Stuck with friends you didn't choose?

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Do you often or sometimes find yourself having friends you wouldn't normally choose because you two are too different values wise, and in how you see friendship, but rather they choose YOU, and since they're the only ones who'll befriend you, then you befriend them. I often have many complaints about my friends, and people think sometimes that I'm too demanding of friends, but the complaints are because I have practically zero opportunity to choose who to befriend. I see people around me have more control over who they want as a friend. It doesn't always work for them, of course, but sometimes it does and they find that someone or a few people whom they want as friends want them as friends in turn...

I think I'm in a more exaggerated case in the sense people will sit with me at lunch time and I don't know how to tell them I want to be on my own without offending them(I get aggravated when I'm not on my own at lunch time, and even when I am I can still be a bit aggravated with all the socializing and it can end up with me saying hurtful things to get people to leave me alone).
I think I've never been friends with people I get along with well and can relate with, except with my friends who are also on the spectrum(which is only 2 people, and they're both males and opposite sex friend ships generally don't go down well in high school so we rarely talk).
I never really choose who I'm going to be friends with, and the idea of it seems rather surreal.
EMZ.

Yeah, I'd say that that's how most of my friendships have been in my life. I can't necessarily say that I didn't choose to be friends with people that I've been friends with, because I did make a choice to reciprocate the friendship, however they weren't the people that I'd choose to be friends with if I'd been given more social opportunities, including more social skills on my part. They were usually people like me that were left overs from a group (like say for example at work) so it was either be friends with other outcasts, or be alone.

A lot of times their personalities weren't a very good fit with mine, either. I have to admit that since learning about AS I have realized that sometimes I was too rigid in my thought patterns concerning opinions, and morals. I used to be somewhat judgmental, and I had a tendency to treat people like objects. That's embarrassing to admit, but it's something that I'm working on. It just seems hard for me to accept that someone else can hold different moral (for instance) then me, and they can still be right. My perceptions of everything can be really black, and white, and unfortunately this can carry over to my views of people.

I clearly distance myself - apparently that is a rude thing to do because it is socially and emotionally inappropriate - from people who I do not like enough to be friends with because I think they're too weird, annoying, boring or whatever. I don't care that they think that I'm in their league just because I'm autistic. Even if that means I have no friends at all. But I'd rather not associate with the wrong people too closely.

Serenity, I'm glad you know what I'm talking about. These are things I could never talk about with anyone in real life, since nobody would be able to relate.

Eg: My closest friend is from an extremely opposite and distant culture / upbringing / values system. I would've never chosen to befriend this person, but I'll befriend anyone who wants to be my friend, just because I'm so terribly alone. So I'm often hurt by the way my friends behave (when I've actually had friends), as we're too different for comfort.

And yes, other rejects or people who have other kinds of social problems are the ones who will get closer to me. But often these people are rejects for reasons that I myself find hard to cope with, I'm only human afterall. Things like accute selfishness, extreme lack of intelligence, extremely traumatized, etc. - I don't find these easier to cope with than others do, but I force myself to cope because I'm so lonely, and then THEY end up rejecting me when I'm not able to cope with them.

I feel I deserve much better than very selfish or very unintelligent NTs as friends, as I'm a generous, warm, wise person.

I've learned it's a good idea not to be too needy and desperate for friendship because it makes you vulnerable to being exploited and taken advantage of.
I used to do this quite a lot. I wanted to go get something to eat but not alone so I would call someone up ask if they wanted to go and they would say "no" and I would ask "why" and they would say it's because they had no money so then I would offer to pay for their food as well as mine just because I didn't want to go alone. I have since learned it's not worth it.

I'll never forget this one conversation I had with a friend. I told her about a time I went somewhere and had to listen to live metal music that sounded like crap because someone begged me to go and told me her parents wouldn't let her go alone and no one else would go with her so finally I agreed even though I would be surrounded by people with icky hairstyles and hair, bad teeth and horrible taste in clothing and considered me weird and stupid because of the way I dressed, not to mention sad hair bands who can't sing or play and had atrocious PA systems that made them sound like they had even less talent.

