Getting too attached, then being 'friend-dumped'...

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Hi everyone!

My question this evening regards us Aspies making friends - I never made any friends in primary school, and just managed a small social circle in High school. I made several friends at uni but not to the extent we met up very often (or even now that uni is over). I really don't have many friends, and I'm not sure how to keep them. I don't know how much information to offer up, how to build rapport, or how to toe the line between 'obsessive-creepy' friend and someone who genuinely wants to know you better and spend time with.

I suppose I'm like a Sith Lord in that I'm all in or nothing - which I've been told by my therapist is a bad thing (which it is, I'm just trying to 'relearn' how to be friends with people) since no one can be my 'everything' nor can I expect other people to be so involved. It sounds ridiculous I know, I've had several very close friends but once they appear to betray me in some way, I can't get passed that betrayal of trust and move on.

How the hell do I make my brain and self make friends, and 'learn' how to make friends - HELP ASPIE COMMUNITY!

I don't know what to tell you. It just naturally happens when you meet the right friend. If you spread your friendships thin, and meet more people, you have a better chance to meet the one or two people that you'll really click with, who will click back with you. For both aspies and NTs I think this is mostly interest based, but it helps to have someone who is physically nearby to you. I'm not saying you can't have a best friend who lives an hour away or in another country, but friendships are stronger and easier if it's someone you're able to physically hang out with without it being a big deal.

Practice also makes perfect, so you should keep trying.

I had a very hard time making new friends when I left uni at 25. It seemed that up till then, I had always been around people at school, college and uni who liked music, sci fi, hanging out at cool bars, and I just ended up with people. I struggled since then though, even though I had 3 very prized aspie friends from a meetup group who I value a lot to this day.

I feel much better this year though, I m up with an old friend who put together a little social group and we have formed a really nice little group, we spent Xmas day and new years eve together and go out on Saturday evenings. It was just all down to this guy who started bringing all his friends together for this bar drink and invited me. I feel very grateful for them.

My best advice is just to go around with an open heart and be ready for anything and to help anyone. Be open to new types of people and experiences and not rigid ideas of the types of people you want to meet based on who you liked in the past. I have found the more I let go of things the more likely I am to get them when I am ready. meetup.com can be good too, I found a local sci fi fan meet there.

I can relate. I found there are a lot of dimensions to this; one was learning about what some call "healthy boundaries". It helped me to learn about how to make myself open to other people without losing myself in the process.

Otherwise it was about trying to establish a friendship, paying attention to what works and what doesn't; if it blows up, doing a review to see what I can try to do differently next time, then picking myself up, dusting myself off, and trying again while applying lessons learned.

Or, as some wags put it: "Learning comes from experience, and experience comes from f*cking up a lot."

In my experience no two friendships are the same.

According to my group of friends I make friends easy, but to be honest I only consider five people actual friends. Everyone else is more of an associate to me. Even though they would call me a friend.

People click when they click, and then you won't get too attached because both parties will want the same amount of contact etc.

I have had that happen to me on several occasions. Some of them come from the other person losing an interest over me or if I did something that they didn't like unknown to me. They often start ignoring me or giving off little hints by giving me excuses that we are not friends.

Recent example:
I had known a guy friend for about a year. He had been very generous while appearing to be very loyal. Recently though he started acting really funny towards me. For example he invited me to stay in a hotel room with two of his other friends, who he has more in common with, for a anime/video game/ gaming/animation convention. The entire time he made it clear to me that he was there with them and did everything with them. For instance- he was riding to the hotel with the other two, going to this panel or that panel.