Losing friends

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I've posted really similar stuff before but I'm finding it really, really hard to make and keep friends and I'm so scared I'll never be able to actually have a 'real' friend. Recently, my best friend of 20 years said that she didn't want me to contact her any more because I was messaging her too much and it really, really hurt- she knows me really well and knows that I find it hard when people aren't open with me if I'm annoying them, and that I can sometimes get paranoid that people aren't talking to me and over text them. She lives on the other side of the world and I hardly ever see her, so if she doesn't reply to messages I have no contact with her at all. I just found out via FB that she actually visited the UK for a couple of weeks over Christmas and New Year but she didn't tell me she was here (I haven't seen her in over a year) and that really, really hurt. She's been pretty much my only constant friend for 20 years, and now I feel like I don't have anyone. It feels horrible- like someone's put a vacuum in my stomach and I'm feeling really vertigo-y and horrible. I can't stop thinking about it and really, really want to contact her but I know I can't. Anyone else have this problem? I hate it so much :/

I don't know why people do this. I had something similar happen to me recently. I *tell* people, PLEASE, if I am annoying you, tell me to take a step back. But people don't. I don't get it. I tell them I don't get hints. Basically, these people are saying we are not worth the effort it takes to be our friends. How much more can you tell someone he or she sucks?

I'm sorry you are hurting. I'm in that boat with you.

Wait a while (like a month or so) and contact her again. Try to write her letters if that's at all possible. If she ignores your calls/texts/letters_ forgive me for saying this _she was never much of a friend to begin with.

I am sorry this happened to you. I would be hurt, too. I basically have minimal friends. I want them on one hand, but on the other, I feel like I sabotage friendships before they can begin. The ones I do have, I also am too much tuned in to their behavior toward me.

It sucks. I don't know the details but it doesn't sound like she's a real friend. She knows your history but she just ditches you, instead of communicating that she was feeling frustrated w/the texts. My opinion, let her go!

Did you ask her why she didn't make time for you while in England? Also did you ask her why she lost her interest?

I relate and honestly it feels like a gunshot wound when it happens, I am currently non verbal over losing friends cause I am afraid if I get any, I'll just get hurt again.

The worst rejections that I have faced are when I see someone who I have been close to before hand and everything appears to be fine. Why they even act like my friend. Then I see them on a different occasion and it's like they have pulled a 180.

I can really relate to this. It seems every friend I make stops being my friend after awhile either because:

1. They lose interest
2. They move
3. We get into a big argument and we begin to hate each other
4. We lose contact

Friends come and go. It's someone everyone learns at one point in their lives. Of course for people with autism it can often be harder to make and especially keep friends. I too had painful experiences losing friends but I decided to accept that longlasting friendships just weren't for me. So I just have many short ones

Drifted apart from most of my friends and didn't make any new ones. My social life is dead, but I've stopped caring about that. The only advice I can offer is that you should accept the friendship is dead and forget about her existence entirely.

I think that you need to try to learn to set boundaries for yourself around what you expect from people.

If you text someone, allow them 24 hours to reply, not everyone checks texts as soon as they get them and if they do, they might not feel like replying right now - this is nothing to do with you, it's stuff going on with them, don't personalise it.

Don't message a friend every time you think of something you would love to tell them, I can't tell you how many times I have typed a message and deleted it, because its not overly important other than I'm excited to tell them my thought and I know that annoys people. I haven't worked out what thoughts are annoying and what aren't, so I just type it and then delete it.

Don't be needy. Don't require validation or praise from anyone, this is draining for other people.

Don't always talk negatively, talk about 2 positive things for every problem you tell someone about. If you have many more negatives than positives, or lots of issues going on in your life, don't tell them all to one person, spread them out.

This is the best I can think of what I've learned about keeping friends.

I have also accepted that I'm full on for most NTs, they have to be nice tolerant people and then can still only tolerate the occasional dose of me. I have about 5 friends, like not acquaintances that never cross my mind but people I think about. I keep them by only contacting them every couple of weeks and seeing them about every 4-8 weeks for several hours at a time for a "catch up".

Having said all of this, I am very much in the infantile stage of figuring out social skills, it took me until my mid 30s to become self aware enough to realise I was very autistic and annoying to people. So maybe you shouldn't listen to me lol, but I hope this helps somewhat.

Also, I lost a "best" friend a couple of years ago, not lost as in died, lost as in she doesn't talk to me anymore, doesn't invite me to anything etc. I think... that she was actually not the nice person I thought she was, and I think that I always bugged her. It hurt to lose her because we were each others bridesmaids, had babies at the same time etc, very close. So I do understand.

I don't know if I "lose" friends so much as come to the realization that they weren't really friends all along, or not as close of friends that I thought they were. Apparently, I was that "special" friend you amuse or tolerate but not someone you really connect to or would call your BFF.

I didn't know I had Aspergers until I was an adult. I didn't know I was different other than some clues here and there when someone would say or do something strange to me or blow up at me out of the blue (at least by my reckoning).

I thought I had a best friend from my pre-teen years on. I had no idea it was lopsided friendship until many years later, thanks to all this wonderful social media. I knew she had other close friends over the years and that's fine, but it hurt when I found out when she was passing through from out of state and that she knowingly drove right through my town without telling me on her way to visit another friend who was 2 hours out of her way. The only reason I found out was that her husband "slipped up" and posted to facebook that they stopped for lunch in my town. I got the impression it was not the first time that they had come all the way to the area and not bothered to see me.

I kind of got over it but it still stings a little when I get a "Happy Birthday Buddy!" on my birthday and she makes her other friend a big photoshopped collage of the two of them over the years for her birthday (that was just yesterday). I've known her longer but whatever, right? Besides it's like that with pretty much everyone I know.

I live near Disney. Everybody and their cousin comes here eventually. There's people I'd like to see if they come to Florida and I tell them to let me know if they're coming, maybe we can have lunch or something. No, nobody lets me know. They're gleefully posting their Disney photos and I'm sitting there going "Yeah, I was there yesterday. Too bad I didn't know you were in town." It's the same reason I've stopped going back home to visit. I'd tell people I was coming and try to see people when I was there and nobody thought it was important enough to see me for an hour or two after I traveled a couple thousand miles to get there.

Maybe I was weird or jerky back when I was younger and nobody, including myself, knew why. I guess it's too much to hope someone else connected the dots and thought "Oh maybe that's what was wrong with her..." and cut me some slack after all these years. I've done my fair share of being extra kind to those from my past who I have contact with now but it probably doesn't matter to them and I probably shouldn't bother.