Lack of friends.

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welcome! I had very few friends until my late diagnosis at age 68.
Since then I have learned a great way to make friends is to use local interest groups.

Choose a topic you are really interested in and try to find others to teach you more about it.

In learning from others, they also share other information about yourselves, and you may share information about yourself with them too. I have found several new friends this way, and now I can call one of them up off and on and ask them if they want to do something related to our interest together. A lot of times it works! glad you are with us.

I had a lot of friends when I was younger but I didn't know who I was then and I masked heavily with them all. I've grown and changed as a person, learned who I really am and made many changes to my life. I live in a remote area and have only one friend, a good, close friend who I appreciate a lot and is also autistic. We spend a lot of time together, which is nice. Other friends who I may still have liked to have in my life have moved out of this area and I've lost contact with them. I live in quite an isolated area and plan to move from here myself within the next couple years. I don't need or want lots of friends and acquaintances but I am a social person and I would love to meet and get to know more autistic people. That will become really important when I move and find myself totally alone in a new area. But it's so hard as an autistic person. As much as I do find it very overwhelming, I do actually love getting to know new people and finding common ground with them, forming deep connections. But it just seems so difficult to find people to connect with in real life (i.e. not online). I'd like to have more "real life" friends. Friends to share interests and activities with, or just to hang out and chat. There seems to be so little resources for anything like that. Autistic Facebook groups are often full of members but nobody posts, and places like WrongPlanet are populated by anonymous people spread all over the planet.

I'm cutting myself off there because this reply is getting too long

I hope you can find some good new friends!

Nice message. I have had friends that have come and gone. I tend to remember them fondly and keep myself some good memories. I try to believe that everything happens for a reason, socially, and I meet people when I’m supposed to meet them and for how long I know them, or am friends with them. It was easier when I was younger. I think I may have had more of an adventurous spirit and was more willing to meet people, and allow them into my life. Anyway, I’ve rambled on, too. Cheers.

I’ve been feeling a bit lonely lately too. People I used to talk to have either moved or we just grew apart. I’d like to have someone to talk to maybe occasionally get together. It’s so much harder as an adult and of course, well, autism.

One of my favourite things to do was to go over to a friend’s house and watch a live concert on YouTube, or sometimes DVD, and talk and maybe have a drink. That was enough fun for me.

I have given up trying to make F2F friends, and socialise more. All attempts have been varying degrees of failure . Last attempt was a group in my local library pre COVID. I didn't say much, but when I did speak there was little to no response. The others got on well with each other. To top it off the person running the group,a self proclaimed 'radical social worker' made a sarky comment when I paid for the refreshments I had. He hadn't done so with a woman who'd paid the same amount a few minutes before me.