Do you ever have trouble letting go?

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Hi:
I was wondering how many of you in here have trouble letting go of situations where you were friends with someone once a upon a time that ended when they lost their interest in you? Even further it disappoints you because so many other people make friends for life but they come and go for us?

If so how many of you experience this?

As you get older, it becomes easier to just let go because work/job takes priority, finding a spouse, dealing with your kids all takes the place of disappoinment with friends. Even when I was younger, friends tended to stay longer when I wasn't so clingy and become thoroughly involved with myself. It seems that when "YOU" become unavailable, you become more interesting to others. I could be wrong with what am about to post right now but in my opinion, NT's see friends as ornamental whereas Aspie's want too much from friendships or appear to emulate that because that's what their early impressions were of NT friendships. The biggest thing that aspie's have to let go of other than old friends is their own concept of the extreme importance of friends in general which is left over from elementary school. NT friendships change like the wind. They're NOT as intense as the aspies who are often on the fringes interpret them to be. Aspies suffer socially because they interpret things as being far much more than they actually are. That's why aspies think that even if you accidentally touch their hand, you want to date them. Their senses are OVERstimulated. That's why others seem so intimidating and so illusive and so hard to catch. That's why it seems like the rest of the world just has it so much better. The most hurtful thing a friend said to me at the age of 15 was, "Why don't you just go and get a life". And this was before that phrase became a colloquialism! My reply was, "Well, that's what I'm trying to do! I can't go to the carnival by myself?! !" She was my only friend. I learned that being an aspie myself, I would have a better time socially if I became part of a group that did a service. For example, I joined a church choir which met twice a week and sang at Sunday mass. It was the one time I could get together with others who had common interests and actually converse about music. The group was dedicated to a cause and every birthday was announced and cake was served no matter what. One NEVER heard the words, "Don't come here anymore", "Get A Life"...etc... As I got older, I even became a choir leader for about 5 years until I got married and moved away. Then, my newlywed spouse became my priority, then eventually the kids. Now, my son who is an aspie has joined church choir because he got tired of being ditched by the other boys. Now, he has a niche for his fantastic voice. He told me just yesterday that he finally feels "Purpose".

The one situation and person who I have been the most disappointed with is a girl who I used to attend daycare with. It was when we both hit puberty that she found her first boyfriend and started making bad choices. She suddenly did not have time for me anymore and started making fun of me.

I'm guilty of this a lot. Often times, I'll seek to reconnect with people my past and drastically misgauge their reaction. This can range from mildly disappointing to devastating, depending on the value that I placed on the friendship. I have a smaller pool of past relationships to draw from than most NT's, and as we all get older, the groupings become more closed off. In some cases, now that I have a better self-awareness, I'll realize that I was never really a part of a group at all. That alone is such a mindf*ck that I'd sooner just leave the past alone.

Yes. Plus movies, tv, novels, etc. can really feed into these ideas of things being much more than they are. Even as an adult I still battle with this in my mind every day. I tend to assume every couple I see is happy together and has a meaningful relationship, that every friendship I witness has a deep and enduring bond. Actually a lot of these people really can't stand each other, and they are just tolerating each other and/or using each other. I flip back and forth between this totally naïve idealism, and really dark cynicism about the nature of human relationships.



A lot of my socialization growing up was being around religious people like that, who would never come right out and openly reject or insult anyone. It led me to have unrealistic expectations of people in general being like that and so now I gravitate to people who seem kind and accepting on the surface, but are actually quite passive aggressive. Again like stated above, it's a problem with taking things at face value, then looking beyond it and being horrified, and not knowing how to reconcile the difference. I guess this is part of what leads to black and white thinking in autism.

I went to a private religious school where we were forbidden to touch anyone of the opposite sex. It quite literally would have been interpreted as sexual and possibly seductive if you accidentally touched someone's hand. Cultural beliefs can heighten the way people interpret things too.