Problem with living in the moment

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I have noticed one thing. Whenever something out of the ordinary happens with me, say for example, I get friends or something, I stop living in the moment.
I become a lot more concerned about recording the moments and activities, like I know its going to end soon. And believe me, it does.
But this wouldn't do me any good. Just around half a year back, I lost my best friend ever(and my only good friend) because I was way more concerned with making logs of all that was happening, and had happened, than actually doing things and letting things happened.
I would write whatever conversations or activities took place in my diary, as precisely as I could, and I went as far ahead as to write about what had taken place years ago, word to word. And I spent 6 months trying to accomplish that, to no avail.
Also, I've noticed that boys usually don't become friends with me, maybe because I am not interested in girls like they are, maybe because I would never swear until I reach near meltdown state, or maybe because I am always out of tune. I don't know. But I've never had any good guy friends, I'm not aware of the exact reason, but they don't like me, and I don't like them. They like to shout, fight, and do rubbish things, which I would never do. But with girls its the other way around. They usually seem to want to make good friends with me, and they care about me, and guys don't. Anyways, this was just to give some pretext to my current situation.
Here's the problem.
Last year, a girl somehow became very close friends with me. I am not aware how that happened, but I did not do anything to cause it. We would talk everyday, and hang out every other day. And then, after some time, something struck me, and that same thing has struck me again, yet I am not able to identify it. I simply can't understand what it was that caused it, but I stopped talking to her and started building kind of an archive of everything that ever took place between us. And then after ignoring her for 6 months in order to prevent increasing the size of the archive until I came into the present moment(in the archival process), I lost her as a friend.
And right now, another girl is becoming good friends with me, and I am scared as hell.
I constantly feel the need to archive everything happening between us, in order to prevent backlog for the future, and I am forcing myself to not go into that state again, but sooner or later, I am going to get into that state, accompanied by some superb depression.
I really don't know what is causing this for me, and I feel like crying about it. I feel totally helpless, I know I will mess things up, I always do. Seems like whenever something good happens with me, I just don't want to take it.
I really need some help or advice.

OK, lets help you.

Firstly, we need to find out why you feel compelled to archive everything that is going on.

Is this a new thing? Have you always been doing it? What purpose does it serve in your life?

I don't know, I just can't figure it out. Even if I try to think about it, I can't understand what causes it. Maybe its the fear of losing something good and having nothing left, but at-least I will have the archives, I guess that is it. Most probably.

It is kind of a new thing, been going on for around a year. Not sure what purpose it serves, but I feel compelled to do it. Its like my life wouldn't be meaningful without those archives.

It is more comfortable for an Aspie to relate to an "objectification/categorization/evaluation" of a person, rather than to relate to the person directly....
especially when relating to your peer group is already a great difficulty.
What do you think?

Aspies tend to have to consciously think about social interactions.
A short term friendship doesn't generate as many things you have to constantly think about to maintain the friendship, and the things you've learned to pay attention to weren't learned so long ago that you tend to forget them.
But a long term relationship requires you to remember things you learned a long time ago... and at a some point in a relationship you may well find yourself starting to forget some of the things you've learned about the other person ... and that might drive the need to start archiving the relationship.

I'm not sure this will fulfill your compulsion to archive, but try from the start just to write down the things you've learned about her, and not the entire experience.

For example, instead of writing out a description of the entire evening watching a movie where she grabbed your hand which was sitting comfortably on her leg, she took your hand and holding the fingers still moved your thumb in a circle.

Just write down: When making contact she likes just a bit of movement to enhance the sensation of touch

Hi,

I have a similar problem though probably mine is rather manageable now. I need to log the uses of my espresso machine, heater, air-conditioner with the exact time and settings. I also need to write down when I opened the new bottle of shampoo etc. Plus just brief descriptions of what I did, what happened etc. - a bit like a diary. Sometimes these things stress me out and for the sake of not having to record it, I choose not to do something. The reason/purpose of doing all this is: it might come in handy later.

I believe you also have a similar purpose/reason. As you said you have something left after the friendship ends. Or maybe you might subconsciously thinking that you might learn something from your record. Whatever it is you must be thinking it might become somehow useful later. You wouldn't do it without any reason/purpose although the reason could actually be irrational.

What I did to make my problem less intense is to actually read what I wrote in the past and logically convince myself how useless it actually is. Once you are able to (force yourself to) stop recording or record much less, you will realize that it's so much more comfortable not to have to do it and also that it's ok not to record much/any. It might sound simplistic but that's pretty much what I did to control my problem to an extent.

Why don't you two archive your friendship together, like share a photo album/journal thing? My sister kept one of those.

@JSBACHlover Yeah, I think thats true.
@Exclavius That's a good explanation. I think it is true for my situation.
@jk1 I might be thinking subconsciously that it might somehow become useful later, but I know for sure no matter what, I am not going to go through those records even if my life depended on it, I hate reading that much. And I know consciously that it is a waste of my time, yet I feel compelled to do it.
@pensieve That is not the kind of archive I make, its rather like a diary or a journal, and I write about 1000 words for a 10 minute interaction, she's not gonna be very happy to do it. And also, this archive(ie, not this one specifically, but all of them) is something I hold very close to my heart(for some unknown reason) and would never share it with anyone, its like giving out a piece of my heart to them.

You are not the only person to have this--it has made for some famous diarists.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypergraphia

Read a little bit about it from the link, seems like that's my problem as well.

maybe you could make friends with other archivists or diary-ists.
in today's day and age, with the advent of facebook, wifi and mobile phones with wifi
surely you could work out a way of combining your archiving with normal activities.

but as i say. if you can find someone who loves writing a diary or obsessed on facebook
then perhaps you could make friends with one of them who's into the archiving thing as much as you are.

i believe facebook has settings to make your posts private to everyone but you or who you want to view.
could be an answer. cheers

^Um...this thread is more than three years old.

I also have a problem living in the moment. I'm either living in the past or the future.

I thought living in the moment meant you are living in the present and whatever happened in the past is over with. This was a problem when I was a kid because I couldn't understand why I was being punished for something that happened the day before or understand why something was bring brought up now when it had already happened and it's been over and done with. When I was younger I wouldn't understand my mother was talking about the past than the present because I would argue with her saying "Mike's not here" and "I didn't hit him, I'm right here." "I'm not in the sandbox, I'm playing with Barbies." I probably grew out of this by 8th grade. It had to do with concrete thinking. Even small children live in the moment because you also have to catch them in the act to punish them or else it's too late. They literally forget about it because their brains aren't that far developed while mine was but I just couldn't grasp it. It's not that I didn't have the cognitive ability. I can imagine I must have done a lot of gaslighting unintentionally but the adults knew to not fall for it. A kid would have to have very good skills to manipulate grown ups by making them question their own sanity and I think that is very unlikely is any child. I have never heard of any story where a kid is able to make an adult question themselves.