What is a friend?

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I've noticed that my 13 year old AS son doesn't really want friends, but he does want people to do things with. There is a difference. He doesn't seem to care about any of the things we expect from friends. He has often said he wished he didn't need friends, for they are annoying. But if he has no one to play Warhammer with, he's bored and depressed. At school, he needs kids to sit with at lunch or he will get teased. He does have a group of kids he does things with, and sits with at lunch, but when we discuss things he does that I don't think are very friendly, he shrugs it off, because he actually doesn't care if he hurts their feelings. He only cares if they'll still engage with him. While he knows the two can be connected, he doesn't want to act a level of caring he doesn't feel.

There was a time he really cared about having friends in a real sense of the word, and he still has a friend who really looks out for him, even though they have about nothing in common at this stage of life, and rarely interact anymore. But the boy is loyal. My son ... losing interest.

I wonder why it seems to be changing, and if this is common in AS kids at this age / stage?

there are varieties of "friends" and there are varieties of "acquaintances" with a broad overlapping fuzziness between the two categories. it sounds to me, like your son wants non-emotional associative connections with other like-minded sorts, without the emotional baggage of true friendship. i fear to say it but i get the impression from your wording that your son may want something more disposable than a friend. a situational acquaintance, maybe? i pray that he learns the deeper values of friendship.

Perhaps I can offer a hypothesis.

Let me first restate the situations to see if I understand it.
He used to want friends, and was not particularly successful at acquiring or maintaining them due to his AS. Now, he just wants someone to interact with when it comes to things which require multiple individuals to do. He does not seem interested in considering other people's feelings or offering emotional supported and social contributions when appropriate.

My interpretation:

I believe your son has realized that he cannot function as an NT in terms of friendship. He does not have the ability to efficiently processing information in a social situations such that he can properly read people, and to attempt to compensate for this is stressful and futile. He has decided to stop striving for that which he has determined is out of his reach...a proper NT style friendship.

Instead, much like a person who can't acquire or maintain romantic relationships decides they just want someone to have sex with, your son has decided he just wants someone to fulfill the purpose of playing a multiplayer game with him, or engaging in some activity which requires two people, without any emotional commitment expected.

I can only reply from my adult self. I have a realy problem as do many people on the spectrum with being fake and have a real need for the truth. Hence I struggle with relationships as you simply do not tell the truth, the real truth that is. I understand it why people do it on an intellectual level, but on a practical one it just feels so unethical, uncaring, etc.

I have gone through periods when I want friends so I can be "normal", but in truth I don't gain anything from them. I simply do not have the same emotional need for friends as normal people do and have learnt to accpet myself for who I am. I much prefer my own company and get really annoyed by people who cannot be as obsessed about something as I am.

I don't understand people having multiple hobbies and interests, telling white lies, being emotionally involved with people, etc. Sure it has all been explained to me hundreds of times by psychologists and the like, and I do now do a much better job of faking it, but I simply do not in the most part enjoy being around people, it is who I am, and not something I feel I should be ashamed of, and to be anything else is just so much work and a full time job and seems pointless to me for what I will gain from it. I have learnt to be robotic in public places, but I don't choose to be there anymore it is just too hard, and I simply do not enjoy it.

The best way to encourage friendships is to try to get him involved in clubs or the like where people share the same interest as he does. Getting him involved with people who also do what he does and want to do that all the time is the most likely way to encourage friendships, as people on the spectrum cannot understand friendships the way the normal population does.

I think it is also important to remember that the friendships that adolscent boys have are very different from those of asolescent girls and it may to a small degree have something to do with gender and then be confounded by being on the spectrum. Adolescence is also a time of great change and that is something that people on the spectrum do not cope well with and being close to family at home can often be seen as being easier than dealing with the emotional world of his class mates at school, and can be enough contact with people for what he needs. His social and emotional development while different to the neuro typical child is also delayed in comparison to them and this makes things more diffucult during the teenage years.

In early childhood kids are friends based on doing things together and this changes during adolescense when being emotionally connected to people is more important for the neurotypical person. People on the spectrum technically do not have that emotional connectedness and hence are still wanting people to be friends based on doing something the same without any strings attached, which is what I suspect he wants and what his peer group of neuordeveloping peers is not doing anymore if that makes sense.

couldnt say it any better than this. well done.

and i still struggle with the question "what is a friend?" and it has become clearer over the years that i have never known how to make and keep friends for very long. i have an idea of a friend but apparently that doesnt match up with the normality. it sucks and its frustrating. but i have to learn to accept who i am and just persevere.

