Friendships and relationships - are they mixed up?

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rdos
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19 Aug 2017, 4:07 am

Started an investigation about it, and at N = 1,465 and with 414 answers to the friendship attachment survey, there already are some robust differences.

First, as expected, far fewer NDs than NTs are in friendships, and this is regardless of gender. Has a chi-2 measure of over 100, so is highly significant.

Second, non-answers to the survey are not connected to neurotype or gender, so there is no bias in who skips the survey.

Third, it appears that for girls only right now (but might eventually get significant for guys too), NDs are more likely to have selected current partner as their friend, and NTs are more likely to have a best friend. The comments are interesting, and some people have written "husband" or "wife" in the comment field, yet sometimes selected "other" or inappropriate friendship type, which will eventually need to be manually corrected.

Fourth, already with this small sample, it's possible to show that attachment increase for NTs but not for NDs up to 5 years duration provided people that are in relationships are excluded.

So, I think my suspicions will be confirmed. NDs only attach to friends if they view it as a relationship, not a friendship. Something that might be confirmed too by analysing things based on different genders of friend and participant, which is more neutral than using the stated type of the friendship.



kraftiekortie
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19 Aug 2017, 6:46 am

I have a few non-romantic friendships. Both men and women.

My wife is my friend, too.

I was friends with most of my lovers, too-----sometimes even after we broke up.