Who else NEVER had a close friend in childhood?

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I never made effort to make friends in childhood. It just wasn't something I was motivated to do, and I was interested in things that were unusual for a kid anyway. But now in adulthood, I spend a great deal of time feeling like I lost something that is tremendously difficult to make up at my age.

Childhood friendships seem like a fundamentally different "beast" from most adult friendships. Kids share moments of carefree enthusiasm and of imagination, and support each other through stages of interpersonal and intrapersonal growth. Nearly all adults have already grown through all these stages, and often are looking for people to support them through serious, adult things. The idea of just having a friend, of being able to share ideas and feelings about the world, is nothing new to them.

Something similar is true when it comes to early boy/girl relationships, but this is where it all starts. I was wondering who can relate to this.

I had close friends in childhood but they never stuck around with me and especially after we all hit puberty. Suddenly I was this weird kid to talked to herself and about Disney things. I think the only closest friend that I have had the longest relationship with is a woman who drove me to school during my Jr year of high school who I still talk with over the phone and write to.

I sometimes envy DJ and Kimmy on Full House because those characters have life long friends in addition to hearing about real life relationships because my closest childhood friend abandoned me after she met her first boyfriend.

I was bullied alot as a kid & had issues in addition to Aspergers that made it hard for me to have friend so I never really had a close friend till high-school.

In a sense, I pretty much only had close friends. I'd find one, maybe two people and get very close to them while remaining distant with everyone else.

Interesting contrast for you to consider!

I had two close friends in elementary school, but the friendships eventually fell apart for different reasons. For the first kid, we were friends in third grade, but my mom forbade me to talk to him after I told her that he put his hand down my pants. The second person was a friend in fourth and fifth grade, but grew to hate me because I didn't let him play with his other friend. I was afraid he would desert me for his other friend because I didn't realize people could have more than one friend.

I had a couple of close friends in the elementary years, but none in junior high or high school. I had some in college, but, since Facebook stresses me out, they fizzled pretty quickly after.

I had several close friends in childhood, one of them is still my closest homie actually, I haven't really had any opportunity to make other close friends due to my mental issues being pretty bad since leaving kidland and obviously autism really affected my life in ways I had no idea about until recently, I had it easier making friends as a kid cause there were less demands and expectations, it was more primal and pragmatic, I am hoping to meet other autistics and mental folk at support things over time.

They have all since drifted away, fallen to own demons, or straight up backstabbed me. I have too much trust and anxiety issues to be close friends with anyone now I think, I develop superficial friendships with these support workers I have but they all go away too so I keep everyone at arm's length. It's depressing.

didn't get one till late on in high school, in primary school i was bullied by my entire class, i did have 6 sort of friends (that i was dragged into really, i got on with one of them, and they pulled me into the rest of them) we were pretty much happy, but then high school came, and that was where things went bad, similar to Summer_Twilight, they all became sort of "3D" if you know what i mean, they had lots of different interests they were doing, lots of activities and such, where as i remained 2D, my only interest has always been Video games, its all i talk about really, and all im interested in, so for my 6 friends i became really boring to talk to....oh and they all realised that i was really weird apparently, but they didn't want to hurt my feelings by telling me to get lost or something, so instead they initiated plan B: ditch me without looking like your doing it on purpose. it went like this: 1. still walk with me to the bus stop, get on the coach that took us to high school, but instead of waiting, get off the coach in school as normal and weave into the crowd erratically, this way they thought id lose them, but it never worked. 2. sit at tables for lunch and break that only have enough seats for them but not for me, even if theres an empty table just next to that one. this one worked well, as i was forced to look else where to sit. 3. stop inviting me to birthday parties, or around to anyones house ever again, then accidentally talk about how everyone met up at someone's house or had that birthday party infront of me to ensure i know im not welcome anymore. 4. get so frustrated that i wasn't getting the message, move from wherever i am, make up excuses to leave 5. make up rumors about me, this way all the other members of the group turn against me and laugh at me, so i left because they were beginning to bully me out now, they never came to find me again, none of them, they won't even talk about it now.


but in late high school i met my closest (and only) friend. he is an aspie as well, and we get on really well, never one without the other, people used to get us mixed up on which ones which.

I never understood reciprocal friendship in childhood, even up to adulthood didn't have real friends. I made up for by my mid twenties.

You can do it, trust me. I made friends of meets on the various communities I was on.

My advice is play to your strengths not you weaknesses. Adapt rather than mimic.

