Half a friend is worse than no friend at all

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Recently I've found myself very frustrated with the few friendships I have. I don't have many people I consider friends, and I don't get to talk to those few very much. One I never talk with because he works two jobs, and he's improving his life, and I'm happy for him about that; I just only get to see him once a month really, which is too little for me as he is probably my best friend. Another friend I see around twice a week, but she and I haven't been getting along very well and she's the kind of person that overwhelms me with enough exposure. She knows about my depression and how I've been feeling, but I can never actually talk to her about anything because she can hijack any conversation by talking about her marine boyfriend, or she'll find something to argue with me about (she looks for anything she can feel offended or slighted about). My other friend lives in New York City now and I've had mixed feelings about our friendship since before she left anyway. She's the kind of person who I can't have any sort of consistent conversation with. She would text me out of the blue, talk a little, explain her problems then ask about mine, yet every time I would begin texting back about my own issues (which she would ask to hear about) she would stop responding for weeks, and we didn't see each other in person regularly. She would also lie about seemingly random things, which didn't make me feel very great, as I often have trouble telling when someone is lying. Now that she's in New York she hasn't interacted with me much at all, perhaps once a month I'll get some sort of message about how she misses talking to me or how she's glad we're friends or something. Just tonight she began chatting to me via Facebook and we had a decent conversation for about an hour. I even got to tell her about my depression and my recent suspicions of Asperger's, and she even responded back....for a while. I know people are busy, and she probably has better things to do, but it does get frustrating to tell someone something personal at their prompting, then slowly realize that you won't hear back from them for another month or so, and when they do talk to you again all of your issues in the previous discussion will be totally ignored or brushed off with a cheery sentence.
That brings me to the title of this topic. I'm tired of feeling like I only get half friends. I know it's probably selfish in many cases, but it doesn't change the feeling that I need to vent. I don't have any friends to vent to...I just have this, I guess. I just wish that when I finally, FINALLY make a friend it could be a friend I can actually rely on. I've been in college since August and I have yet to even nearly make a friend. Or half a friend, even. I have a few older acquaintances, but none of them have bothered to communicate with me at all in months. This is the kind of thing that makes me feel even worse than I usually do. I just don't know what to do anymore. Nothing seems to ever get better. Sometimes it just seems like I should stop expecting anything to improve. Lately I just feel like I don't want to stick around to see things get even worse.

I live in Colorado myself, and I'm more than familiar with what you're learning - just recently, for pretty much all the same reasons, I gave my own social life a break. It seems that many of us are more socially sensible people than we're ascribed credit for, sometimes we improve things for others indirectly by stepping back and respecting our own intuition. This may be all you can do in your position, but there's really a lot to be said for it. I have no doubt this is a slow process, but there's always something to keep one's mind off the tough times implied. How much can you do or learn for your friends before they get curious about what you're up to?

_________________
"Standing on a well-chilled cinder, we see the fading of the suns, and try to recall the vanished brilliance of the origin of the worlds."
-Georges Lemaitre
"I fly through hyperspace, in my green computer interface"
-Gem Tos

It seems like this realization is coming at a terrible time, as well. I tried giving my social life a break over the summer, but that just made me feel worse. I've been feeling like I need people for the first time ever in just the past few months. I used to make a conscious effort to repress any emotion I had, since all of my experience told me it just didn't work out for me to express anything, but after I stopped doing that and forced myself to feel everything again I haven't been able to avoid the feeling of needing at least one person in my life with which there is a discernible mutual care. I feel like I need someone or something more tethering me here. I've been reaching out to those around me as best as I know how, but I can't find that tether. I'm adrift and I feel like I'm getting dangerously close to drifting too far out for anything to be done about it. I don't understand the people around me, but I want to. Maybe that's the problem. Maybe I've been expecting too much of people that I don't understand and who I probably wouldn't care to.

Try not to force emotions on yourself - clearly you've spent long enough doing the opposite that, I believe, like anyone you need time to identify what you feel before acting on it. Do your best to characterize your emotions before you decide which ones are important to share. Clearly you don't just care to understand people, but furthermore enough to accurately define and try to help them through their own flaws. You may still feel adrift after seeing to all this, but that's because you have the space in your head to stretch out or pull in. You're right, this all depends on timing.

