Are some people inherently worthwhile?

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I am 24 years old and I've never had one friend in my whole life. Not even in grammar school. Literally the only people who have been interested in knowing me were people who were paid to do so (therapists, teachers, etc). I really can't get over how pathetic that is. I've made a huge amount of progress in my managing my symptoms..... by this point I've been able to conceal the obvious aspects of my disorder. I am certainly not one of those Aspies who never brushes their teeth or uses deodorant. I am a friendly person, I'm always kind and respectful, I dress very well, I don't make weird comments for the most part and I always show interest in others.

Yet in spite of the headway I've made over the years in social skills, people's indifference to me is exactly the same as it was when I was 7 years old. I have to wonder if this ultimately has anything to do with Aspergers at all. Honestly, I'm thinking it's more the fact that I simply don't have anything to offer as a person that folks couldn't get from other people. I could pick myself apart and try to analyze exactly what personal defect is the issue here. But the bottom line is that nobody is perfect; I see tons of flawed people who have plenty of friends around them. So what if I'm a bit awkward sometimes? One of my classmates has some serious anger management issues, yet he is one of the most well-liked people in my class. The real question is: why are other people's imperfections forgivable and mine aren't? I think that they would be willing to look past my Aspergers if I had the capacity to enrich people's lives. But what I have to give just isn't enough, it can't measure up to what others have to give.

It's gotten to a point where I have to leave school during lunch breaks (either go outside or retire to the sofa in the basement). It just hurts way too much to see everyone hanging out, joking around and being friends and I'm not included. I have to struggle so hard not to burst into tears. The last straw this week was the discovery that all of my classmates went out for dinner together the night before Thanksgiving and nobody invited me or told me about it.

Over the years, I was willing to chalk up my isolation to a variety of possible factors:

1) There was nobody my age who shared my interests
2) my coworkers were either too young or too old to consider being friends with me
3) I come from a different social background than many of the people I've come across in my hometown.

(Never mind the fact that I see folks connecting with each other in spite of these differences all the time.)

But now that I'm surrounded by people my age who have the exact same interests and goals as me, I can no longer continue to deny that this is about anything other than who I am as a person. I realize now how extraordinarily naive I was to have hoped that things would ever be different. I wonder if I could've spared myself feeling like this right now if I had accepted when I was younger that this was the way that my life would be.

Sorry about whayou're going though. I feel like I alSo get treated differently and miss on a lot of things most people experiencE and often get treated differently. I sometimes feel like ut might be because I give off the wrong signals Like maybe I seem sad oR come off as stuck up without meaning too. I feel like ut's because I get misunderstood in a lot of different ways. Are there any autism groups .kn your area? I''ve been able to make a few friends that way.

I believe the vast majority of people, even those who do not, superficially, seem to be "worthwhile," are inherently worthwhile.

I'm sorry you're going through this. I also find it hard to see people making friends without effort when it's such a struggle for me. In the end, I had to force myself to socialise through work. It was really, really awkward to start with and I hated it. However, after six months I've found people that I might not consider friends yet, but that I can at least talk to and have a conversation with without feeling like I'm forcing myself to talk to them. We all share different interests and we're all of different ages, so that's not a barrier. I did find that I never initiated conversations and I'm still very shy, I think that maybe was why I found it hard to make friends, I don't know if you've experienced the same issues. Like slw1990 said, autism groups can be very helpful for this kind of thing. I joined one where I live and it's very useful to me.

To answer your question, yes. Many, many people are worthwhile, and the more you find out about people, in my experience, the more you will see that.

Something that has taken me many years to start to understand is that I perceive people as not wanting to associate with me even though there is evidence many people like me. I've at least reached the point of accepting that many people seem to want my company even if I don't quite know what to do about it.

It might be worth examining whether you are interpreting people's behavior as not wanting to be with you simply because that is how you expect people to behave. Sometimes we interpret reality based on what we expect to see rather than on what is actually happening. It may be valuable to try to step outside of yourself and look objectively at the things people do. Create a list of notable interactions with people to see if you can find a pattern of behavior that either confirms or dis-confirms how you believe people are treating you.

It is possible that people are genuinely not interested in being friends with you. But it is also possible that they might enjoy your friendship but you expect them not to and so behave in a manner that keeps them at a distance. At any rate, this is how I have behaved for most of my life and it has been quite a shock to me to discover that I had backed away from people who wanted to be friends because I feared they did not like me.