I had like different friends for every school I went to (I was transfer a lot mostly due to speech therapy) but I never really considered them close. When I was in elementary school I didn't care that much about making friends esp outside my classroom. I had one friend from elementary we went to middle school and we just sorta drifted apart. Meanwhile I thought I had a bunch of girlfriends but most of them were just taking advantage of me bc I was weak minded and I didn't understand social dynamics. By the time I got to high school I was guarded and my approach was basically let people come to me. I did make some really close friends one during sophomore year and quite a few during my junior and senior years. I still keep in touch with some of them (not often). I have a "cousin" around the same age and we hung out from time to time but she lives faraway and our lives are in two completely different directions.

I can relate. I had friends in childhood (though not many), but I'm not sure any of those friendships can be described as "close." I also had trouble keeping the casual friends I did have

I wasn't really interested in the same things other kids were...didn't care about sports or music. I liked superheroes...nowadays, it's perfectly acceptable for kids to like superheroes, but that wasn't so much the case in the 90's when I grew up.

I don't know where I fall on this one.

I had occasional "friends." How "close" they were is open to debate.

I was the "weird kid" nobody liked. I never knew why...although teachers commented to my parents that they had never seen such a group of "vicious" children as the ones in my grade level. It was part of why they recommended holding me a year back (not that it helped that much).

In grade school (5th IIRC), I met a boy who gave me a chance. He found me likable. His father raised him to not judge others without learning something about them for yourself. He found that all the nasty things said behind my back weren't true. He was my "best friend" from that point until we started high school.

If it was not for him, I might have gone through with the many, many suicide impulses I experienced during my teenage years. We did a lot together, but there's a reason for that...because he was my friend, everyone shunned him as well. Sometimes, this issue came up when we fought.

Just before high school started, he broke off the friendship...claiming he was moving to another city. It was half-true. He was moving, but not for another year. Not being my "friend" anymore made a big difference for him. When I saw him in high school, he was surrounded by other "cool kids" and clearly very popular. I was the anchor holding him down. I felt betrayed but also happy for him because I knew and understood that being my friend came at a price most people wouldn't want to pay. I would have rathered that he told me the truth about why he wanted to part ways. It would have still hurt, but I would have understood.

I'm not sure how I survived high school. It wasn't as bad as middle school, and I had a couple of casual "friends" I did stuff with. Basically, the "losers" and "outcasts" were the only people who wanted to associate with me.

While i'm not sure I could say I never had any "close" friendships, how close they were can only be guessed at from my point of view. Had a couple friends I felt close to, but one moved away, then i switched schools and talked to the one every now and then, usually when he spent the night at my place once every couple months. Middle school came and i had another friend i felt close to, and a couple other, lived underneath one of them in a two-apartment house until he moved in 8th-grade. Moved schools again after the spring break in 7th grade, where i met a couple of the friends i still have. Just before freshman year one of the friends i felt close to from my local moddile school where i no longer went to school hung himself. A few of the friends from my local middle school stayed in contact, e1nd of freshman year i went to my local high school a couple classes at the end of the day amid rumors i was in juvie (while not exactly far off, the other school was a school where many of the students were court-ordered to go there due to criminal activity and lived on campus, i was a "day-student" who only went there for school then went home), at my local high school i promptly got into a fight on the bus going home a couple weeks after starting. Did online school for my sophomore year, where my social skills suffered even more. Went back to my local high school my junior year, amid more rumors i was in juvie all of sophomore year, decided not to fight the rumors and actually reinforced them with my behavior and stories i spread myself. during my junior year i met one of the current closest friends, we have so much in common we jokingly call each other our "soul-clone" because we're always finding even more things we have in common, though while i'm pretty confident he has autism or Asperger's he was never diagnosed (but many of the things we have in common are my aspie/autistic traits combined with our common interests and hobbies). he's currently my best friend and vice-versa. We act as each others anchor, talking each other out of bad ideas, and calming each other down when one of us gets super angry. When i have a meltdown caused by a source of rage i usually end up blacking out, though he is the one and so far only friend that's been able to calm me down before it gets that far (also vice-versa), which is why we both fear what would happen if we both got equally mad at the same time/place, and over the same thing because if that happened neither of us would be in a state to talk the other down. I still talk to a couple friends i had in elementary school (really it's only 2 of them that still bother to respond), most of my attempts to hang out are blocked by their jobs, or family duties (watching younger siblings, household chores etc), which i understand but it often feels like their blowing me off as a hint to stop talking to them. Which i know isn't true because they still give me up-to-date phone numbers and stuff, but it still feels like they want nothing to do with my unless I see them in-person. other than that most of my high school friends are the same weird crowd i hung out with in middle school, our lunch table in high school was "that weird table" of 3-7 people (depended on the schedule for the that school day) who had the weirdest conversation, changed topics almost every two-minutes, and always cracked jokes (dirty or other-wise) with the only table rule being if you have a joke, you have to say it not matter what, no getting mad over another's joke, just roll with it. Still talk to a few of them every now and then, but mostly it's just one of my friends from my 2nd middle school/1st high school, and the one friend i met in junior year who might as well just be my clone. Always been easiest to get along with those younger than me, most of my online gaming friends are in middle-school or just entering high school, and I find it much easier to socialize with the middle-schoolers who go to the local swimming pond (where i also spend much of my summer when not gaming or riding my bike). I stopped trying to make friends in 7th grade, which is also when i basically stopped caring what people think of me, and decided to use the many rumors about me (arrested, sent to juvie, really violent temper(which was true back in elementary school) among others) to my advantage, so i'd be left alone during high school, it worked for the most part and the only ones who tried to bother me were lowerclassman, that i couldn't hit because i turned 18 three weeks into my senior year (downside to a September birthday). In any case, whether i had close friendships or not is up to debate, but i really only ever felt close to 3 classmates prior to high school, and one of them committed suicide just before high school began, while i was in a period of not talking to him over an argument we had the last time i saw him a few months prior (that really made me feel like crap when i found out) and never really forgave myself or our class-mates who treated him just as badly if not worse than they treated me, but never changed their behavior afterwards even during high school.