Well, if your son is anything like me, he is trying to avoid what you think of as 'friendship' because he doesn't want to deal with people shooting themselves in the foot and dragging their 'friends' down with them. Do you know how much time an average normal person spends getting themselves involved in petty, superficial, poorly conceived, and self destructive relationships? It happens a lot.

When children are young (i.e. age 10) their relationships are fairly simple, and emotionally supporting a friend usually involves nothing more then consoling them when somebody makes fun of them. But once you start getting into the overly complicated and poorly run relationships that typify adolescence and adulthood, then supporting somebody in a relationship involves putting up with them while they shoot themselves in the foot and them ask for reassurance. Now I know you probably don't view relationships as a bad thing, but thats because you have an emotional investment which causes you to gloss over and underestimate the potential for problems and difficulties that relationships create. When you aren't addicted to other people, and you don't have hormones clouding your view then you get to see all the damage that is caused by these relationships, and you want nothing to do with it.

As such, your child is trying to maintain the 'freindly acquaintance' type of relationship where people get together, have fun, play games, and enjoy each others company. But he doesn't have to put up with their relationships. And that is really the best type of relationship you can get.

i do not know.
i am not sure i understand what other people mean when they say "friend".

there are some people in my life who like to be in my company, and i like to talk to them, but i am in my own world and they can not live in my world with me. they can only visit until i want them to go.

i never feel lonely because i have not the capacity to feel lonely. i am quite content with my own company, and i like to be with myself because i know what i want to do, and i do it without any hindrance from other people who may not want to do what i want to do.

i feel no true connection with anyone else, and when i see that they are not interested in what i am interested in, or when i see that i am not interested in what they are interested in, i disengage and i want them to go elsewhere and think their thoughts where i am not interrupted by them.

i am not indifferent to whether they are happy or not. i truly wish for people who i like to be happy, but i do not see how i can contribute to their happiness because what makes them happy is something i am not interested in for my own happiness.

if someone is bored and wants a good time with me, then i will let them come to my place, and i will include them in my activities with much encouragement. i like it when someone sees what i do by myself and says "that looks so interesting! can i join you?"

but when they want to steer the situation with their own ideas into an area that i did not think of before, i start to become resistant.

i try to see how what they want to do is interesting, and if i can see no interest in it for me, then i want them to go home and leave me to my own devices.

i can not sacrifice my own deliberation for anyone else, and when someone exerts an influence on me to stop thinking my own thoughts and accommodate their ideas into my deliberative structure, i just shut down and see them as a trespasser on my consciousness. i can not be seduced to attention by thoughts that i was not an author of.

i know that is a bleak situation that will ensure i never have real friends, but i can not help it.

i can not see things from anyone else's point of view. i can only see things from my point of view.

people can come for a ride in my world, but when they wish me to exit my world to ride with them, it all goes sour for them because i will not sacrifice my own existence to live for a second in theirs.

but i think i am vastly more affected by my errant soul than your son is.
i have never met anyone like me, and i never expect to.


the thrust of what i am saying is that i have a brain that is able to say things that other brains that are not my own can understand. i see the miraculousness of the fact that someone who i am not related to, and who i have never met before can understand what i say.

i am happy that i can talk to the world when i want to, and i would be unhappy if i could not.

so i can sleep soundly with the knowledge that the potential for simple communication is there, and i know it is just my decision to remain alone because my own perception of the world, and my reaction to it, is something that i have never seen anyone else identify with in a native way.

tammy is an exception. i am not able to talk about tammy here because she is outside of my general routine of thought. i love tammy and she is not a subject of this post.


time will take me off the earth and it will take everyone else too. i am going to sleep with extreme relaxation now because i am alone with no one preaching in my ear.

This may sound out there but I can't help but think he might benefit from Bhudist teaching. At the heart of this practice is the concept of loving kindness and compassion. Emotional attachement is not encouraged but a general well wishing to all people. The rules are straightforward and don't get into that sticky gray morass of peoples' emotions and feelings. Just a thought.

Thanks, all. I'm leaning towards Chronos and Trackers perspectives as being the most likely for my child, as he has always been a child who does yearn for and need a certain level of emotional connection: he is very connected to his family, for example, in a very emotionally reciprocal way. Part of me does wonder if all that can change, however, permanently, or if having once had that need means it will always be there, although he may choose to turn it off. It sounds like some of you don't recall ever wanting an emotional connection, but that isn't what I've observed from this unique child - I would say he has always been drawn to making them. Which leads me to conclude that the current turn off is more likely to be a version of adaptive behavior. Frustrating and sad to watch, but given that I'm not the world's perfect social person, I don't have a solution for that. He is involved in activities with kids and he has some good working relationships among the kids in the activities, but he is definitely keeping a distance. 4 years ago, I think he would have tried to bridge that distance. I think it is his choice to make at this point, and not something I should force him to change. But I guess I have to figure out how to keep enough belief in relationships alive that he will build them when he has opportunities that better suit his own emotional needs, and not give up permanently. Do you think keeping the family relationships strong will be that thread, to allow him to know it can be done? Enough for him to have something to build from when he feels better about the quality of his acquaintances?

