Failure to develop peer relationships appropriate

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Thanks RainSong. I think I have a logical attitude. I don't want to be dxed with something that I don't have just because I somehow talked a psychologist into it. However, if the results say that I'm not AS, I will change my status, and probably be in the haven writing a post straight after. I will not lie. I'll be quite devastated, because I finally feel like I know what's going on with me. It will be hard if I find out that I'm wrong.

To be honest, I find friendships really hard to maintain. People drain me. When I've had any friends, there was usually 2 main reasons that they didn't work out. One being that I was unintentionally rude. I'm a little better at that now. I used to not understand why what I had said was considered offensive. The other was because I didn't do my part in keeping in touch. They said that I never called them, or wanted to go do anything. True, I didn't. I thought it was them that was weird. I thought they were simply too clingy, and demanding. Now, I know it's perfectly normal behavior to contact friends that often. This may sound so totally selfish (and it is) but I wish that I could have a friend only for the times that I felt like hanging out, or chatting, but that they'd leave me alone all the rest of the time. This could be for a few days, to several weeks.

Of course, the above paragraph highlights the times that I've had a chance to be friends with someone. Those opportunities are few, and far between anymore. Now, I'd settle for neighbors, and acquaintances to at least be casually friendly, instead of avoiding me like the plague.

I believe that the DSM-IV was developed in relation to children, not adults. Suggesting that marriage is the adult form of "peer relationships appropriate to developmental level" is, I believe, a bit of a stretch beyond the original intent and spirit of the criteria.

What I believe it means is either an unwillingness or inability to form friends or social networks with other children in or near your grade level in school. I remember them teaching us about "peer pressure" in 6th grade. I thought to myself, "What!? Why in the world would anyone feel peer pressure? That's so foreign." I was because (I'm willing to bet) because I formed few to none of the peer relationships appropriate to my development level. My relationships were almost exclusively with adults until high school.

I'm posting this without having read the entire thread and I intend to go back and read it all. At first I thought I had wandered into the wrong thread, into a discussion about self dx and was about to leave, but now I see I am where i intended to be - Failure to develop peer relationships.

This may be true of me to some extent and it may be a bona fide Aspie characteristic, but frankly, I'm quite proud of the fact that I am able to relate to all age groups and don't feel the need to limit myself to peers. So why isn't it seen as a "failure to develop relationships with seniors and juniors" for the majority of Nuerotypicals who seem to rope themselves off to all but their own kind, age and social status. Perhaps we as Aspies, have not failed, but succeeded in establishing relationships with all age groups.

outlier,

That's it.

There's all of the works she references at the end of her chapter, as I said, so it might be in one of those, or, she might be speaking from her clinical experience (however, she usually lets the reader know when this is).

She may be referring to the outcome study Digby Tantam did when he included AS in the DSM-IV-TR, where he found that only 1 or 2% were married of the people he studied for the inclusion of the disorder (males and females alike).

I have 3 brothers and 1 sister so I always had company and I knew the same people from 1st grade to high school graduation. New people came along but there was always the core familiar group that I didn't have to work at socializing with. When I left town to go to college I realized I had no idea how to make friends or approach a group. So if that question had been asked of me as a child it may have seemed like I was just fine in that category, when actually I wasn't. I never learned those skills by observation and my parents never taught me.

I think the whole idea of peer relationships is highly overrated and foolishly sought after in order to follow and be included in the herd or the flock or the pack. Being a loner seems to be synonymous with the black sheep, and tell me please, what is so wrong with being a black sheep. It stands out among the herd. It gets stoned. The other sheep bully and abuse it because it's different to say it is not "normal" because it doesn't relate well to its peers, or group of peers, is like saying the black sheep is less valuable, less wholesome, less healthy than the more common white sheep in the herd. That makes no sense to me.

In the old days, before civilization or society became so congested with people living in close proximity to each other and breathing down each others necks and poking their noses into each others business, it wasn't the usual for a person to develop peer relationships because there was too much of a geographical distance between people for that to be possible and too much work to be done with no time left to hang out with ones "peers" on the other side of the mountain. So then, after a while, the population exploded and now we must, by whose insistence, be able to form peer relationships or we are not considered "normal" or "neurologically typical"? Bah, humbug.

