What is a friend?

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it seems like a pretty common occurance with autistics to not want or care about having close friendships. often it seems they want the intellectual connection without the emotional one.

i think as a mother, and admittedly a non-autistic, the part that would concern me most is the not caring about how his actions or words hurt others. its ok to not want that emotional connection, but we should still recognize the emotional components of other people.

to be honest, i see similar things with my SO. besides family that he has an emotional connection with, he generally has little interest in the well being of other people, and therefore doesnt seem to care how his actions affect them, even if its in a negative way. as a spouse, its a disturbing behavior to see, and doesnt bestow a flattering or attractive image. as a parent, its something i try very hard to make sure my children dont emulate.

one way to approach it with your son could be in how he wants other people to view him. even if he doesnt care if he hurts others, does he care whether they consider him a good person or a jerk? if he has dreams of a future as a scientist, does he want to be respected as a professional or seen as someone hurtful and not worthy of respect? even if he doesnt care about the emotional components, the vast majority of the population does and will be affected by his behaviors. he may not care either way, but its worth discussing. i would also be concerned as a parent that this would make it impossible for him later if he decides he does want those emotional bonds.

i am trying to choose my words very carefully, but i think this touches on behavior that may be viewed by the general populace as, at the least anti-social, at the worst sociopathic. not that i think there is any correlation with sociopathy and autism, or that this behavior in an autistic is even intentionally malicious. is it a theory of mind deficit? i dont know enough to really say. but i do know its a behavior viewed negatively by the majority of the world.

interpersonal relationships, whether we want them or not, can be very vital in our world for a lot of things. if we are going to live alone in the woods as a hermit, well they arent really needed that much. but if we are going to interact with anyone else, attend school, hold a job, find a partner, raise a family, then the ability and willingness to form bonds with other people are going to have a significant value in our lives.

He cares very much about being a good person, but his personal code has a very strong emphasis on honesty, and he feels it is dishonest to emulate caring he does not feel. Something we talk about a lot. In a broad sense, he cares a lot. But with day to day transactions ... I think he figures his friends hurt his feelings all the time, and that he doesn't mean to hurt theirs, and it's basically something that doesn't happen in any logical pattern as far as he can discern, so I think he finds it illogical to care about it. He doesn't care about perceptions at all; he cares about living true to his personal code (which is actually fairly well designed so I try not to mess with it).

I have gotten him to make a non-personal apology along the lines of, "I apologize for saying something that upset you," or "I'm sorry you are mad." Basically, not assigning fault, but recognizing just the concept of apology makes the other person feel better.

My need and desire for social interaction has gone down as I've gotten older. It's really funny. I used to believe, as a kid, that only children ever had friends and adults didn't. Now I wonder if that may have been a good guess on what my desires would do. That said, I'm not totally asocial. I enjoy internet interaction. I am capable of loneliess and have felt it three times since the summer of '08 (in the summer of '08 I felt lonely while surrounded by people, and the two times since are actually arguably not loneliness at all, even).

That said, I expect and hope to have friends as an adult. One that I have now I hope to never lose because our hearts have touched in such a way that pulling apart would rend me; one that I have now I hope not to lose just yet but would not be weakened by the loss of; two I benefit from but would not truly be weakened to lose, only disappointed. The last of my friends is expendable (inasmuch as anyone is expendable; anyone merits certain kindnesses, but I mean that our relationship is expendable to me).

I have to say, as someone on the fringes of AS - I worry when I read words like asocial and asexual...not to say that I am opposed to either thing, but I am concerned because often it sounds to me like the people talking about not socializing and/or expressing sexuality have just become so frustrated with it that they've given up.

Considering how confusing it all is for me, I can't say I blame anyone - and I have no way of gauging my personal level of difficulty against theirs, but I am bothered by the idea that people might be shutting out things that might be worthwhile. I wish there was a way to make it easier to communicate (or, on behalf of family members who are concerned, a way to know that this is, indeed, the way their loved one prefers to live even given the ability to overcome communication problems.)

Well, some may give up, but plenty actually don't want friendships or sexuality. Please respect that. Just as not everyone likes eggplant. No matter how wonderful you consider eggplant, I will never eat it, and that's not because it's hard to cook. It might BE hard to cook, but please understand that we're not giving up on good things or getting too frustrated.

