Not being able to make friends is frightening me

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I think all my life my social problems have been caused by anxiety, depression and ADHD. But what if that's just wishful thinking and denial?

My cousin shows some symptoms of Asperger's but it still has never affected her ability to make friends.

- As a child she had the most tidiest bedroom a kid has ever had, and woe betide if you moved anything in her room

- She wasn't very good playing in groups - but I don't know if that was to do with her being an only child, although I knew other kids with no siblings and they still mingled well in groups

- She doesn't always express her feelings like most females do, and I don't think she always understands feelings of herself or others very well

- As a toddler she was always in her own world, didn't interact much or make eye contact

- As an adult she doesn't initiate conversation that well or join in group discussions, or know much general knowledge (she spends more time giggling than actually chatting, but she's better at chatting one to one than in a group)

- She had noticeable speech delays as a child


But all that doesn't/has never stopped her making friends. What's she got that I haven't? Making friends ain't that hard. I'm just worthless.

For the longest time i didnt care about how many friends i had, or keeping contact, plus after years passing of not really caring it's kinda hard to reconnect with people you disregarded. Some of us are just meant to be loners. Its our destiny. it's in our genes.

Was she not accommodated by someone else's networking, or this happens naturally within the location's proximity?

I don't quite understand your question.

IOW did she have help from some social service group or lay forum or such?

For what it's worth as all people get older, their friendship circles shrink. In addition our maturity and emotional resilience becomes stronger and we are less reliant on friends for emotional support and for validating our decisions.

Alright.

Is she with someone else, usually a caregiver or a very social friend, who can let her to go to other places, meet other people and include her?
Usually done via chains of mutual friends or acquaintances.
Or, had she been using a service of sorts to help her meet and socialize with other people?

If not, compare the odds on how she initiates any contact herself, and if it's backed by another party or not.

Does she do the socializing herself in where she frequents?
And/or, does these places she frequently go happened to be a more socially inclusive area, with people who would include her?

If not, then what draws other people to her? And what makes some people stick with her?

She's never had any support, she's always been treated like any normal child and adult. I had support but still sucked at making friends from about age 11 onwards. When she was 5 or 6 she joined a dance club but she didn't make any friends there so she quit. But she had schoolfriends, and when she got older she had sleepovers. She's never hung about in a group but she had a few friends that she saw one at a time and they seemed to enjoy spending time with her and she wasn't socially isolated or a burden on her mum.

Another thing is although she is quite shy she still throws herself at people, gets their number and even home address straight away, and invites them to do things with her outside of work - all within like 10 minutes of getting to know someone. If I did that, I'd just get socially rejected. The last time I tried to make a friend I played it very slow but it still died out. I met the girl at work but she left, but before she left she gave me a hug and said we should meet up for a girly day out. I was thrilled, and that night she added me on Facebook and sent a nice message, so I sent her a nice message back, not too forceful or anything to creep her out, just the casual niceties (it's not hard, I know what I'm talking about), and I passed on my mobile phone number too, because that's what other people do. We exchanged texts a few times and I tried organising a meet-up day, but she kept saying she was busy. I understood that and didn't bug her or anything, but I didn't like to keep asking when she was free so I told her the days I was usually free and I thought she'd organise a date because I had more free time than her, but she never did. It's been over a year now and it's clear that the friendship fizzled out months ago. Is making a friend THAT f*****g hard? Because I think not. It's just me, innit? I give off fuck-off vibes that has nothing to do with how my stupid brain is wired.

well written and i think it is factual.

I think I'm just triggered again because my socially awkward cousin and her boyfriend are often going out to gigs and stuff at bars with a crowd of people from their work. Just when I reassured myself that my cousin hasn't seemed to made friends where she works and she even said to me herself that she talks to one person the most at work (who is an older relative of hers). Yet her mum told me that she's going to some sort of music gig thing in a bar next Saturday, and these gigs are becoming a regular thing with them.

It just reminded me of how excluded and left out I have been at my work when I worked with 3 others my age. I got on with them and everything, and we didn't know each other before we worked there, but they all made arrangements and did exciting stuff together at weekends (like theme parks and stuff), and they knew I liked that sort of thing too but there was never even a hint of an invite, and it hurt. It still hurts today, even though most of them don't work there any more - thank God. I'd love to have been able to post on Facebook that I was doing social activities with my colleagues, like normal people with my age do. But no, it's not meant to happen. It's embarrassing really.