During my childhood, I never had any close friends. Whenever I went to school, I was always around my classmates, but I would just leave them alone & not say anything to any of them, or ever participate in anything they did. During lunch time or recess time, I would always just walk around the field all alone & pace, never saying anything or playing with any one. My teachers became concerned about me being anti-social & informed my parents. I also never played with my 2 brothers or any of the children who lived in the neighbourhood. My parents never understood why I was this way, so they sent me to a clinical psychologist when I was nine years old, who diagnosed me with Asperger's syndrome. A year later, when I was ten years old, my parents took me out of the mainstream public school I attended & transferred me to a small private school for special needs students.



I did very well academically at the private school, but I continued to be a loner & never made any effort to make friends there. Sometimes, students would talk to me & attempt to start friendships with me, and I would be nice back to them, but I was never interested being friends with them. When I was 12 years old, my parents signed me up for an after-school group for boys with Asperger's syndrome. It was a very small group with four or five other boys, but I still had trouble making being social with any of them, and I had trouble participating in their group activities & never talked. I was in that group until I was 16 years old, when my mother told me I did not have to go any more. I had been attending the group for a long time, and it got repetitive, and I was not getting anything out of it, so I dropped out of the group.



I attended the private school until the age of 14, when I was enrolled in a small private high school for special needs students. My teachers there worked very hard with me to be more sociable & they set social goals for me to improve, and I made progress to some degree. During this time, I started to change & started actually wanting to make friends. I had one classmate who liked me & wanted to be my friend, and we would sometimes get together outside of school, but being his friend caused me a lot of stress & anxiety because I still wanted to just be by myself & hang around alone. He graduated from the school a year before I graduated, and we lost contact until we re-connected online last year. There was also a female classmate that I had a crush on when I was 17 years old, but she was not interested in me, so I felt really sad during my senior year there. After graduation, I never kept in contact with any of my classmates.



When I graduated from that high school, I wanted to go to college, but my parents made me attend a transition programme for special needs students. I finally made my first real friend at that school, and I was thrilled about it. She lived somewhat far away from me, and my parents used to take me to her house, and we would also get together at the mall near me & go shopping. We stayed friends until I was 26 years old when I dumped her. I always had a crush on her, and I thought we were boyfriend & girlfriend, but she had been lying to me the entire time I knew her. After we broke up, she faced an uncertain future & died of pneumonia less than 2 years later. She was only 28 years old. I later lamented the fact that I could not have stayed a loyal friend to her during her final days.



Today, making friends is still one of the hardest things for me to do, and I am still reclusive with very few friends. I attend Meetups for adults with Asperger's syndrome, and I hope that I will meet some people that I will become good friends with.