So, I told her I went and she didn't like that scene either so she told me she would have told her "no" anyway and refuse to go. When I told her I bought my own ticket to get in she got really annoyed and said "I would have made her buy me a ticket. Why did you get stuck buying a ticket to something you didn't want to go to in the first place?"

Her exasperation made me feel like I was so stupid for getting conned into spending my own money on this crap. It made an impression on me.

Anyway, I pretty much learned sometimes it's better to just be alone.

It all depends on the price you have to pay, but some is worth paying because being totally alone like I am can be even dangerous. You have to hear what people are talking about now and then. Listening to the news is not enough. You have to hear some feedback on yourself, some different ideas, some fresh opinions, even if it feels like a chore. I'd certainly do it, if anyone wanted to hang with me once in a while. I think that at this advanced stage of my NLD, not even abusers want my company, LOL

^ plastic bubble-wrap popping virtual invitation on back deck at our house is still on offer. I'll even let you smoke and accommodate you doing so with an ashtray. we can keep the conversation to a minimum as previously stated, but the birds in the garden are great - lots of small honey-eaters and a medium sized one too and many lorrikeets - and if you like swimming you can jump in the pool although the water is getting too cold. The free range guinea pigs are also fun to watch and are really nice little fellows. The snake that is now frequenting the back path looks like it might be a brown snake and is late in hibernating - (not cold here at all) but at very least he adds some kind of reptilian dram to life.

Yesterday I met an ex-colleague's father, he's visiting from Australia. I'd always been curious to meet him. His work is something I'd love to do: he has a tree farm and grows trees. So now I have two things to do there: help him grow trees and help your son pop the bubbles on your paintings wrap

Early on in life, I had "friendships" that were pretty much imposed on me by my parents. These "friendships" consisted of my parents dropping me off at another kid's house where I would watch him play video-games for 5 hours, bored out of my mind. I never really wanted any friends; I was very happy alone and never desired more than one or two friends to share my interests with. I only had a self-desire to socialize mabye once a month.

A couple times, early on in school, I made "friends," who said that as their "friend," I had to do their homework, carry their books, give them my lunch money, and be their fallboy for their antics. I was very naive and didn't realize that these kids were ultra-manipulative and had agendas, at least for a couple months. Later, around the 8th grade, my mom used to force me out of the house in the afternoons to be social and I would wind up over at a neighbor boy's house with a group of kids who used to tease me mercilessly. They would basically use me as "entertainment" and force me to do all sorts of compromsing things, or they would just beat me up for the hell of it. They would come by my house demanding to "play." I wouldn't want to play, but they would sweet-talk my mother, coming off like true friends, to get her to force me out of the house, and then they would take me in the woods and beat me up or force me to do things like touch dead animals. I tried desperately to avoid these boys but I had to be with them in school and my mom would force me to be with them after-school, totally unaware.

Later, when I was in the military, I had to be friends with other guys. It was sort of a forced friendship by association. I had nothing in common with anyone in my unit and was totally miserable with those guys. They had crude interests like guns and trucks and there was no basis for compatiblity. On top of that, I had to spend all day with them and do boring stuff that I was bad at like working on vehicles. Once they saw that I was weird they would not treat me with any respect.

Most of the people I have been "friends" with aren't individuals I would have associated with had I been able to choose or have had control over social opportunities. In reality, I would never be friends with anyone, because I have no interest in investing the time and effort to reciprocate real friendships. The problem with me is that I struggle with spontaneous socializing; I can't handle it if someone "drops in" on the spur of the moment. I also can't handle doing "favors" and selfless acts needed to maintain a friendship.

Right now I don't have that many 'real-life' friends to speak of - because I moved to the area where my husband lived, most of my friends are people he knows. But I wouldn't hang with them if I couldn't stand them.

