Friendship Distress

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Hi everyone,

I'm new and having a really hard time. My father (now deceased by suicide), my brother, and my cousin on my dad's side all probably have Asperger's. I've suspected I've had it for over a year now, and at first it was more like oh that's interesting, but now my possible diagnosis is becoming really distressing.

I've had three, yes, THREE people I thought were good friends suddenly tell me they were just pretending to be polite and now they want nothing to do with me. They say I'm selfish, infuriating, and annoying. Apparently I overshare, contact them too much, don't understand them, and am rude. I tried to explain it's neurological and I did nothing on purpose but that wasn't good enough for them.

I, on the other hand, cannot understand why they would keep their true feelings a secret from me for YEARS. They were just pretending to be my friends to be polite and never could speak up and say "Hey, Sam, this isn't working for me." and instead kept playing a part. This completely mystifies me.

Now I'm really distressed/contemplating a life as a hermit. I am not working or in school right now because I'm having some other health issues and am living off my inheritance from my dad. My plan is to move to my aunt and uncle's farm in a town of 850 and maybe I'll stay there forever and never interact with people other than my family again. It makes me so sad that I could be annoying, rude, or be violating boundaries without meaning too.

Maybe I'll have to start explaining to everyone I meet up front that I have Aspergers and not to take anything I say or do personally.

My symptoms are mild enough that its not obvious I have a neurological difference but severe enough that it obviously is negatively affecting my life.

Anyone been in similar situations? Would love if people could share their stories of losing friends, if that's happened to you, and advice for going into future friendships. Thanks.


Peace and love.

-Samantha

People have done this to me, and I've witnessed them doing this to others. It's infuriating. I see them act polite and chummy to someone's face, and then when that person is gone, they'll badmouth/complain about them. I now find it hard to believe that anyone truly wants to spend time with me. But what's even worse is that my boyfriend, cannot understand why this would bother me.

In elementary school I tried hanging out with the girls in my class. I saw that the boys hung out as a group and the girls hung out as a group, thus I concluded that the girls would like me because I was one of them. So during recess I would try to talk and play with the other girls. One day when they thought I couldn't hear, I heard them badmouthing me. More than being hurt, I was confused. I started playing with the boys after that, in retrospect they were way more fun. We would play stuff like Hot Lava on the playground.

I really wish I knew how to tell if someone genuinely wants to be around me...I have to go off of evidence. And I'll ask to hangout once, but I won't try again until they've asked me once after that (taking turns). Which is a sucky method, because people hardly ever call me. It's lonely.

Thanks for your response. Yeah, people never call me either, so I got in the habit of always reaching out and assuming if they didn't want me reaching out they'd tell me, but apparently NTs just don't work like that, so people have just been pretending to be friendly. So I guess I need to go back to the making a balance game between me and friends in terms of how often I reach out. Which sucks. Because my naturally inclinations is, oh I want to talk to Susie so I'll text Susie. I hate these social games. They make no sense to me.