversation in another direction. I was thinking about some experiences that I have had in my past when the shoe was on the other foot so to speak.

I have had a few people over the years seek me out for the purpose of friendship. For some reason I found this to be a little behavior to be a little repulsive at the time when these people sought out my friendship. They were not bad people and I loved their company at times, but there was jist something about this type of interaction that made me want me to avoid them. I am mystified as to why I would feel this way.

The best friendships that I had were the ones that were spontanious. Another thing is that I have always noticed is that I feel more depressed when a friendship with a person that I have sought out ends. For some reason I feel more at ease when a spontanious friendship comes to an end. It could be that with the spontanious friendship, you have been able to get what you have wanted out of the friendship.

I've never really had friends (more than the odd person or two that I spent time with on rare occasion or the classmate I was very cordial to but never divulged privately or let my guard down as to how I was acting around).

Since University I've had a really amazing experience finding friends. I think it's both because I have a wider variety of people with interests in common (I do better when I have something to talk about with a person where I'm ranting but at the same time, they're at least slightly interested -- I hope )I as well have found people more willing to accept how I act. I have always been very aloof and quiet within High School (even more so in Primary School) and that was mostly because I didn't know what to say/do. Now, at least with many of the people I spend time with, they realize I'm a bit different and just go with it -- to the very few I'm close with, I've sat down and explained why I act the way I do. To others I don't really care so much about, they can figure it out themselves and if it bothers them then oh well.

But University has been a saving grace I would have NEVER expected to find. Admittantly, most of my friends use "Sheldon" from the Big Bang Theory to explain to others my actions/reactions, but in all honesty, it could be far worse.

I think this is where I fit in, to be honest. I look much more normal around some of the people I spend time with (I'm still one of the top few odd balls, but I'm not as set apart). And I have noticed that as well -- a lot of subcultures not putting emphasis on intellect and not even viewing it as a good or important thing. At least among the people I spend time with, it's viewed as a beneficial thing.

In my own case scenario I do poorly at making friends probably due to my narrow level of interests as well not having the advaced social skills to help facilitate a friendship and maintain one.2nd, there are a great many psychological issues I deal with such as depression & anxiety so, that tends to have a big impact on how others relate to you and such.Anyways, I keep trying to make friends even if sometimes I feel disenchanted deep down inside..

In my opinion, it's mostly a matter of intelligence, life experience and the will-power to try to make contact with others. There once was a period in my life when I had no friends are all and I didn't know how to make them, but by putting a lot of effort into overcoming my social limitations and learning from every failed attempt to bond with someone I managed to have a more or less normal social life.