It's all about to get more difficult, however, as I am returning to full time work in a month, so quality time with mom and dad is going to get harder to come by. Ugh. Now I'm making myself feel that this work situation is all very bad timing, but it can't be helped.

You don't need to worry about him 'giving up' on relationships. He is just being reasonable and staying out of relationships that are inherently harmful to him. That's not a 'frustrating and sad' adaptive behavior, its a smart one. Your son is at an age where social pressures caused by a horribly run educational system and other poorly managed influences causes the average maturity and intelligence of his peers to decrease.

Have you actually spent time with normal 14 year old children? This is the age where immature children are left to their own devices without proper supervision, and are thus they descend into petty superficial social hierarchies where maturity is viewed as a sign of weakness, and peer pressure replaces rational thought as the primary factor in decision making. This is also the age where children start to get involved in poorly conceived, and poorly run relationships where neither person has the required maturity in order to make such a complex relationship work. In other words, its is an age where your peers are not good people to be co-dependent with.

Your son is just making a rational choice to avoid getting into a in depth relationship with people who are immature and self destructive, simply because he doesn't want to put up with it. It isn't a sign that he has 'given up' on relationships, he has just 'given up' on trying to have a relationship with his 'peers'. Wait a few years until he hits college and his 'peers' actually have enough maturity and self respect to be decent candidates for friendship. Then you will probably see your son start picking up more complex 'friendships' as you would define them.

This isn't a bad thing at all. In fact it is a rational, and intelligent thing to do. If all adolescent children acted like your child then there would be no gangs. There would be no peer pressure to do under age drinking, or commit crimes such as tagging and car jacking. Life wouldn't be perfect, but there would be far fewer problems. The difficulty though is that normal people have an unhealthy addiction to other people. And as such they do not act rationally and avoid self destructive relationships. Instead they dive in head first, and then become exceedingly emotional and irrational when their relationships predictably fail.

So be glad that your child isn't addicted to the approval of his peers. It will make his life and yours a lot better.

Always love your perspective, Tracker. I think my son thinks a lot like you do. But now, at 13, he's still struggling with his own choices a bit. As is to be expected.

I'm behind you, so I don't have a future perspective to offer - but I don't think you should worry about the job. I think your son may need some clarity about the world, and you're about to offer it in a small, controlled dose. Much better that he get it at 13 when he has time to think this stuff through than at 18 or whenever he's on his own for the first time.

A guess: I've been thinking a lot about pragmatic language recently. My son is constantly vigilant about how his peers talk, and brings their language everywhere he goes, even when it's inappropriate. It's been a huge strain for him to keep track of language as the kids around him grow and develop. I would guess that the next big leap in "normal" language development where all the rules of change again is around age 13; if so, I wouldn't blame your son for withdrawing. (I think this sort of goes along with what Chronos was saying.)

From a personal perspective (keeping in mind there were NO interventions when I was a kid, and while I know I'm spectrum-y, I don't know how much) - I had a truly horrible time at this age, and withdrew socially. For a few years things didn't improve much, though I eventually found girls I could hang out with in high school - but once I got to college, I was able to find a genuinely like-minded peer group and got along socially.

This might well be that by college, language became more stable and easier for me to understand and predict; or it might be that the field of potential friends got bigger (I am not friends with anyone I went to high school with.)

I have collected a few friends over the years, and most of them are aspie or close. I think the reason for that is because aspie friendship doesn't work the same way as neurotypical friendship.

To me, friends are people you can count on, who will put you ahead of other people. Neurotypicals constantly say things they don't mean, so I can't count on them. If I say to someone, "I'll come by your office later", I'll come by later, or on the rare occasions that I absolutely can't I'll let them know and make it up to them later. When a neurotypical says "I'll come by your office later", half the time it's just a polite way of saying, "I need to do something else now, please leave". Without knowing the secret code, there's no way I can figure out when I can count on what they say - and thus, for example, stay in my office so I'll be there when they come - and when I should just ignore what they say. Since I can't count on them actually to do what they say they'll do, I can't count on them, so it's hard to consider them friends.

