Do people with other severe disabilities have more friends?

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To the OP, if you would like to meet people and make friends, I have a couple simple pointers.

1) Have a open or pleasant look on your face. This may take some practice. Ask someone to tell you what facial expression looks approachable.
2) Have a generous easy smile. A smiling face is an attractive face. People are drawn to attractive things.
3) Make it a point to ask someone how they are doing and actually listen to their response. If possible, have one or 2 follow up questions. People love when you ask them about themselves. Also remember to try and look interested. It can come across negatively if you ask someone something and then zone out.
4) Initial discussions should be positive and hopefully. Nothing turns people off as the person who is appears to ALWAYS be complaining about something. People are drawn to positive people. It just makes you feel better.
5) Try to do something nice for someone (hold a door, offer to help them carry something, etc). Small acts of kindness rejuvinates the soul and people's faith in th human race. It also makes people feel obligated to give you a second try.

I hope this helps.

I'm not the OP, but I have done all these things (and NOT to get friends: I'm just a naturally good person) and seem to have no luck at all. No matter how nice I am to people my age, I only get one or two word answers to my questions. People tell me I'm too negative, but how the #$@#$@# can you be too negative while smiling and saying "So I see you are a fellow X player. How did you get involved in X?" Seems when I try to be genuinely nice to people my own age they seem to think I have a hidden agenda. Conversely, conversations with older adults and seniors are never an issue for me and I can strike up a conversation with a child very easily. Go figure!

On an related note, I have found that the women who smile and give the "signs" of being open and easygoing are usually the LEAST approachable and usually have the biggest attitude problems. I find the ones who are more "negative" are usually the best because they are genuine and aren't putting on a phony front. While upbeat is good, there's nothing I hate more than an actor/actress and most "cheerful" people I run into are just putting on a front.

I don't have as many friends as my NT cousins do. Well, saying that, I might have, but my cousins seem to hang out in groups, while I just see one friend at a time, because they are at different ages and so don't really know eachother. So I do have friends but I don't have a crowd, if you know what I mean. My cousins all seem to have a crowd, or if not, then they're spending all their time with a boy/girlfriend.

I agree with some posts talking about visible/invisible disabilities. I think people generally apply the "normal" standards of social interaction to people with AS because they look just normal, whereas they are more lenient to obviously disabled people.

I also agree with someone's post about many of disabled people's friends possibly being not true friends.

So, essentially I think the answer to the OP's question is yes but with reservation that they may not be true friends. At least those visibly disabled people can probably enjoy socialization, though, as someone pointed out, they have to deal with some other unpleasant issues such as patronizing people etc.

This forum is so informative and full of insights from different people. I also realize that there are many people like me struggling in similar ways. I'm just so glad I found this website.

Every person who are mentally challenged who I have met (and I have met a lot because I used to volunteer at a club for teenagers with special needs) and all of them had social issues to a degree. Some couldn't even talk, but weren't Autistic. One of them was 20 but literally had the mental age of a 1-year-old, and he had a wheelchair. He wasn't Autistic though, I just know he wasn't. He was just severely ret*d, both physically and mentally. He did love attention though, if you gave him eye contact, he did smile at you, and he used to wave to everyone passing in the street and if they said hello to him, he flapped his hands excitedly. He was very cuddly aswell, he used to hold his arms out to people. I used to cuddle him too.

Yes, this is often the case because most other disabilities are not social disabilities.