How did you know that they wanted to be friends with you? Did they ever ask you to hang out or reach out to you in any way? What was it that signified to you that they wanted to view you as more than an acquaintance? I have literally never seen anyone show any interest in spending time with me. The only parties I got invited to were the work/school parties that sent out invites to everyone. Whenever I've been in school and it was time for classmates to choose partners for projects, I have ALWAYS been the one without a partner. I seem utterly incapable of inspiring any reaction from others apart from politeness.

It just hurts me so much to know that I truly do not have what it takes. My whole life I've looked around me and seen everyone building rapport with each other in a way that completely escapes me. It's like there's a whole world which the rest of humanity belongs to, and I never received an invitation.

Last edited by SummerAndSmoke on 10 Dec 2016, 11:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.

^^^^at least now you know that you are not the only one who struggles with this.

Everyone is inherently worthwhile, you included. I truly believe this. I love my cat, therefore she is worthwhile to me, but she certainly does nothing 'worthwhile' in terms of, well, any objective measure of value. She sheds, she makes a mess, she costs money, can't look after herself, etc. But I like her for her and I wouldn't have her any other way.

Your 'training' has not been what you thought it was. You have been trained to be socially acceptable by societal standards. True, being unkempt, belligerent, etc, are things that can -prevent- you from having friends, but that's about it. What you were failed to be told was that this is not how friendships are made. Even if you were to make friends, from the way you describe yourself, you wouldn't even be friends with them. They'd be friends with the carefully planned outward appearance that you so carefully trained yourself to have, but not 'you'.

It seems like you've been told your entire life that you are different, not good enough the way you are, that you need to do x, y and z. The very title of this post marks you as thinking that you are inherently deplorable. You've been told that you are wrong the way you are, so whoever 'you' are is not something that anyone likely ever gets to see. Because why would you let people see that when you've been told that you are not right? But that's exactly the part of you that you need to get other people to see.

No one, including you, would make friends with a 'blank' person. It seems to me like you are blanking yourself out. You take pride in it, because you have been told that that's what you have to do. You sound like a...a...human doll or something.

But underneath that, there's a real person being torn up with shame and pain inside, and you've been told that that person is not what people want to see, so you hide it, which just grows the problem. You've learned what society wants you to do, now you need to learn what YOU want you to do.

Have you ever thought of yourself as being gaslighted before?

Unfortunately I was blind to the overtures of friendship when I was young. In one absurdly obvious expample, a girl in high school asked me to kiss her, gave me her phone number and asked me to call during the summer break. I thought she was just teasing me until about 25 years later when a mutual friend told me she had a crush on me. I actively misinterpreted her behavior because it did not fit how I saw myself... as someone noone would want to be around.

Like you, I was not invited to parties, I was picked last for games. But looking back, I can see that this might have been because I kept to myself and was reluctant to approach people. Recently a woman who I had not seen since she we were about 12 years old contacted me to appologize for how her brother treated me when we were young. She remembered me and had liked me, but didn't know how to say so at the time. And I didn't notice because I was too busy worrying about how I came across to realize other people were not offended by me.

In my twenties, in college, I tended to become friends with other people who were on the spectrum. The friendships have had their awkward moments, but they have lasted. I found it easier to become friends with people who shared the same work interests - in my case, film making. I ended up joining the theatre department in school, partly because there was an almost instant intimacy that forms when people are working to put on a play.

But over the years, I have continued to struggle with the feeling that people merely tollerated me. Even with my closest friends, it took over 20 years before I started to let go of the feeling that they didn't really like me, but felt obligated to be my friend. Eventually I began to realize that they did genuinely like me or else we probably would not have stayed friends for over 30 years.

If you perceive the people and the world as not likeing you, you might regard any gestures of friendship as something else entirely. That was how I have lived most of my life. It is frustrating to me that I ignored so many opportunities simply because I could not believe that someone actually wanted to be friends. I pushed people away who were happy to spend time with me because I did not trust them. I regret not accepting the friendship of people because I was afraid of the risk of being hurt. Maybe what you have to do is behave as if some people might like you even though it feels like they do not. The "fake it til you make it" approach. Sometimes it actually works.

^^^I wish I had the genes to "fake it 'til I make it." that just seems soooooo mysterious to me, like expecting a cat to use its paws to open a door- a smart few "get it" but most don't come anywhere close to comprehending this.