Let down by long time friend

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I needed someone to talk about this, and seeing it's about the one person I usually go to to talk about these sort of things, I'm in a pinch. So I'm dumping my crap here. Sorry

Like many Aspies, I have gone through life either having no friends or one close friend on whom I'm perhaps a little too dependent upon. I've always been like this, and I'm in my 30's now. Anyhow, I have been friends with the one person for a number of years now, and we've never fought over anything. I have some other, more casual friends but she's the only one I really talk to about personal things including my AS, which is very awkward for me to discuss with anyone. I had always thought that even though she doesn't really understand AS, she was at least supportive of me and was understanding.

Recently I've grown more and more aware of how this friend talks about me to her other "normal" friends, and it's been making me more and more uncomfortable. This is especially the case with one of her friends who does sociological research on age groups. It seems that this person, who has met me once for a grand total of 20 minutes, has been telling my friend that I don't have AS but rather I'm just a typical Gen X'er who can't get my **** together (translation: "slacker").

So then the other day I dropped by to see my friend, who had incidently just finished talking with that sociologiost friend of hers minutes before. As we started talking, I mentioned a recent situation where I was having a conversation with some other people and the topic of autism came up. I told my friend that it had made me uncomfortable because I didn't know whether to tell these people that I had AS. Then my friend just blurts out "Well, I personally don't think you have Asperger's. I've recently met a couple people with Asperger's and I'm sure you don't have it. Whatever your deal is, it's not Asperger's." Then when I tried to remind her that AS is a very complex and broad condition that can look very different on the surface from individual to individual, she cut me off defensively, complete with throwing her hands in the air, and went "I'm no diagnostician, sure, but that's just what I think."

This simply made my head spin, and I've been obsessing over it since. I'm absolutely crushed that my friend said this for a number of reason. First I'm hurt that someone who knows what I've been through to come to terms with my AS over the past 10 years and has always been supportive would suddenly gainsay me like this. And then dismissively sum up my struggles as "my deal"??? She's NEVER spoken to me in this manner in the past, about anything.

Second, I don't think she's actually met anyone with AS recently, because in the past she's always mentioned to me when she's met people she knows are autistic. And she hasn't mentioned anything like that in months. I have good reason to suspect these "couple of people" are really people her sociologist friend knows casually, and she lied, basically, to make her claim sound more authoritative. Plus she didn't elaborate on who these people were - not even whether they were children, adults, male, female - and got defensive and evasive when I asked. That she may have "padded" her stance with me also blows me away, because this is not like her either.

Third, I feel like she was more or less saying to me that she thinks I'm full of it regarding my AS. Not only does that hurt, it makes me seriously question what else about me she thinks is total BS too. The one thing that I have always valued about our friendship was the sense of mutual respect I thought we had between us. Apparently, I was gravely mistaken.

What's more is this is exactly how my family talks to me. And she knows that, and knows how hurtful it is to be patronized and dismissed by people herself, because of her own crappy childhood.

Anyhow, that's it. I've been in a bad place ever since. Respect, honesty and trust are so essential to me in any relationship, and after a 10 year friendship that centered on those things, I feel she's violated all of them in one fell swoop. I just don't understand it. It's hurts all the more because I know her well enough to know she won't apologize for this, because she hates admitting when she's wrong. In the past she's let friends drift away from her because she wouldn't apologize for something dumb, because she always has other friends to turn to (like me). So even if I were to distance myself from her - which I've already started to do - I doubt that would make her reconsider. She'd probaby just got gossip among her other friends and forget about me and what she said.

So, it would seem I've lost yet another friendship, and like in the past, it's a bigger loss on my end than on the other person's end. It just sucks.

She seems pretty feeble minded to me if she heard one rumor about you and believed it right off the bat. She should think for herself. I know how you feel though. My job assessor got to understand learn about me personally, and I got really close to them but they pretty much dropped me because my depression was so bad I couldnt stop talking about it. I got lines like "I would love to start working with you again after you get some counseling.." and my mom told me they said "Im not a counseler Im a job assessor"... I didnt mean to burden them with my complaints and I feel horrible about it but I had nothing else to talk about, and no one else to talk about it and it seemed like we were starting to become friends. They took me out for coffee once lol. But whatever.. As long as I relocate with my WP friends I think Ill be just fine.

That's the rub: she's not a feeble mindeed person, really, she's not. But she's acting like one recently, and I don't know why. It's like she's letting this person (perhaps other persons as well) influence her opinion of me, because she's older and more her age (she's older than me). Yet she's known me longer. That's why I can't understand it. She KNOWS me and we've been great friends for years, yet she'd let someone else redraw her perception of me? God, people can suck, even the ones you thought were cool.

