Why it is difficult to make friends in mature age

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True: I like your idea of finding someone who likes cats to be my friend. If only I weren't so allergic to cats!

Postperson:

Who are you talking to?

What does "The bubble is being over-precious about yourself" mean?

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Lelia:

Think of other interests, hobbies that are along the same lines. Book people. That's one. You can share or swap books with others, and talk about them. Learn about what each person likes, as far as kinds of stories and what specifically they liked about a book. What characters do they identify with? Have they ever been to a certain place?

Like Carl Hiaasen, Randy Wayne White, Laurence Shames. Those three all set their books in Florida. That's one example.

How? If I get out of my bubble I have to go back into it, but the bubble has, at least for some time disintegrated. This is the real knot. When I get out I have for some time to pretend, and this pretending has no solidity. When I go back my pretending normality has no chance to meld into the bubble. You get out to find some validation of your existence, and in a way you get some miserable crumbs of validation, but you can’t integrate them in your ontological bubble. The bubble is all there is for you a livable environment. You can’t discard it and look for some solid different reality.

After all I see from your profile that that you also live in a bubble: that of you and your dog. I don’t know how much this is a only a pun. But I can look at my experience. Every afternoon a nice woman comes to clean and put in order my things. She brings with her a little dog who plays with me, licks me and show disappointment when she has lo leave. Well, while I have some pleasant conversation with this young woman, whom I have known for three years, my relationship with the dog has more weight for me that the relationship with her young owner, and when they leave I miss the dog more than I miss the woman, cruel as this might appear.

True: I've enjoyed belonging to different book clubs. Tonight, we had a C.S. Lewis meeting at our home. We discussed "Reflection On the Psalms".
The San Francisco area is my favorite area in the USA. I loved going down to visit a brother in law and his wife in Mill Valley. I adore the smell. Now he is a pastor in San Lorenzo and she still is a professor of computer science at SF State.

No, that seems to me something Sartre or Nietzsche might have said...


But God! I wish I could... solve problems like Darfur; the Iraq debacle; the widening disparity between rich and poor; pollution & climate change.
Sounds like a philosophical outlook much like mine. But vitality declines, the machine wears out; I don't have the energy or stamina I used to take for granted. That's another difference: the young have all kinds of energy to DO things together; the old mostly talk. (Not that there's anything wrong with that!) ...I'm tireder than I thought; good night. I agree with wendy:

Good analogy: NT dogs, AS cats!

Re the bubble: have you seen the movie "The Fountain"? Towards the end, our hero has the ultimate bubble. (TRUE, it's full of ideas!) I think that most of the reviewers who didn't like it, didn't understand it.

I think that there is also something good in not feeling in charge of such incredibly complicated machinery of life. I will never get rid of the idea that we are animals like all other animals, and no animal except man lives on the assumption that it (he, she?) must reform its own condition. And reform and revolutionary projects of men have only brought havoc, non only to the human kind but to the planet and to life in general. That’s perhaps why I feel safe with a dog or a cat. Man is the stray animal, the sinner, the liar, the plotter. Misanthrope? No there was a cycle of Ken Loach’ movies here about degraded life in English outskirts of cities. Poor people who strive to survive in terrible hardships, poverty, obtuseness of power. They make mistakes, but they never have the idea of reforming society. This is a luxury commodity for rich and privileged people. They don’t know anything about Darfur, Iraq, North Korea. They know their little local mobs, which, after all are not so despicable than the great spy agencies of the great nations.

But God! I wish I could... solve problems like Darfur; the Iraq debacle; the widening disparity between rich and poor; pollution & climate change quote


Oh oh oh! I know, I know! At age 54 and tired with a crud body I'm helping in a small way! I'm helping to restore the ecosystem in the park behind my house. You can contact Friends of The Trees (oops, if you're in the USA) to find out what you can do. Today I'm in pain from pulling invasive English ivy. If you're in the UK, you can help Africa with Fields of Life or any number of organizations. I'm also helping Rwanda by helping two primary schools and sending them books about ecology and environmental issues and cultures and conflict resolution. If these kids grow up knowing their neighbor IS Everybody, they won't participate in genocide! (www.AfricaMissionAlliance.org)
I went to Rwanda last January with www.comeandseeafrica.org. I went reluctantly convinced I was spending thousands just to get sick. I did not get sick! And I fell in love with everyone I met there. My husband and I hope to go back there every January. Now I also support David Nahayo who is trying to teach better and organic farming techniques and better nutrition and occupational training. Next time I go I will build him and the schools chicken tractors.
Of course I'm not telling you to do any of this. But I feel your heart and this is what I found to do. Paleo is right that lots of mischief has been done in the name of doing good (Read Lords of Poverty. Shudder!) but planting a native tree will not harm anyone unless they hurt their back doing it.

You all sound like the kind of friends I'd like to have...especially planting native plants!

It would be swell to solve big world problems. In accordance with Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, we first have to have food, water, shelter. Helping to solve those problems allows many more to go on with improving their lives. Lack of clean water and hygiene/sanitary conditions kills people, especially babies and children.

We have global warming. Cut back where you can on gas, transportation, electricity, etc. For us, it is an option. For the future, it may be a requirement. Do the greenery around your homes and in your neighborhoods, which helps YOU with cooling costs in summer. You spend, your home is cooler, your neighborhood is cooler, etc.

Get involved from home on an issue for your neighborhood that requires phone calls, emails, maybe a petition. It took awhile to work on one issue on our street, but the end result was a reduction in crimes.