I think the first part of this is true. And sad. I don't think people value friendship as much as they should once they start settling down and getting careers and families. They don't feel they have the time for it and work relationships often scratch the socialising itch.

I don't know about the second part. I think that resilience might be a necessary reaction to the first bit, rather than another reason.

I can manage as a loner, I've always sought out and enjoyed my own company, I've always found people disappointing and frivolous and exhausting. But then, I watch a lot of Youtube videos about whatever I'm interested in at the time, recently it's been parkour and then skateboarding and I see these groups of young men doing stuff together and they're so supportive of each other, they're like brothers and I get so jealous of that, it seems like a lovely thing that I never had and all my experience suggests I probably won't have.

The strangest thing is...
This applies to people I had met in their 30s and above.
They usually already have social circles firmly rooted that already been there before their adulthood.
New ones are either of family or professional.


Yet it doesn't apply to my own mom.
She multiplies and merges social circles -- offline and online. A true extrovert in and out.

Her social circles seem to expand exponentially overtime.
And I'm aware she's not an average NT in that respect, her circumstances and choices in life are not exactly typical.
Added the nature of this culture, it's adds fuel to the fire.

I wonder if I had inherited this trait... In spite of being socially disinterested.
Because I manifested said traits, once upon a time. Sometimes I didn't understand why.

I think I need help with accepting myself, because if my depression goes on like this much longer I'm going to commit suicide. I can't live with this f*****g Asperger's s**t much longer. I cannot accept
that Asperger's is the reason I can't make friends. I cannot accept that my socially odd cousin can make friends and doesn't have Asperger's. I can't accept it at all.

f**k my life and my pathetic poorly wired autistic brain.

Have you ever thought of getting help for how some of the trauma you've experienced as a result of rejection and exclusion when you were young impacts you now?

I'd definitely agree with how you lead in, that part of the problem is accepting yourself for who you are and the entire assortment of traits you have. Often when you discuss these things it's clear that you carry a lot of grievances tied to how people have behaved towards you and it often sounds as though you've come to agree (on some level) with people who've mistreated you that you somehow are less deserving of being accepted and liked.

You're a good, likeable person who has a lot to offer to humanity. You have a partner, loved ones and if not friends at least acquaintances who all benefit from your existence even if it's hard to see at times because depression tends to lead to ruminating over the worst parts of our lives and ourselves.

It's also possible you might be failing to acknowledge people who view you as a friend in these moments. I'm prone to this but eventually noticed if I'm always making this complaint to people who view me as a friend, might they just feel like I'm saying they're not my friends? I don't have a lot of friends and many of them aren't very close, it's probably not enough to actually meet my social needs, but they do exist and ought to be appreciated in those moments. It also helps ever so slightly reduce that feeling to consciously remember those people in those moments.

I suppose I can try to think of all the people who have been nice to me. A guy at work (not one of the cliquey ones that left me out) is a friend. When he got married, he was picky about which people to invite to the reception and mostly invited family, but he invited me and my boyfriend too, so he must like me. Also he gives me a ride home from work often (and no, he's not two-timing or anything, he's just being a true friend, my boyfriend likes and trusts him as a gentleman, and his wife likes and trusts me). I do know the difference between a man friend "trying it on" and a man friend just being a friend. Should I focus on this to help myself feel better?

I would.

I struggle with depression a lot and often struggle with actually applying advice I give to others but I know when loneliness becomes the focus of what's I'm thinking of while I'm depressed remembering people who are kind and supportive and there does help with reducing that specific concern, even if it doesn't make the broader feeling of depression.

And you might struggle with applying it as a strategy a bunch too, because when stuck in depression it often seems to undermine our ability to use and implement healthy coping strategies to pull ourselves out of cycles of rumination, defeatism, etc. But, all that means is just try again. A lot of it is about training yourself to adopt healthy mechanisms in response to negative feelings and that does require persistent effort just like any other sort of training. It's the sort of thing where you can't actually fail so long as you're still trying.

I wish I had adopted this approach 20 years ago.