I've been a bad friend, plus more.

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Him saying you are a bad friend makes no sense.

I get how you feel, autistic people always feel it is their fault, but he makes excuses to his w*ker, eek sorry, his homophobic w*ker dad, arrgg did it again.

I don't know you or him, but it sounds like a cry of frustration from him, not your fault and probably not his, but definitely not your fault.

As someone not involved in your situation it just screams that he has feelings for you.

I think at this point I don't want to keep this friendship going. Whenever I try to have a conversation, it always ends up in an argument or petty squabble. Seriously, no topic is safe. I just...I give up. He hasn't been the same ever since he got new friends. I guess my first clue was when he told me that I wouldn't fit in with his new friend group. That I'm too uptight for them.

Next year I won't ask to have him as a flatmate. Drifting away shouldn't be too hard. He never wants to hang out anymore anyway, he's always gaming with his new friends or working. I'm not entirely sure how to bring up not wanting to live with him next year in a civil manner. Chances are it'll end up in confused shouting back and forth, but I'm done.

At least I have new friends now as well. I'll be alright.

Yep. This guy sounded like many 18 year old people. He was still doing the high school stuff about “not fitting in.”

I’m glad you’ve gotten new friends who will appreciate you more.

Well, his physical age is twenty one. I became friends with him when he was seventeen, back when I was sixteen. Understandably he's changed over the years. However, I do agree with what you wrote about him still being in a high school mindset somewhat.

Er, are these not merely things that NT friends of people with A.S.D. have to cope with? Or am I missing something?

Obviously you would be right to endeavour to develop what NTs would perceive as slightly better social skills, but if you happen to have been born without them, then the effort of doing so is monumental, so you needn't beat yourself up for having fallen short of Rolls-Royce NT perfection. I seem to remember the phrase "lack of reciprocity" recurring in my A.S.D. report, but I was 41 by then and my "lack of reciprocity" hadn't completely prevented me having friends; presumably they could see that the "lack of reciprocity" did not actually indicate self-centredness or a lack of actual interest in them.

It also occurs to me conversation can become a bit too full-on after a while: cumulative sensory overload could account for the zoning out you describe, and that wouldn't be your fault at all. Sounds as if sensory overload could be something you're prone to (but I don't know you well enough to say that, obviously...apologies if I'm out of order).

After a friendship lasting so long, why would he suddenly decide he couldn't tolerate the way your mind works? Presumably he knows, or did know, that you care about him and regard him as a friend (or did do)? Does he not know you well enough to accept that you aren't actually self-centred and uninterested?

Sharing student accommodation has broken many a friendship; for one thing you can have grown apart, and for another thing you can see too much of one another, even if you are friends. Maybe that isn't helping.

I think I've spent the rest of my adult life recovering from the trauma of university, so well done for sounding like you're coping with the social aspects better than I did.

@Raphael F

I'm not autistic, despite being on this forum. There have been times where I've wondered, but I think I'm more just hypersensitive and a bit awkward. Maybe BAP. In theory, I should be able to improve and develop those skills. My social ability is fairly decent. It's not perfect, but I can make friends without too much difficulty generally. Sometimes I miss sarcasm or otherwise misinterpret tone. The person who this thread is about has tired of this.

I know that I can come across as annoying and pedantic. The number of times I’ve asked for clarification has likely grated on him over the years. I should let things go more than I do. He also probably sees me as lazy for not attempting to learn sarcasm more. That I complain about my social awkwardness, yet do little to combat it. Which isn’t entirely true, but I can see where he’s coming from.

As for what you said about sensory overloads and conversations… well, I do experience sensory overloads of sorts. Ones which often lead to feelings of derealisation and exhaustion. I know that when they happen sometimes I can’t understand what people are saying to me at the time. Their speech sounds incomprehensible and the background blurs into white noise. I try to leave a situation if I feel myself slipping into that state of mind if I can. Otherwise, I focus on one detail in the room, then slowly extend my focus onto other details until I feel back to normal. I’m not entirely sure what would happen if I didn’t do that and just stayed there.

However, I’ve never considered that this might be happening in everyday conversation rather than just in those moments.

I think to some degree our friendship has been onesided. He’s had to apologise for me after my outbursts before. Our friendship had become overly dependent. We used to joke about how similar we are.

But as we got older, our differences became more noticeable and pronounced. We didn’t give each other enough space. People started to assume that we were dating which hindered both of us. Especially in the romance department. He wanted to go to social events that I did not, and vice versa. To do activities that we couldn’t agree on. So we drifted apart. He made friends that were a better fit. Now I am beginning to do the same. Things aren’t so bad when we don’t see each other much. I think it works better that way. Whilst I often get annoyed at him, I wouldn’t go as far as to say that we hate one another. Being distant friends or allies seems the best course of action to me for this year.

Well I did take a peek at your, er, profile (is that what it's called?) before posting, and I did see your diagnosis was stated as Neurotypical, but then I considered the fact you were active in this forum and then I looked at the situations you were describing, and then I kind of diagnosed you Neurodivergent myself. But I'm a Latin teacher by profession, not a psychiatrist, so you can take my opinion with as big a pinch of salt as you like. Might you be one of those individuals who is "on the spectrum" but functioning well enough not to count as clinically having a disorder as such? You seem to be describing some autistic traits, but you could have those without meeting the full formal criteria for a diagnosis.

