Do we let a single conflict ruin friendships?

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I was thinking about this friend I had years ago. We never met but we talked online for over a year. I liked her a lot. But she was much more normal than me. The kind of person who goes to a drive-in theater and talks over the movie. Her world was a very social one and she was socially capable.

Well one day I got flustered. Said mean things to her I didn't mean. Because it got to me that she was living a life that I never would. A life so different that I couldn't really imagine it. And it bothered me that I couldn't live that life with her. I was too afraid to meet her because I can't express myself in person and she'd see me as less. Well, that's how I felt.

That one conflict effectively ended our friendship. I apologized but she was understandably not ready to warm up to me again. Rather than keep trying I just decided I failed her and that things were finished.

This made me wonder how common that is with autistics. To have someone upset with you or cold with you and figure that is the end of the friendship. Where a normal person might realize these emotions can be temporary. That friendships have these hurdles and sometimes are stronger for overcoming them.

So my question is, has there been relationships you probably let go of to soon?

Because you figured that, despite them liking you before, they didn't seem to like you anymore, so you just had to suffer the loss, perhaps hate yourself over it, and move on?

Do you wonder what it might have been like if you kept trying and eventually got on good terms again with these people?

Yes, absolutely.



Not anymore. Numerous times I have tried to re-friend people toward whom I had behaved harshly. It has never worked for me. I have had to accept the consequences of my actions and the loss of that friendship, then move on and try to behave differently the next time a similar situation arises.

Like the stock market, life can be unforgiving of bad choices.

Yes, I've had friendships suddenly end from one incident, whether my doing or the other person's. But no, I never wonder what I would have been like. I don't dwell on ended relationships. You never, ever move backward in life. I've never seen an instance where doing so turned out to be a good thing.

I can't say I ever got flustered to a point where I thought it would be better to break off a relationship rather than persevere with the relationship in the hope that the person would notice my better qualities. In fact, I always overrated my good qualities and wondered why my mates scored better girl friends than I ever did.

When I was younger I tended to over react in situations where a single point of difference was enough for me to break off a friendship. For instance, I didn't speak to my best friend for 10 years after we disagreed on musical tastes concerning a single genre of music. Usually in opposite sex relationships the girl would beak off with me after a single episode in which I said or did something they deemed inappropriate. I would be scratching my head afterwards wondering what it was that I said or did, because usually the girl didn't say anything other than not return my calls the next day.

In the longer term relationships I was in where my girlfriend would put up with me, I used to get very picky for no reason at all, other than I was felt I was losing my free space and independence. I would then create an argument out of nothing with my girlfriend just to bring the relationship to an end so I could be alone again.

After a time I would get lonely to the point where I would yearn to be in another relationship. It wouldn't help that most of my friends were all married at the time and I felt the odd man out when I visited.

So the cycle of short term relationships continued until I found my life's partner.

I've experienced friendships and relationships ending after one conflict/the first conflict all my life. About half the time it was me who ended it after the one thing, but approximately the other 50% of the time, it was the other person who gave up on me right away after the one thing.

When I was on the receiving end (ie, they cut things off with me for one conflict) it felt overly harsh to me, particularly since I seem to notice other people's friendships and relationships surviving way, way, way worse things they they get over together.

My most recent relationship ended after I had a meltdown due to stress that was caused by something huge that even NT's list as a "major life change and stress factor." Even NT's don't find it easy to deal with what I had going on at that time. So, this type of life event for someone on the spectrum was many more times tougher for me to cope with, and I finally broke down. The person who claimed he loved me turned a 180 and reviled me. Game over.

Meanwhile, I've witnessed people's marriages where someone was difficult and threw horrendous scenes on a regular basis, yet their partners still calmly stick with them and love them to death, forgive them for being jerks and wouldn't be with anyone else. I had one meltdown due to a real situation only a dick could blame me for breaking down over, and boom, done. Rejected. This has happened a lot in my life.

On the flipside I've ended a friendship at the first conflict too -- sometimes because I felt the transgression of the other person was a legitimate dealbreaker (although that can be very subjective and I may not have been always fair myself), and sometimes because I truly didn't know how to go forward from there.

Right now, a very dear friend I've known for over ten years and whom I don't want to lose, has said something that will forever be "the elephant in the room" because we so disagree on a course of action. I don't intend to lose our friendship but I literally don't know what to say to her now going forward.

Not really but more because I can never seem to make a proper friend in the first place. It may if I could make a proper friend and I could see it happening.

Well, it's happened like that, but mostly I've hung on in there. Nonetheless, I've often had a strong irrational feeling after a conflict that I (or more rarely, they) have broken something that can't be fixed, and that feeling has been known to continue seemingly forever. Probably partly explains why I'm often so anxious in company, afraid to put a foot wrong in case I spoil a beautiful friendship.

Dad was even worse. He had several friendships in which one conflict ruined everything, and he would then surgically erase the friend from his life.

Once I have a conflict with someone, I just feel too awkward to talk to that person again and certainly won't actively try to fix a broken "friendship". Probably I've never had a real friend. I also tend to hold grudge forever.

More often than not it has been the other way around, I have been the person who kept trying and held out hope to get past a rough patch, only to find out that the other person had some sort of grudge against me, or some wild misconception about me or other behavior that would make me disinclined to ever talk to them again.

Has always seemed to me like most people take the attitude you are describing, when things get a little awkward or difficult, they just assume it's over and let things drop.

There was one friendship I've written about here before, that went horribly wrong, and I tried and tried, I mean for YEARS, to patch things up, and suffered quite a bit of humiliation because of it. Eventually the guy apologized to me and we reconciled, but only after I had completely given up and written our friendship off as unsalvageable. We haven't talked much since then. I'll always think of him as a friend, but is our friendship stronger because of what happened? NO. I wish I had given up much sooner than I did.

I really dislike being on bad terms with anyone, but it takes two to be on good terms with each other. If the other person doesn't meet you halfway, it won't change anything. It only takes one to be on bad terms.




Yes. Same here.

I read something about being autistic that really hit home. It said that since we never know how something we say or do will be interpreted by others, it feels like always putting your foot on unstable ice. It's scary as hell. I think this explains some of our lack of relationships. I'm currently being frozen out of my family for something that wasn't only false, but denied when asked about...

Yes that is exactly how it feels.

Also I don't understand why other people can be tolerated and accepted and forgiven for all kinds of obnoxious asshattery, yet if I do one tiny little thing "wrong" people seem to just hold it against me forever.

I suspect NTs and ASDers have in some way a very different idea of what's forgivable and what's not, and that difference may be at the root of this.

I hadn't thought about it quite like that, but I think you have it right.

There are some things that I would consider "dealbreakers" that other people might not even understand. To me it just seems obvious that they are doing something beyond the pale.

Food for thought at least. It's an idea I haven't really developed very well yet, but it does seem like it could explain a lot. I guess it manifests itself in the same kind of way as culture shock.

It's stupid to hate yourself. Wtf

Valid point. It's far from helpful in most cases.

For me it happens off and on. Mostly around other people as my functioning is bad and I can't express myself. Lately I'm doing a little better though. Since I get a therapist to talk to.