What is it like to have aspie friends?

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I fantasize that it will/would feel much like "coming home" for the first time. I have longed, all my life, to have friends with measurable integrity. To have relationships with people who I can trust to be fully honest and to say what they actually mean. To have friends love me by studying me, and caring to attempt to understand and appreciate me in a similar way that I understand and appreciate myself.

If you think Aspies will have integrity, love, and appreciation by default, you could be in for a nasty surprise...

I actually have both a younger brother and a college roommate who are both aspies, so I can give you my perspective on it. To be honest, I find being friends with them more difficult in some ways; their lack of empathy really causes problems once in a while. Even though I have AS, I still have excellent theory of mind, and being around aspies who don't can definitely be a pain. While they're both generally nice people, they have little to no clue where boundaries are or how they come off to others. Frankly, they both come off as extremely insensitive, which, while not entirely their fault, is still annoying to me and everyone else who happens to be around. Sure, their straightforwardness can be very refreshing, but they still have pretty much no tact whatsoever.

For my roommate, who we'll call S; he's easily the least liked person out of the 4 guys that live in our shared room. We're all seniors in college, and I've roomed with the same guy for the past 3 years. S, on the other hand, has had new roommates every single year; nobody wants to room with him any longer than necessary. And I honestly doubt he understands why. That's been my experience with nearly every aspie I've ever met. I would expect another aspie to understand you about as well as they understand anyone else, e.g. not very well.

True, there is good and bad in everyone, including Aspies. And while Aspies do understand being an Aspie, sometimes it's still hard to communicate. Aspies can be good friends, too, but they may not show it in ways even another Aspie can grasp (the old, "if you've met one Aspie" saying applies).

Pretty much.

I'm usually happy to approach people to talk or friends to visit, however infrequent, while my Aspie friend... if I didn't message him we'd never even talk, let alone visit. Yet he's often bored and eager to go if invited. It's hard to engage him in conversation because he doesn't seem to be very interested in anything outside of his solitary pursuits or have much to say on things we can both talk about. That's how it's been since we left high school and couldn't just sit together and make fun of the lessons.

Me too, but as time passed and with awful unpleasant experiences with people, I've realised that it just can't happen. Unfortunately, there are no people who are like that....Well, to dream is free, isn't it?

Not sure I would want to be friends with a bunch of aspies! I hear there a bunch of shifty ba$#@#s (laughs). I'm one of eleven children and at least half of the other ten exhibit behaviours consistent with aspergers. As far as families go were closer than most I guess. The whole "inability to effectively express empathy" is definately a trait that quite a few of us share but its never been an issue. Were all eachothers best friends. If they knew I just typed that they would probably gang up and lay into me, haha.

I've had this experience too. The weird thing is these have been people I have liked, but found difficult to deal with. One has recently cut me off because I told her I was tired of her being rude to me and she took offence and won't talk to me now.

On the other hand I have also met fellow people on the spectrum whom I have great relationships with. It is like going home, but they tend to be people who don't struggle with theory of mind. Honest people, who know how to be tactful too. Intelligent people who have had similar experiences in life to me and who are interested in interesting things. We talk about all sorts of things. We also talk about how we find it difficult to fit in with "regular" women and their interests or lack of interests.

The downside is that none of us are really good at keeping in touch though, so we don't see each other very often and we all get a little lonely, but we also can't deal with seeing each other too often which is a catch 22 situation.

For me, it's not terribly weird, especially after now I want to connect with the autism community more. That said, most of my friends are NT's because it's the nature of my profession.

I find my aspie friends annoying.

Haha, my dad is like this. The only reason we tolerate each other is that we are the nicest people we know, and that's a really terrible thing to say about everyone else, I guess. Well, it's true for him, since few people can tolerate him enough to be nice to him. I just metaphorically "drop bombs" on people when they least expect it, even I don't know when it will happen.

If you can really tolerate frequently going out of your way to make really obvious shows of friendship with each other, then it's great.
Also, laughing and smiling after each statement whether you've said something good or bad seems to help.

I think, in order to be friends as an aspie, you really have to know how to be a friend. The less obsessed you are about relationships, the better. The less worried you are about keeping friends, the better. The less you care about the sentiment of others, the better, especially negative sentiment, rudeness. It's also good to never say anything that you want them to remember, because they will probably forget because they don't care.

I went to an autism group once, and everyone there was so extremely high strung and anxious (including me) that it made me shake for the rest of the day. I don't know if I could do it again.

It feels like coming home haha