However, your own diagnosis of "hypersensitive and a bit awkward" would make just as much sense, and there's no reason for a stranger such as myself to force autism upon you!

Getting back to your original query, it really doesn't sound like you're bad at being a friend. You just happen to be someone who sometimes misses sarcasm and can misinterpret tone. I see no shame in that. I see nothing wrong with being hypersensitive and a bit awkward, either. Sounds like you know yourself pretty well and are tolerably comfortable in your own skin. Your conclusions re. maintaining a bit of distance from this particular friend this year are faultless. Good luck with the year!

@Raphael F

You are correct, it is referred to a profile here as far as I know.

Whenever I've taken online autism tests, I typically score either borderline or more traits than average but below the diagnostic threshold. I tend to see myself as being within this area, I get by without too much difficulty yet have moments that either inconvenience me or seemingly self-sabotage. People have referred to me as a bit strange, quirky or otherwise eccentric before. I've also been told they wish they knew how my brain works.

To complicate matters, I have learning differences. Particularly regarding processing visual information. I don't have an official diagnosis for anything, but I do have a few documents from school which show that my scores in certain areas are significantly below what you'd expect. Unfortunately, these aren't enough to get any help or accommodations.

My University won't fund testing since my course of study isn't considered academic enough. I've been passed around to many different people but I haven't got anywhere. At this point, any help I could get isn't much use and out of the question. My parents have suspected dyscalculia since I was eight years old.

I was labelled as lazy at school and my educators discouraged me away from seeking support. Sometimes my issues are dismissed as merely being a bit bad at maths. However, it's more than that. I lack skills which can be downright embarrassing to not have. Conflictingly, I also feel bad/ almost guilty about feeling this way. There are moments where I lie to cover up my inability. However, I do my best to find ways to work around these things.

Even though I fit into the term neurotypical by some definitions, I don’t feel entirely typical. But I don’t really think of myself as neurodivergent either. Which I’m aware may come across as overly attention-seeking.

Thank you for your kind post and wishing me well with this year.

I'm just too sloshed right now to do your kind reply the justice it warrants. At present I'm dealing with my own difficulties with alcohol, which is NOT a coping strategy I would recommend to anyone (except maybe to someone who just needed to get across the threshold of one good Chinese restaurant, just the one crucial time...). Also I missed part of the Radio 4 afternoon play this afternoon (it did star Timothy West, so missing it feels kind of like harvesting 50 acres of wheat on the Sabbath), so obviously I need to spend some time on Listen Again this evening, before I pass out on the hearthrug like usual.

You raise some interesting and pertinent points, and if I still feel as though I might have a few remotely useful things to say about those when I'm sober in the morning, I stand a better chance of being able to say them succinctly then, with a pint mug of jasmine tea by my side instead of a monumental glazed stoneware goblet full of wine.

Best wishes for now...

Not to anyone who has struggled with similar difficulties, it won't! Airing difficulties, in hopes of making sense of them and finding ways of coping with them, is a perfectly healthy and constructive thing to do, and better than suffering in silence. Probably you know this.


Yup. Sounds like that could be where you are. In one way I feel your pain, because although I am well above the diagnostic threshold, when I was at university the mental health profession had not yet spotted Asperger's as the condition underlying most of my depression, anxiety, social isolation etc., and anyway it was practically impossible to get an A.S.D. diagnosis back then; when I finally ventured to suggest it to one psychiatrist in my final year at university, he just laughed and dismissed the possibility. So yes, it can be frustrating and demeaning to know that you have a problem yet be confronted by a stone wall of professionals declining to recognize it. The university doctor said Schizoaffective Disorder. One psychiatrist said Bipolar Disorder and wanted me on lithium for the rest of my life. Another psychiatrist said Prozac would fix everything, but Prozac was about as effective as throwing a pint of milk at the Towering Inferno.


This is all sounding quite A.S.D.-ish to me, at least. At school we did something called a Morrisby Test, a/k/a I.S.C.O. Test. I was off the top of the scale for some stuff, way down for other stuff. Careers Master said he'd never seen a graph like it and reckoned the Morrisby supercomputer must have blown a gasket. Twenty-six years later I had a Wechsler Test, considered the official psychometric test for Asperger's: it was just like a Morrisby Test and surprise surprise, I was in the top 2% for some stuff yet practically ret*d for other stuff. The lovely psychologist doing the testing explained then that a "spiky graph" like that was a classic indication of Asperger's (they seldom bother explaining what they're doing, in my experience, but this one did).

Difficulty processing information in some ways, yet not in other ways, would I believe be very typical.


Alas, again this sounds all too familiar to me, and is I believe fairly typical of high-functioning A.S.D. They call it high-functioning, yet one is painfully aware of the areas where functioning is low or non-existent. Still, you've got into university and are getting decent marks and have some friends.

Given that it really does sound like you could be on the autism spectrum, and in fact with the right professional you might even qualify for a diagnosis, this isn't anything you've done wrong, it's just how you were wired at the factory. Those around you can either accept that this is who you are, or not. Sometimes it can help to say to yourself: "No, this is not me being stupid or unreasonable, this is just the way I am, and I'm actually dealing with it as best I can, thank you!" (or similar...).