Potential Reactions To Explaining Masking To Friends.

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This is a hard one to people who may not understand as they may get the wrong perception of what masking is and how it is used.

Right... Let me explain something first. An aspect of my masking is to smile at everyone where it can look like I am being friendly when it is not that I am not being friendly... It is that I am trying to "Fit in". Never assume that because I am masking that I am not friends because I am masking.

Uhmmm. Let me try to explain a little more if I am able. When I used to regularly attend a social gathering I used to come across as being joyful happy and smiling... Cheerful and joking with excess humour (My humour is a major aspect of my masking!). Now later in life after several burnouts I mask a lot less in this way. I am also far less likely to be even considering wanting to be in social gatherings. This is not that I don't appreciate people. It is because it is exhausting, and after going through several burnouts, I need a lot of time recovering as I can find social gaterings far more energy draining then they used to be.
So later in life it can take far more effort to mask, so I am more likely to be serious faced if I am relaxing the masking. This does not mean I am not enjoying. It does not mean I am. (I don't know if I am explaining this correctly). As masking is exhausting and I have to relax the mask and I look more serious, and I also need to retire early or leave the group and be on my own now and then so I may want to spend time in the toilet to calm the nurves and get some alone "Me" time for about 20 minutes....

Uhmmm.
Better example. Someone I know said "You used to be so happy and cheerful and now you are serious and don't look happy" (Or words to that effect).
While at times I may be genuinely happy and full of joy, a lot of it was masking to try to fit in. (I was not able to give an answer to the person who said this to me as I had not worked it out myself what was happening to me).
Now if I explain this to someone who may not understand, they may assume that I may have been pretending to like them and this is NOT true. I was NOT trying to be false to them. I was trying to CONNECT with them in the best way that I had learned how.
So when I mask, though it is an "Act", it is not that I am pretending to like the people I am masking around. I genuinely do like them, but underneath the masking, I am nurvous and possibly even petrified! Haha!
I am masking my nurves and anxiety of being in the social group situation. I am NOT masking my friendship... I want to be friends, even though I may find I have had very few close friends in my life. Uhmm. In one way I have lots of friends. In another I have only a few. The lots are what I call people I know who I am friendly with but I don't seem to connect in their social circle. I am not un-friendly and they are not un-friendly to me. It is more that very few people I have been able to call someone who I can connect with in a close way... And these few people that I have connected closely with are like precious gems to me.
The problem I have found in life is that it has been soo hard to find people I can open up to. Very few in my life.
But anyway....
Back to masking.
If I try to explain how I mask, I will get people upset with me because they assume that I have been pretending to like them, which is not true.
Am I making sense?

I'm sorry, I'm not in the mood to read those big blocks of unbroken text right now; especially since the title seems pretty self-explanatory for my reply, which is:

There's no sufficient reason to justify the desire to explain masking to friends.

The whole point of masking is to be adaptable to the social way of most people.
To inform them that it's faked, a contrivance completely undercuts the point of doing it in the first place.

Instead of explaining masking, stop doing it and explain your true self. Let them do the masking if they want to go through all the angst and effort.

[Edit: To explain my last sentence: NTs mask, too. They do it every time they're confronted with someone who's not like them; especially if that person is visibly and demonstratively different. They smile, talk as if to a child, it's not effective because they don't practice but it's "masking"...just very poorly done.]

...

You are making perfect sense, and the way you explain it to friends and others makes sense. It is a good way to explain masking.