_________________
"Standing on a well-chilled cinder, we see the fading of the suns, and try to recall the vanished brilliance of the origin of the worlds."
-Georges Lemaitre
"I fly through hyperspace, in my green computer interface"
-Gem Tos

Your not alone in the 'half-friend' dilema. I suppose if one had real friends the half-ones would not disappoint because your not depending on them. Are none better then half-friends, in that you don't experience the disappointment? I don't know. But perhaps the lonliness is not bad if it motivates you to seek real 'full-time' friends.

I don't have any 'full' friends at this point. I haven't really had many at all, even at the peak of my sociability. I don't know how to go about finding and making even any new half friend right now, so I'm not sure how likely it is I'll find any full friends soon. I don't think any of my half friends even realize they're only being half friends because it seems most people are content having quantity over quality with their friendships now. It's one of those differences I notice between myself and others around me that make me feel so alienated. I think part of it might be that I don't even feel like I have a family in the sense that most others describe it, so I'm looking to friends to fill even bigger voids.

I think you've done a pretty good job reading the three friends or half friends you present at the beginning. The first one is potentially a friend, although maybe on a different trajectory. The other two, not so much. It sounds like you're just more mature than they are. You can coach them and help them, if you have the energy, if they don't ask too much, if they realize that the relationship is basically you as elder statesman or stateswoman, which it sounds like they do not. But they literally just don't have it in them to reciprocate in turn.

If you're ahead of your classes and can swing it, working part time might be an opening. I've had some luck at least meeting people I can talk with a little at work. It seems like my issues, my interests, my circumstances, are just more complicated than most other people. I used to think of myself as an artist type person. Now, an artist within the broader range of being Aspie, who is self-diagnosed which I think is fine.

It's very hard to meet people in classes, maybe only occasionally that magic happens. I've had more luck casually hanging the dorm and casually studying, and then going down to the cafeteria with dorm mates, playing ping pong or pool together, watching TV together. But it was a bullying type atmosphere. I wish I had had the skills and energy to be a low-key leader and invite people to my type of activities. Student groups, whether biking or political, don't really have activities often enough to get much momentum going. And the whole fraternity and sorority thing of judging people and hierarchy, even for a number of people not in fraternities and sororities, kind of permeates. Yes, this is bad news. But it also means you're not crazy. You may be largely reading college correctly.

I've been trying to find work for the past eight months, but I've only gotten one interview out of my dozens of applications (despite a decent resume for my age group) and no job offers yet. I hope to get something soon, as I know many people around me seem to make at least a few friends at work almost out of necessity. It's also harder for me to meet anyone at college since I have to commute, so I don't even get the benefit of just spending so much of my time around so many other people whom I could potentially make friends with. Sometimes it gets abysmally lonely. People always seem to like me as a person, but not as a friend. Most of the guys my age are complaining about the 'friendzone' and I'm just rather envious they can even become friends with other people.
Right now I'm looking forward to not having to deal with college, but that also makes me terrified for what might follow. Sometimes the smaller details of life are so complicated that they outweigh my concerns for the bigger picture.

The classes at H&R Block (or Jackson Hewitt, or Liberty) started about a month ago, but you can still get on late. And they have ongoing classes like taxes and small business which are briefer and start November and maybe even Dec. There's still plenty of time to get the job if this is something which appeals to you. Basically you pass a test early to mid December.

You can meet people in the classes, and I think they're somewhat friendlier than people in college classes. It's a condensed track of class, then job. A lot of people are looking forward to get the bonus, and it's neither your job nor my job to rain on someone else's parade. If a co-worker directly asks you, perhaps something like, Let's see how it goes, but I'm not going to work off the clock.

And the bank and loan products have some real negatives which are buried in a raft of like 40 pages of paperwork. Yeah, they might be underlined, but they're still buried in a raft of paperwork. If you make any effort at all to inform people, you are ahead of the curve.

And the job usually lasts about five weeks from late December to early February and typically, that's it.

So, all this for a five week job? ? Yeah, but that's kind of the point. It's five weeks of working directly with clients. And I decided my primary loyalty was to my clients and my immediate co-workers, and not so much the company hierarchy. It was kind of a wild west environment, and I learned a lot. Now, one year out of four I was fired, but that means three years out of four I wasn't.

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A Christmas job in retail, you might think would be relatively easy to get. But it takes me 10 to 15 applications, sometime more and I have experience. And might be approaching too late, or still some time.

I always say "no company is better than bad company!"