I have links for some of the info suggested above, but I also have the "Quicken: I need help with ... business/personal finances" ad up that slows my browser to a crawl as I am on dial-up. I get that annoying text stagger, so I type out a word and then have to wait for it to appear. Although, I do like the hue changing red dots and squares.

elevator friends. . I understand completely!
there are also co workers that get along with you in the section of our little cubical farm, but they don't sit with you in the lunch room. Well, they sit with each other in the lunch room, but they don't sit with ME in the lunchroom. And there are those supervisors that nod and smile, or even say ritualistic stuff, like 'good morning, Merle' or the smile and nod thing, and then there are some supervisors that never look at me. Never - no eye contact, nuffin'

My supervisor knows I am AS, the supervisor I thought would be most helpful is the mother of an AS but she is worse than useless. She will ignore eye contact on a daily basis and then from time to time will loudly call my name and ask 'how are you!?' and startle me. Just the other day, after a month or so of silence she passed my desk and put her hand on my back and 'included' me in a social moment she was having with MY supervisor. (startled/disgusted/confused and irritated me all at once!) Gawd only knows how she relates to her AS son!

I have no idea who else my supervisor told, but my supe thinks I am 'teriffic!, courageous, but most of all she is grateful. . really grateful that I am managing myself and my AS with humor and patience. She even understands when I get really stressed I just need a moment or two with my stim&hobby (I am a political news junkie and I download my fix three times a day and read quickly to distract myself while jiggling my leg under the desk.) I am scrupulous at directing my 'blank stare' towards the computer screen, at least, everytime I catch myself, I force myself to turn to the screen ( and I can do it usually with out breaking the buzz)
Dang I am glad I now know I have AS, it has helped me so much in my work life. I know now to notice the signs of stress in, say, a grocery store, or shopping (UGH!) for clothing and can end it before I meltdown thinking it is everybody ELSE's issue and MAKING it everybody else's issue. I can stop it before it escalates. Wow, what a gift.
thank you fellow Aspies, I have learned from your constant chatter on this forum, I have pickedup your techniques and gained courage and (most importantly) taken Heart.

May the Force be with us all!

Merle

As a matter of fact, it is difficult to make friends, more difficult when you advance in age, and if you are autistic it’s a desperate business. What about wearing a badge, like politicians with their flag on the lapel? After all we belong to a different planet. It would draw some unctuous respect, but maybe would invite reflection on the condition in general and perhaps to your being “one of them”. Someone would ask “What is that?” and you would be free to answer or not, in a measured way, according to the receptivity you can expect.

I like the blue logo of the NAS of UK.

This made me laugh too; been there done that! And it was great . Spoiled me for almost all friendships since!!
However I was wondering whether maybe the reason it gets harder for some people to make friends , me for example , is that the reasons for having friends seem more and more unclear.
About two years ago ,( the same time as I realised that my trying to believe that life was fundamentally wonderful etc just made me ill, because it was as if I were constantly denying the evidence of my own senses , as if I kept saying TO MYSELF : I don't believe you!!, and so instead decide to declare happily and with much joy that "life is pain" ! !!) I realised that I had for quite a long time been describing myself as someone who liked having, and had ,until moving to france got in the way ,had a small group of close and intimate friends ( most of whom I had at some point or on a regular basis got stoned with in the past , and most of them "mentally ill" or "weird" one way or another ! !!). This had not been true for at least 5 years. But I had carrried on thinking of myself as someone like that and as a result I felt miserable about not having any friends any more.
Why do I want friends? What for?
To ask this question is generally unaceptable , it implies total selfishness, or that if I feel that way everyone will just go off and leave me.
It's not that; it's just I'm wondering what it's about ; friendship.
When it's not in a team working on something.
If it's simply for "company" I don't generally feel the need for that ; if anything I'd like less of it ( mother living with an 8 year old boy home-unschooling, and his papa with whom I experience only the affection and patchy team"spirit" necessary as co-parents ! !)
??
So would friendship be for company, to function as a team on something, as "reflection", as reinforcement, what ?
The older I've got the less I seem to need those things.


Any other reasons why might carry on looking for "friendships" , and which might explain why gets harder as get older ?! ! Sex, has to be the only one that would still count enough with me to make it worthwhile dismantling or at least disturbing a lot of my survival structures. But then it's no longer about making friends.

Last edited by ouinon on 16 Oct 2007, 6:03 am, edited 1 time in total.

I don't know why i made my previous post, I must've been having a bad day. or maybe it was one of my other personalities

I live in a bubble yeah, but lately i've been noticing that about nt's too - narcissists live in bubbles, lotsa people do.

I find the game playing and the 'work' of being around people exhausting. The constant shifting of positions, moods in people, trying to decode language for 'real' meaning, it's hard to keep up. I'm in the process of forming a friendship at present - been ongoing for 9 months, my friend is a bit crazy too so that helps. I don't like feeling like the only 'nut' in a relationship.

It's been a long time since I had a close friend. I have had two best friends in succession, the first in my mid teens and the other my late twenties. Both were nt's. They both betrayed me and used me, but we had good times too. It's a strange thing, friendship, a strange dance. Because friendships are about mutual exploitaton, my low ability to exploit people usually leaves me feeling exploited in friendships. you get tired of that.

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Yes this exhausting work of decoding, is a burden on everybody. The difference with normals is 1) they do this work much more easily, istinctively, they have wired in the apparatus to decode. This is what is defective in us. 2) we are desperately more in need to be sure of non being exploited, we even would need love, or at least affection. For a salesman who rings your bell to sell a vacuum cleaner, the important thing is the vacuum cleaner not you. For us this is unbearable.

Only after I came out from my job, I realized how much I was being "used" all the time, by people who exibited "frienship".

yes, that is the chief problem for me with 'friendship'. I don't have their (nt's) ability to exploit the relationship. It's not so much that they exploit us, it's that we fail to exploit them back, so it becomes very one sided.