Forming close relationships with people of one's age group should be an option and not a necessity or a criteria in some psychiatric manual to determine "normalcy" or "health". Loners," black sheep" can and do lead happy and productive lives if they are not being ostracized and stoned because of their oddness or symbolic color and pressured to fit in, fit in, fit in - and work hard to be more attractive and accepted by the herd. Tribes were necessary once for all the obvious reasons. They aren't necessary anymore, except in places where civilization has not developed and people need to group together for safety and preservation and protection of their resources.


Quoting ZenMistress

It seems to me like a lot of diagnosed AS people who are on websites, and even those who have written books, are married... But just don't have an actual social network outside of that.
I've never had a girlfriend or boyfriend, dated, or anything like that.. and i'm 21. But i would like to think that someday i'll be able meet someone, maybe another person on the spectrum or just someone who's an oddball, who i'll be able to connect with

If there was as low an incidence of marriage among aspies as some of you make it seem like, then why would there ever be anyone creating that whole "Cassandra Affective Deprivation Disorder" thing? There must be a few Aspies out there who are getting married and driving their NT spouses crazy

From the outcome studies, marriage/partnership is a way harder thing to achieve for the entire spectrum.

Whilst only 1 to 2% are married [with AS], at least 25% have a few close friends* (these figures are taken from two different studies. The latter is in reference to individuals with HFA, so that's why I have "at least").

*Not romance

Okay, just my opinion on a few things.

When I asked the question "what does it mean to you" I was wondering exactly that. The failure to develop peer relationships is a part of the DSM criteria, but is not the end all be all. As I've said previously, you don't have to have that characteristic to be diagnosed, just 2 out of the 4 on criteria A.

The main thing that I wondered about was what would constitute a peer relationship? I see lots of pictures on here, and other places where there are people on the spectrum in groups of friends. A lot of the time in group hugging style for the camera. I have to wonder how many people with AS fulfill the above criteria. Personally, I've not had a group of friends since high school, and even then, it would've been iffy whether or not these people were really friends. I also never did the happy outgoing interactive thing with friends. Partly because I don't know how, but also I really don't enjoy it. I don't like people in my personal space, period.

I do think that a spouse would be considered a peer relationship, but as someone else pointed at it is only one relationship, where the criteria states plural relationships. IMO, it isn't developmentally appropriate for an adult to have only one relationship with peers.

After giving it a lot of thought, I don't think as many women that are on the spectrum get diagnosed as men do, for a variety of reasons. As I said previously, I don't want this to turn into a debate about self-diagnosing, so I won't go too far into that. It seems that when we do, it will come full circle to the self-dxing argument without fail. Suffice it to say that since I don't believe that many women (and people in general) get diagnosed officially, I don't think the stats provided are giving a full valid picture, nor do I think the user population on WP does. I spend a lot of time on other sites for ASD people, and reading about ASD. It's my special interest, and has been for almost 3 yrs. From the info that I've gathered over these last few yrs it would seem to me that the stats from the study provided isn't accurate. For one, it doesn't take into account the people on the spectrum that aren't married, but are in a long term relationship. I know of many people on the spectrum that even if they do get married end up living separately from their spouse, and that's not counting the ones that choose to not ever get married, but stay with the same person for years. Personally, I was content with just living with my husband, but he wanted to get married, so I gave in.

I also think that the criteria is set up to distinguish those on the spectrum, from those not on the spectrum. It is considered to be out of the norm to not have peer relationships. Not bad, just unusual. There has to be some way of distinguishing who is on the spectrum, and who isn't. I guess, for most people not having any friends would be devastating, but it isn't necessarily that way for someone with ASD. Typical people are wired to be social creatures. When someone deviates from that it is considered to be out of the norm.

There's something else that caught my attention while looking at the criteria. There are 4 symptoms listed in the first part, one of them being the relationship thing we've been discussing. The other 3 if one were to meet them, I would think would preclude anyone to be able to have appropriate relationships. To me, it's kind of like listing the same thing twice. It would almost be like someone who was incapable of walking, and using a wheelchair, and asking them if they had any impairments in running after it was already determined that they couldn't even walk. (that's maybe not the best example, but all that I could think of at the moment)