Maintaining Friendships

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How do you manage to cope with maintaining friendships?

My stress levels have hit the roof lately for several reasons.

1 I get a bit lonely for friends when I don't have any but when I do find friends I cannot cope with the amount of socialisation and interaction they need. I feel absolutely ill today because having to socialise and chat with people has drained me of all energy. I am also studying for my degree and I cannot get the time I need to study. As a result I am falling behind because I cannot get any peace and quiet to focus on my work. I don't mind the work, I can happily spend hours studying and my subject is most fascinating, but I CANNOT concentrate on my work when people keep talking at me.

Endlessly talking at me. Talk, talk talk. And I have to keep making conversation and its draining. Talk talk talk talk talk.

I cannot get any time to just be alone or just disappear off into my head or just be quietly with my books.

Talk talk talk talk talk....socialise socialise socialise socialise.

And when you don't socialise people take it personally or think that you are just depressed. And if you ask for alone time they give you 30 minutes and they are back again...I meant a couple of days. Then arguments break out and there is pressure to socialise socialise socialise socialise and talk talk talk talk and I just can't think any more...and I feel so ill and exhausted. So exhausted.

2 I am due to go for therapy for my social anxiety (which is my diagnosis not an ASD) and I just know they are going to expect me to socialise a lot and I just cannot do it. I want to be sitting quietly with my studies but the world keeps forcing me to socialise all the time. Talk talk make conversation, talk yack yack yap yap yap yap arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

I want friends and I don't mind socialising sometimes but I need to do so in my own time and in my own terms or my anxiety levels hit the roof and I become so exhausted I cannot function. Right now I just want to flee from the world, which makes it look like depression, but it is more that I am so tired and feel so ill that I just want to relax by myself for a while, and just potter around quietly doing my own thing. But they think that is bad for you and need more socialising, but the more socialising I do the more exhausted I get. I don't really care what people or the world thinks of me right now, I just want some quiet.....some quiet time with my studies and pottering around in my own head and my own house doing whatever it is I want to do, without all the talking, without distraction. JUST QUIET.

The alone time does not make me worse...it has the opposite effect and allows me to recover.

Pottering around with my hobbies helps as does putting my little routines back in as my day feels more like it's my day again. And that's another thing they want me to take out...my routines. I am lost without them. My day does not feel like my day, my life does not feel like my life, everything is too different and I miss them and I want them back...I like them. I like them dammit.

I don't know what I am asking really other than maybe for some advice or if others here have ever felt the same or had the same problem? Also how do I get this across to my therapist. I am terrified the therapy will make me worse, it has in the past, because no one understands about needing the amount of alone time I need. No one...

I did not read your whole text and just stick to the headline.
All my "friendships" were connected to the common special interest that I had at that moment and when this special interest changed or I had to move from place I could not maintain a "friendship" anymore. Then I alienate from people. Then I am in "another" universe and it has to be very narrow settled, and I cannot "switch" between things.
Sometimes I feel a bit sad about it, but that is the way it is, I do not know how to maintain a "friendship" if it is not connected to a special interest anymore.
I did not had that many "friendships" as well and could never combine having two at the same moment, too hard to make a "switch".

It's hard for me to maintain friendships because I'm never the one who initiates contact with them. I always wait until they call me for example, I'll never call any of my friends in a million years because I'm not good at making plans and most of the time I have no desire to hang out with them in the first place. Most of the time I'm perfectly content sitting in my room reading a book or watching tv or something.

Do most people on here not primarily look toward other introverts as the potential friends?

I'm not all that good at socializing, but I do need to hang out with people every once in a while to keep me from feeling lonely, plus filling time by doing fun stuff keeps away the boredom as well.

Initiating contact with people is easy, I've made some friends again in recent months, and spend time with them every once in a while.

Maintaining contact is harder. Sometimes I get bored of people if they keep nagging at me to do things. Sometimes I like them so much I want to hang out with them a lot. In the latter case I get really paranoid when I message or text them and they take a long time to reply or don't reply at all.

I'm always afraid I poke them too much, so then I try to wait for them to contact me. The first week is rather stressful because I keep being paranoid and think they don't like me or don't care about me. After that I get used to not having them around and don't miss them as much. From this point I usually feel like the friendship slowly dies off. I really need to update my social protocols here I guess.

Though last saturday several friends I hadn't seen or contacted for a while messaged me and invited me to go out. I don't often get invited so that was nice for a change

Usually friends either use me or once they finished using me they dump me

I remember one of my friend loved books she used to borrow from me....after i shifted house she used to call me up once or twice in a year
she had taken loan of some money and finally when one day i had decided to sell of my books at throw away prize i had emailed her she came running all the way to buy those books otherwise in all those 3 years she never visited my house after that i never heard back from her.

Another friend shifted from this city and just stopped calling me.

Its very hard for me to deal with friendship

I'm not good at maintaining close friendships with anybody... I do have some friends but most of the time we text or email only a few times per month. I have to be in a very good mood if I ask them to hang out with me...

I'm way better with communicating with my roommates, who have become friends, too. I can see them every day and I cannot really avoid them. With friends who live further away (10 minutes by train....) uh, hard. very hard.

Good thing though that most of them are very busy with their party life and don't really care if we only meet up every once in a while.

I'm not good at it at all.
I'm either too clingy and do to much or I am to distant and seem as if I didn't care. Those strategies don't work for maintaining close friendships for long.
Though I have 3 of those friendships. I probably hang out with every one of them,...once a year. I send messages, maybe twice in a half year...and so on.
I can count how often I asked people to hang out with me on one hand. I usually don't know what to do other than talk and you can talk throught the phone or with messengers anyway.
And it's always a blessing to find someone I can connect to, at least because of one of my interest. No matter if I'm bad at keeping a good amount of contact.
Sometimes I would like to tell someone something about one of my interests and nobody is there....with so few friends, it's more likely that you can't reach anyone than to reach someone.