Not the case for me in the past, though. At school I used to go round with a bunch of girls who were 'born-again' Christians. I never had any interest in that religious path - though they made frequent efforts to get me to convert - and I was interested in a variety of other spiritual ideas which to them were 'Satanic'. It was a disaster waiting to happen, but they were more or less the only people who would hang with me. I broke off contact with them after leaving school, because there were a few incidents that brought it home to me that whether or not I followed their faith was more important to them than my welfare or privacy as a friend. It's bugged me recently because one of my relatives still knows a few of these people, and I really don't want to get back in touch with them again if they're still of that kind of mindset...but it's kind of hard to explain that. (There's also perhaps one girl who was the class 'heretic' and just ignored the rest of them, and I really liked and got on with her...but while she's on Friends Reunited, I daren't sign up there because I'm afraid those other people will make a beeline for me.)

I also used to be guilty of adopting some...very dubious (to me, now) musical tastes to fit in with a bunch of people I was hanging with. And when I was with my ex-husband, I regularly used to spend time with his friends (or rather, his friends' wives) being bored out of my skull because I had nothing in common with them, but no particular friends of my own.

I have a history of people befriending me who i want nothing to do with. Because of a lack in social skills communication I just let these weird kinds of friendships perpetuate because I didn't know how to get out of them. They weren't friendships for me, but others invested in them and i was later told i was a heartless, brutish young woman for not understanding others who were my
friends!
huh?

People are weird and I always just seem to say the "wrong thing" or be just out of kilter from "the pack." I try to read and analyse strategically and that is good in me nowadays, but people on the whole are just weird. the most normal people i have ever come across are a handful here, and they would hardly be described in those terms by mainstream society.

I don't actually have that many friends, per se. The ones I do have are the ones who are happy with only hearing from me about once a year or so. There are people I like well enough and am friendly with, but they're not friends the way my daughter's friends are -- we don't "hang out" together. Honestly, if there's a more useless thing to do, I can't think of one.

I don't feel lonely all that often, so if I don't like people all that much I just don't do things with them outside of places like work or school, where I have to associate with them.

Now, I can understand about having someone you really want to get to know not wanting to get to know you. That happens occasionally. It sucks.

I also understand being annoyed by the people who seek you out. Why do they always seem to have worse issues than we do? But then, maybe we're just not seeing ourselves very clearly, either.

Regards,

Patricia

In my case, it's mainly been lonely guys who befriend me because they're desperate for a girlfriend-girlfriend (and most of them have some sort of cute-asian fetish when it comes to girls which makes it even worse for me ). I hate this so much! I'm not looking for a guy (hell I'm not even looking to get married or have kids) I'm only looking for someone to go to parties or the movies with from time to time (so I dont feel like an idiotic loner) and I get stuck with desperate virgins as my only means of companionship. Any guy who hangs out with me and is constantly whining about how he is single and thinks he'll never have a woman spells T-R-O-U-B-L-E!! !! !

Yes, I´ve definitely had this problem! Though nowadays, less so.

When I was younger, it seemed that quite a few difficult, manipulative, annoying types of people wanted to hang around with me. I was usually too naive to realize what they were like at first. I often didn´t really want to be friends with these people, just because they didn´t interest me that much. But I had something drilled in me from childhood that I had to be polite and friendly to anyone who bothered to talk to me, so I was. I was also not very good at being able to get rid of people when I wanted to; I seemed to just passively let these things go. I had many difficulties with these types; in fact, many of us mentioned this kind of thing in a recent thread. I think it´s pretty common.

Oh, and I pretty much never really felt like I chose my boyfriends. Only once was it really mutual. Usually, people chose me, but always the wrong people, and people who had NOTHING in common with me. As I was never really sure how this boyfriend thing was supposed to work, I finally just passively accepted some of the ones that were interested in me. Always a disaster, though.