Slightly better are the people who mean what they say when they say it, but change their minds later. They'll at least tell me, "hey, I know I was going to come by your office, but something else came up so I can't make it". Once, and something important might have come up; if it happens the majority of the time, though, I'm obviously pretty low on their priority list and not really a friend.

The flip side is in what "put you ahead of other people" means. If I happen to join a group where there's a debate going on about whether the sky is blue or the sky is green, and I say, "the sky is blue and here's a spectrum analysis to prove it", suddenly the guy who was on the "sky is blue" side considers me a great friend. But if the debate shifts to the color of grass, with the same guy claiming that grass is also blue, and I say, "grass isn't blue, it's green," suddenly I've failed to put him ahead of other people and I'm a traitor who betrays his friendships. Sorry, I can't deal with that - putting friends ahead of other people, to me, does not include putting friends ahead of reality.

Aspies will generally do all they can to make sure they keep their promises, and don't mind honesty in "I need to do something else now" or "reality disagrees with you" situations. That I can work with and reciprocate, so it's not difficult to be friends with other aspies. Nonaspies that I can work with the same way are extremely rare. Nonaspies that I'm willing to work with according to neurotypical rules are even more limited - pretty much limited to close blood relations.

The bottom line is, I agree with Tracker: what your son is doing is realistic self defense, and is a good thing rather than a bad thing.

Family is important and it is not quality but quantity. People on the spectrum do not have the need for relationships as other people do, and they certainly do not have the need for as many. While for most teenagers, being an adolescent is about forming emotional connections with peers and distancing themsevles from family it comes at a high emotional cost and one that is incredibly difficult for those on the spectrum to deal with. He is going to be getting the need for emotional connnectedness from family and that is crucially important. He has time around other kids his age doing things he enjoys, and that is all you as a parent can encourage and support. Above that it is about accepting him as he is, and allowing him to be his own unique self whatever particular differences they may be. He does not need your 24/7 support, but he does need to know that you are there for him, as you always will be throughout your life. I read a study once which showed that parents of infants in full time day care were spending more time with their infant than parents of stay at home mothers. Some weren't. The difference came in what the mother wanted to do and what made her happy. If working feels good, you enjoy what you do, etc then you will spend the time needed with him when you are at home. Those mothers who stayed at home and didn't want to did not spend that much time with the kid as they did not want to be there. In order to look after your child you need to look after yourself first. It is like they say on airplanes, put your mask and safety jacket on first before helping the child or you will both be lost. The last thing any child needs is a parent who is not emotionally available to them. Look after yourself and you will be a much better parent.

DW_a_mom,

REAL Friends are pretty rare. If he had a bad experience with a "friend" he may mean ONLY that he wants someone he can do stuff with that won't require any sort of commitment. Ever see "brewsters millions"? At the beginning, brewster has effectively NOBODY. A few minutes later, people are gathered all over him. They ACT like friends, etc... but they are just sycophants. Things chaange because he is effectively given $30 million to throw away. In fact, he is told he HAS to throw it away on something that has value, but he can't have any of that value after the period. Obviously, one of the best ways to do that is to hire help for services. Hire a driver, publicist, lawyer, photographer, etc.... Well, you get the idea.

The FRIENDS are the ones thhat try to STOP you from doing that, because they feel you are being taken advantage of, AND, when you are broke, down, etc... they stay to help you clean up, and try to get you back on your feet, and keep you happy.

Steve

a friend is someone who does not get sh***y when i tell them i am all "socialled out".

a friend is someone who understands that i do not want to talk to them when i am not interested in a chat.

a friend is someone who can wait until i want to talk to them again, and not feel ripped of that i do not want to talk to them every time they ring or visit.

a friend is someone who does not stick their foot in my door when i close it with them on the outside.

a friend understands that i like them when i am ready to like them and not before.

a friend does not rely on me for their self confidence.

a friend is someone who has their own life and does not blame me for making them lonely because i am otherwise engaged in trivial pursuits.

a friend is someone who can forgive my shortcomings and be strong without me having to carry them with false and arduous endorsement.

that is why i have no friends.

i will be dead in about 50 years and no one will blame me then for leaving them stranded on the shore of their hopes.
people expect that if i like them, and i show them affection, that i will always be the same.


those people get angry with me when it comes to the point where i am not interested in them that day.

people think i am much more than i am, but i am just an automaton most of the time, and they fail to see that my heart is only my own, no matter if i lend a bit of it to them when i am willing.

many people want to know me and they bare their hearts to me thinking i am a nice person, but i truly want to be alone without the distortion of their needs that are peculiar to them.

always in the end i want to go home alone.

i am not capable of true friendship.