Are they our friends or acquaintances?

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If you know Autistic Callum on Twitter, he always writes brilliant threads about how to cope with life as an autistic person.

He basically says, most of his friends turned out to be acquaintances, which actually wasn't a bad thing. And gives a list of how to tell if your 'friend' is actually your acquaintance.

I think this is the link, if you can get Twitter:

https://twitter.com/i/flow/login?redire ... ticCallum_

If I knew how to post images on here, I would, because there is a lot of useful information in what he's written on his images about this subject.

I feel a bit sad because I'd like some friends, but acquaintances will have to do.

That is fantastic Recidivist!

Thanks x 100.

What Callum says is so useful isn't it!

You're welcome

Not useful for me (I don't do friends ) but hopefully useful for people who need to figure relationships out, but as Callum said, every relationship is unique so it may not be helpful, but it's probably a good starting point to work things out.

I definitely need to figure relationships out, I always mistake acquaintances for friends

Even if you don't have friends, surely you must have acquaintances? Or do you live in a vacuum? haha.

Here is a link to the Twitter thread.

Thanks Mona! You are always so helpful!

wow thats very useful.

i guess i have had more acquaintances rather than friends.

though for awhile i also had the idea that if i liked someone they were my friend.
took a long time to get that idea out of my head.

i feel like i really dont understand friendship at all.

What I can't understand is...I used to have friends in the sixth form at school, and at university. They fulfilled all the traits of friends, they definitely weren't acquaintances according to Callum's list.

So what happened? Why did I suddenly stop being able to make friends? Where did they go? Did I suddenly get brain damage without realising and lose the part of my brain which allowed me to make friends?

I don't get it...

You're definitely considered an acquaintance when someone who claims to be your friend does not bother to tell you that she is moving to Europe this fall.

I would say that the real measure of friendship -- or, at least, close friendship -- is what the person does in time of need. Do they try to help you out in at least some way?

To me, true friendship involves caring about each other's well-being. I do not consider things like quantity of PM's, or quantity of different contexts in which you see each other, to be good measures of friendship.

A person who lacks the spoons to write gazillions of PM's, or to invite you out to dinner often, can still be a true friend in the sense of caring about your well-being.

Yes. Fair weather friends who only want to know you when you're happy and fun.

And foul weather friends who only want to know you when you're a struggling loser. When you start doing well, they drop you out of jealousy.

People eh.

I've never encountered foul weathered friends but yeah - people eh