My friends don't keep in touch

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So I do have friends. And a lot of acquaintances.

I realized this past year, during a time (that's still ongoing) when I've isolated myself and stopped keeping in touch with people, that I feel responsible for maintaining contact. And yet... when I stop talking to these people, whom I consider friends, they don't try to get in touch with me, either. Once I stop maintaining contact, contact is over.

I don't know what this means. I'm not being bitter, just trying to understand what is going on.

Just as a point of clarification: Quite a few of my friends are autistic, and I've known them since before I seriously looked into diagnosis. But I know most of us have similar feelings about friendship and keeping in touch. Mostly, I'm thinking of people who are not - as far as I know - autistic and who are more invested in social connections.

Same here, even with good friends. That is why I said to my psychologist that I always feel like I am sporadic to others. I it is because of different interests and conceptions of what fun consists of. My friends are all NT and, for example, they like going to parties which I am repulsed by. I tend to avoid social situations and most of their ''friend time'' consists of that. So, off course, they want to hang out and have fun and they call someone else to join them at the party or something like that.

True, there is that.

A lot of it is online chat, e-mail, and PMs on various social sites as well.

Yes, I had started a few conversations through dating sites. I am still in touch with only one person who has social phobia. With others, I don't know. There were times when I simply didn't feel the need to respond and if I didn't respond, it would simply fade away.
I believe that these are AS at their's best, I just can't keep social things keep flowing naturally. I presume NT just call someone, almost by an impulse, but I plan it: ''today I will call this one'' and there are also times when I feel exhausted and I will not respond to phone calls.

Yeah, I can't really keep social things flowing. And generally speaking, I don't really have much interest in doing so. But the question crossed my mind as to why people who say they like it when I get in touch don't make much effort themselves to get in touch with me.

If I do get in touch with someone, it's usually because I have something specific I want to talk about that I know they are interested in as well.

Yeah, I am puzzled by that as well. I guess that we might have different understanding of what friendship is and I also believe we might be confusing to others as well.
And, the big problem is that I am never sure if I did something wrong, I mean, many things people might understand as peculiar, come to me naturally. But, I must add that I am content just with the fact that there are people who don't avoid me (or at least, I believe they don't).

Sometimes with some people I think I did something wrong. Most of the time it turns out I didn't, they just had other things on their mind.

I posted about this recently in the social section. People seem nice and yet I somehow need to keep it going. No-one would contact me otherwise. I'm at a loss as to what I can do.

I can't currently empatise however when I was a young teenager in what you'd call middle school I had a similar issue.

What would happen was I would often find myself coming over to my "friends" and joining in the discussion, so I felt somewhat wanted, I occasionally even made them laugh.
But what I began to see was that if one of this group was missing, the rest would come over to him and get him to join in, and if one of the group were sick they would wonder what was wrong with him - the same was never true of me - If I didn't come over to them they would never come looking for me or even notice, when I noticed this I was so insulted I stopped talking to them, they of course didn't notice this either.

Same here, though in my case the friends are NT.

I think part of the reason this has happened with my NT friends is that they grew up and I didn't and they care about me still but don't know how to relate to me anymore. (It hurts though, especially when I am aware of them being in contact with each other still)

But that can't describe all of them, just those that really knew me best when I was much younger (say 13/14 instead of 22).

I don't know why that happens with the person who told me I was one of her best friends, yet stopped talking to me completely less than 6 months later (when she started getting involved with someone I can't stand) except for once in a while trying to make small talk when she knows that that doesn't work for me, and yet still think she's being a good friend.

For autistic/autistic friendships, I think its more "I don't know how to do this whole social thing without a particular topic or goal in mind".

I really wish that others would keep in contact with me, the lack of that really is the biggest thing that makes me lonely despite knowing people care for me.

But it just might be it's the way NTs communicate, that they don't push contacts too far (well they have them so many) if they are not important. For me, people would contact me for a few times - I turn it down(not nec. intentionally, maybe it's just one of those periods) and that's it. I would imagine that's the way it is. And also I almost never contact them myself no wonder they would fed up with me. Anyhow they have this odd stupid special connection between themselves..

I am wondering how old these friends are, and what 'stage' they are at in their lives.
I ask because if they are married, with children and possibly working, often in these situation people are just get so caught up in their day to day lives and they unintentionally let other aspects of their lives get away from them. I am guilty of it also, there are things that I need to get done - people to call or email but caring for young children, being a tax- driver, a house cleaner, shopper, cooking, washing, feeding, being a wife (the list goes on and on) and before I know it, the week is over and I haven't done what I wanted to. Unfortunately, I lose touch with friends because I know they are in the same boat as me, some of them work also.
It's just a thought....