Have I Given The Wrong Advice To My Aspie Friend?

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Today my friend and ex long term student came to visit and give me an update of how his life is going. He is an aspie and I first taught him when he was 11 and on through his college education, even beyond that for his first year of employment. In his younger years it seems that I was the only one relating to his autism and trying to give him tools to cope with his difficulties. With all the autistics I know their families have been loving and supportive but none of them have actually acknowledged the diagnosis and most ignore it, perhaps through fear, stigma, denial, I have no idea.

When he was young, my friend would have meltdowns frequently over small things, me showing up 5 mins late for a lesson, usually over trivial things for me that were tremendously disruptive for him. Over time I deliberately came late or even early and gradually he stopped having meltdowns with me. I explained that in real life nothing is constant and he needs to be prepared. When older he would crash into glass doors in anger if a bus was late and by then I expected him to come to my home to study so he would deal with the travelling and become familiar with the unreliability of public transport. Many times I had to clean his wounds if the bus was late or the trip was problematic. Now he is grown and will be 29 next week. I am the only one he confides in with his most personal life experiences and we have tea and biscuits once a month to catch up on each other.

He was very upset today.He has been attending a workshop that deals with emotional intelligence and communication and he really enjoys it. He felt he had a really good connection with 2 girls there and he was over enthusiastic in offering them friendship, he really admires them and really wanted to just be friends though he has never had a girlfriend and yearns for one.
Basically he upset them both on different occasions. He wanted to, in his words, " tell her how great she was and boost her confidence" ( he is the sweetest) and gave this long-winded momologue and she walked off in the middle which left him gutted.
The other girl just found him annoying and was rude to him. He talked about this for 2 hours with me, he was so upset.

I told him that he needs to be less open and exuberant. He is very innocent and childlike. Keep his monologues shorter. People aren't used to 29 year olds wearing their hearts on their sleeves and not everyone is nice or trustworthy. He told me that in the workshop they encouraged him to be open, and I am telling him to be more guarded. I explained that if he will get to know someone more intimately and they prove to be nice and trustworthy then he can open up more. Then he won't get hurt so much. Did I say the right thing? Can he even control his open nature? I hate to see him hurt.

Every Aspie is different. I'd guess you would be in the best position of anyone to decide whether or not he is ready to change his social behavior.

I have issues with time in that my day is paced by events, rather than the clock. Adding to the problem is that I can do an enormous amount of work in a very short time, sometimes known as a flow state.

As a person who used to open up full throttle if I somehow got comfortable in a social situation, I have had to learn how to dial it back. The only thing hurtful about it was the fact that I was unaware of my ASD/ADD, so I thought I was just sucky at life. I think that if your friend begins to learn intentional masking with the knowledge of the dangers of long term use, he should be just fine (except of course, that masking is very hard, especially when you're yearning, etc).

I've had girls walk off after "Hello." Maybe younger women have shorter attention spans, maybe they just don't care. Good thing it's now ancient history from four decades ago.

You gave him the right advice.

Being overly friendly tends to turn off people. They suspect either that he’s “slow,” or that he has bad intentions.

I used to make the mistake of being overly friendly.....and I would get similar reactions every time. Either disdain or mockery.

A few days ago my wife confessed that when we first met I was

“so intense it was a bit scary”

I’m wondering is it possible this is how some/many NT folks experience our tendency towards completely open friendliness/passionateness?

He really is OTT and so sincere and loud and unaware that he is not interjecting any cues for a conversation to take place rather than just a monologue. He is completely unaware as yet to how different he is to NTs. I sat and listened to him and considered the negative impact I would have if I told him the truth because he was so bewildered and hurt to begin with. He has no-one else to bring this to his attention. I recommended that he discuss personal boundaries with his psychiatrist, he says his phsychiatrist is primarily concerned with medication. He has learned eye contact and hugging. He is progressing. How can you tell an aspie that he needs to be more reserved, hide his true self or he sets himself up to be hurt or disliked? I couldn't tell him that he presents himself like an innocent child, that is too much for a man to bear I think.

Psychiatrists tend only to be concerned with medication. He needs a real therapist.

Yes you are right Kraftie.

Yes: that’s resonating to an extent with my experience of life from pre-puberty onwards (about age 10)... but different because
‘bottle it all up out of uncertainty until the lid blows off spectacularly then be all surprised that anyone even noticed’
has been my usual self-sabotage of choice ... the reverse of your friends approach really, but unfortunately with much the same result in the end.

Find the medication thing puzzling: is it to damp down the emotional distress?

And, yes: had I been diagnosed and had this explained to me at the time I doubt it would have gone down well, and could even have made matters worse.

Could there be a way of framing it in terms of how to approach women? Rather than problem with him, stategic considerations based on what it is to be a female human in this world?
(Feel like I’m trying to nail jelly to fog here though)

Seconded!
I was sent to a therapist and it did eventually indirectly help: nothing she said helped at the time, but she did get me into philosophy: which has given me some little insight into how differently human minds can work.
Not a solution, more a less unstable default holding pattern.
Took about fifteen years for it to come into focus though.

The medication is for OCD/ anxiety
At the moment I am just relieved that he is sharing all this with me. I really don't have any idea how else to help him . I am working with my intuition here only. All I know about aspies is self taught I am not autistic.
It might be damaging for him if I wobble his newly found confidence. He is on a number of dating sites but not successfully.

Ah: got it with the meds! Not something I have any direct experience of (never been prescribed any) did have a schizophrenic friend in my teens and his experience of meds left me sceptical by default: but that’s a different human with a different neural typology so neither here nor there.

Yes: having a trusted non-autistic who cares to share with can be enormously valuable... probably more valuable than any specific instance of help now I’m thinking about it.

Confidence and it’s fragility: yes I’d go along with your concern there wholesale, mine was pretty much eliminated by the age of twenty-three and it’s been a long struggle to partially get it back, and crushed, broken confidence compounds social difficulties (at least as far as I can be aware of looking back at my own life)

No experience with dating sites I’m afraid.