For an adult, the way you live your life is your choice, especially if it makes you content, and I certainly understand that there are all kinds of different ways to be happy.

However, as a parent, part of my job is to push when it's needed and back off when it's needed; I find this to be an exceedingly difficult dance. I can see where a parent of a kid who relates differently socially might need help figuring out where the line is between give up/just don't want to - if my kid said "I'm asocial/asexual" I'd want to make sure that's really what he or she meant, and not "I give up."

Fortunately for me, DS is extremely social (often unsuccessfully, but it's decidedly something he wants) so this is one place where I know I need to push/help if things aren't going well.

There's nothing you can achieve by pushing that will help a child who's given up. Such a child will have given up because circumstances are making it impossible. Unless you can change circumstances (all different kids, different situation to interact in, sometimes even that wouldn't work) you shouldn't push. You can only do damage that way, and you can also make your child pretend to be social (pour lots of effort into unwanted friendships) or try to be social (pour lots of effort into an unsuccessful endeavor).

If you really, really think you still want to push, one way you could maybe do it (and I speak here not as a parent, but as an Aspie who knows what it's like to be an Aspie and what makes socialization easier or harder) would be to see if your child can join a club (with people they've never met before so they can make a fresh impression, unless they actually have a friend, in which case you shouldn't even be doing this, but then I guess under these circumstances they should try to join with their friend) focused on their special interest. So, like, if they're really into chess, a chess club for kids around their age. And then actually listen to their reactions. If they say it's stressful and they don't like it, let them quit.

Another thing is to try with people vastly older or younger. The important thing here is that they still need to share something to talk about or do together and it's better if they meet one-on-one. Personally, I have had no less success with the attendees of a conference on tech stuff that my parents have dragged me to literally since I was in the womb than with NT members of my peer group. (Online or with non-NT peers is more successful. A chance to interact with autistics-- again with the same caveats as any social interaction-- would probably be really good.) Younger is also good, with the caveat that sometimes parents can be truly crazy-worried about the older kid saying something to the younger. And nothing that's actually worrisome. Something like "Santa Claus isn't real" or comparing the shape of a light to the double-helix structure of DNA. Why should these things upset people so much? But they do. Don't ask me why.

I think there is a big difference between being asocial and asexual. Sexuality involves a great deal of really complex feelings and believe it or not many people do not have those feelings. While it is felt to be a need for some, it is definately not a need for others.

However when it comes to socialistation that is slightly different. It is my choice to not have friends per say, but I still need to be able to function in the world, to be around people at times, to be in public places at times, etc.

I think there is a point for parents to encourage and support social interaction, but you cannot encourage and support sexual interaction, either the person has the feelings or they don't. I have a problem with parents pushing a child to do anything. I know there is very fine line between pushing and encouraging, but for me it is there. You have a role to encourage your child to become more comfortable in the mainstream world, to be able to interact with people as is necessary, etc, and to be there to support them to learn other things if they want to, but I don't like the idea of pushing a child to do anything. To me pushing involves force to do huge things and not take things in little baby steps to make them slowly more comfortable with the world.

Other than this site all the people I know of on the spectrum are asexual and nothing at all to do with sexuality has ever entered their minds or there world. But they have all wanted some level of social connection, but that differed for different people.

I am totally asexual and I always have been and at the age of 36, I doubt that will change any time soon. However a part of me would still like some level of social interaction and friendship, but it is something I find incredibly difficult as I do find that honesty is so important to be, I feel that so much of friendship involves lying and I just can't comprehend that. I don't know that I will ever want friendship in the way nuerotypical people do, but I do need some level of social interaction.

Functioning in the world means not doing anything to make people hate you. If you can be polite and pay for your groceries and do job interviews, you don't necessarily need to make friends.

Personally, I'm not completely asocial or asexual, but I think I have far less desire and need than most NTs in either area. Depending on the circumstances, I can survive without people at all, but that's not ideal. I do better with friends. But I'd do better with no friends than with a whole bunch of interaction all the time. The former would eat at me a little slowly and take months to make a dent in my mental resilience (if everything were otherwise good); the latter can tire me within hours and leave me unable to do basic self-care within a week. So I would always, always err on the side of assuming asociality in an autistic who claims it and just leave avenues for friendship open.