I guess I can take some solace in that I'm not the only person she's done something likw this to. There's a mutual friend of ours who has had to deal with her "souring" opinion of him for the past year. I've tried to bring her around, get her to ease up on him, since I felt she was being unfair and I just didn't see where she was getting these wierd ideas about him. All the while, I felt she was doing it to impress this other guy she more recerntly made frfiends with. I just don't know - it's like she's methodically destroying certain friendships in prefence for other friendships she deems more valuable to her at the moment. I think I'm too AS to get why people would act like that. That's just not what friendships about to me.

I'm sorry to hear about your 'friend'.

She sounds like she's blindly following the opinion of the sociologist, rather than using logic and common sense.

The sociologist sounds like they have no idea about AS.

And your friend definantly sounds like she's lying about 'having met lots of other people with AS'.

I am NT (married to an Aspie and mother of 2 Aspie sons) and I don't get people like her. This is not how you treat a friend!

This is one of my favourite websites.


http://home.att.net/~ascaris1/neurotypicality.html

Helen

I know that it doesn't seem like it right not, but in the long term you are really better off without people like that in your life.

As she acknowledged, she is not a diagnostician, and although everyone is entitled to an opinion, it should be a WELL-INFORMED opinion.

Also, sociologists are not exactly renowned for their vast knowledge of AS, so this sociologist friend really doesn't know what they're talking about. In fact, they sound pretty judgemental to me!

People who study things like sociology and, sometimes, counselling often learn to pigeon-hole people (i.e. try to categorise everyone) and this tendency, combined with the fact that they think they are always right, can lead them to come to some pretty crazy conclusions! And if you try to challenge these, they won't accept it because they are convinced that they are right!!

Your friend should really not have listened to her and should have been more loyal to you.

I think you have been badly let down and you are better off without such people in your life.

Thanks guys. Your reasurrance is very appreciated.

I'm old enough and expeirenced enough to know when I'm being screwed over. God knows, I have had enough "friends" do this kind of thing to me. I just hate how I always end up feeling so vulnerable and exploited by these kinds of things. I know I can be a sucker sometimes in interpersonal dealing, and I feel like a sucker now.

I really did trust this person, and had turned to her for many years for encouragement. I used to really admire her too, because she's well educated and done a lot of good things in her life. But this past year or so she's been changing, and I've had very dubious feelings about some of her actions and comments on various things. So I had already begun to question my frriendship with her before this happen. Even so, it's still a shock. I know for fact she would not tolerate someone speaking to her like that, and normally she's a very tactful, conscientious person who speaks to other in the way she wants to be spoken to. What's even more ironic, is that I've learned a lot from her about how to converse adn interact with people in a tactful, respectful manner and how to be more aware of those inferences people make betwen the words they speak. So basically, I'm aware of how badly she's insulting me through her own example of how she's handled being insulted in this same way!

Anyhow, you guys are right, she's not a friend worth keeping around if she's going to talk to me like this (and talk to other people about me like). And that sociologist - I don't get where she's getting off passing judgement on me and whispering in my friend's ear either. It all feel a bit too much like a Shakespeare play right now, and I can live without that kind of drama. LOL.

PSH.... females
JOKING

Joking or not, that wasn't a very helpful comment to make at my expense. I've been screwed over in similar or worse fashion by men too - actually, by comparison I'd say the male friends who've screwed me over have been vicious by comparison, since they were even more insensitive and more obsessed with looking good in the eyes of other people than this person. Years back, I had one guy, who I likewise thought was a trusted friend, humiliate me in front of dozens of people by accusing me of being obsessively in love with him and that's why he couldn't be friends with me any longer. I wasn't at all attrracted to him - he had become embarrassed to be my friend after something someone "higher up" on the social ladder said to him about me being "weird" and "probably a closet lesbian," and he needed a way to publicly denounce our friendship so everyone would know. He ended up damaging my reputation with a whole circle of people, because he didn't stop there, but continued to tell people I was a liar and delusional. I was too humiliated to even associate with any of those people again after that. Classy, huh?

That sounds very familiar to me too. I have quit jobs and avoided people because of something someone said, only to find I misinterpreted it completely.

I can't say whether or not you are over reating or being overly sensitive, just be careful you don't cut yourself off from someone who still likes you and wants to be your friend.

It wasn't fair of her to trust her other friend's armchair diagnosis over many years of time spent around you.

That sounds absolutely right. I don't understand it either. How long has she known this other "friend?" I still can't believe that she'd take that other person's unsolicited, likely not all that well informed opinion over her own experience with you.