“Be yourself and you’ll attract the right friends”

Post Reply New Topic

It has the potential to, but if that happened I would just brush those people off and continue looking for actual friends

My daughter is a bit like this but she has learned politeness and etiquette

the best friends I ever had, and still have are ones with who I share interests. We built the friendships on shared activities surrounding the interests and some of the friendships have been life long, surviving long distance moves . I have one friend I have not seen in years, yet we email each other almost every day. Shared activities surrounding something you love will draw others ... hope you find what you need.

Yes, you are much more likely to have friends if you share common interests. We often have detailed knowledge and can help our friends with it.

There is a difference between not masking and learning restraint.

Amazingly, my power just went off and my draft of this message was saved!

It worked for me but I only really have online friends, not really any real life friends.. The only one I do have moved an hours drive away after I graduated high school.

I try to, but I try to convince myself to give them a chance. Or everyone around me does.

Online friendships always feel too intense and stalkerish for me. I did make a few “online friends” in the past, but they were just stalkerish guys.

I have a question: when you meet guys who don't respect that you aren't interested in men, do you think you could communicate that better to them? Or do they ignore this and pursue you romantically regardless?

As we all know, autism makes it hard to understand people if they aren't explicit, so is it possible to be more explicit?

And I'm definitely not doubting your experience, just asking this in case it opens up an opportunity to have healthier friendships for you.

I have a super hard time with my sexuality in general. People expect me to be 100% sure of my sexuality. Especially because I don’t fit people’s narrow ideas of what a lesbian looks like. People also push me to “give guys a chance” because I don’t really have any friends and we happen to have surface level similarities. This caused me to develop an OCD obsession with my sexuality. Mainly because no one respects me. I still have a bad handle on my sexuality.

People should just respect that I find the idea of dating men absolutely disgusting without making me label myself or be 100% sure of my sexuality. This isn’t the same as man hating, but I understand why it looks like it to people. I have no issue hanging around guys when there’s zero pressure to date them or be romantic. Part of my issue with guys is that they often have date-like interactions with me, without asking. Or at least they did before.

I don’t exactly have a strong or obvious attraction to women, so that makes my sexuality hard to grab onto. This is probably one reason everyone forced me to give guys a chance. I could just be asexual, but that doesn’t seem right either. I practically function like an asexual because no girls are ever into me.

I think I told those guys I’m not dating at the moment or even that I don’t want to date them. I think that’s pretty clear. But I know that they just want me to label my sexuality and tell them right away. Even if I wanted to label my sexuality, it’s not everyone’s business.

As ever, when I was in my teens and twenties, I acted myself and attracted friends. After my thirties, I acted myself and didn't attract any friends.

The world has changed.

This makes sense to me, but I do think you could be more clear if you tell guys that you don't date guys. If you say you're not dating or don't want to date them, it leaves open the possibility that you'll change your mind. If you tell them you never date guys and that won't change, they can better understand that it's not possible to "woo you" and they may respect your boundaries a bit better.

As for the rest of your sexuality, I am not a big believer in labels or even the need to figure out what you "are."

You're you. Your needs will change over the course of your life. Sometimes you'll want to date, sometimes you won't. Sometimes you'll know for sure, sometimes you won't. It's fine.

So my last bit of advice is from the perspective of a person in a very long relationship that I just completely lucked into: there's no secret sauce. Just go do stuff with people who like what you like, take active steps to be there for them, and you'll make friends. If you want romance, go find other people who also want romance and ask them if they want romance with you, too. That scares the crap out of me, so I'm glad I'm not in that position, but if I was single that's what I'd do.

Yes, faking somebody you're not will at best attract people who will come to like a person who doesn't exist, as is often the case with celebrities until the bubble bursts. It's also unsatisfying to the faker, if they have any "soul," because they know that people only like the projected image, they don't like them for who they really are. Yet almost everybody does it to a degree. Who hasn't used at least some discretion in their responses to what others do or say to them, or spruced up their physical appearance so as to seem to be something they aren't?

And yes it's a fine line between that and being yourself enough to avoid such an unsatisfactory outcome. It's a compromise. I wish I had a simple formula to decide what to show and what to hide. But it's hard to know what a given person will think of me if they know this or that about me, or how much it will matter. In a way I tend to "see" people as potentially intolerant, narcissistic bigots of the lowest order, which is a bad fault of mine, probably caused by my general defensive pessimism, not a considered, low opinion of people. But by all accounts, you shouldn't interfere with defensive pessimism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensive ... ectiveness

I like the idea of trying to present the best version of yourself. It's like being an artist and taking into account what people will think of your work - if you don't like or approve of the change you're proposing to make, it's not really art. Similarly, I tend not to modify my behaviour just to please people, especially if I end up doing things I hate to see in others. Being genuine is very important to me.

I wish life could be this simple. It’s not. I was chatting with this autistic guy and he quickly told me I don’t look like a lesbian. I told him I’m not comfortable being called a lesbian and after that he kept asking me if I want to have sex with him. He didn’t care that I straight up told him I don’t want to have sex with him. Now whenever he sees me, he winks at me. So whenever I see him, I try to hide.

I guess the doing activities part is hard. I hate doing stuff. Especially if I’m depressed. Sure I have special interests, but I don’t count that as doing stuff. It’s usually stupidly solitary things like studying Finnish grammar. If you’re wondering, I don’t have any interest in actually speaking Finnish or finding any practical use for it. That will just ruin it for me.

So it’s just a fun and impractical interest that won’t lead to any friendships or career. Oh well. It’s not like NT hobbies where you can figure out what type of persona someone is, just by their hobby or interest.

I guess the closest thing I have to NT style interests is vintage shopping and art. So I guess this is a good basis for my depressed artist persona. That’s the persona I show off to people and I guess most people accept it. Except when I was trying to get into online dating. I kept being accused of “not showing my personality”, which really pissed me off. I think depressed artist is a valid personality type. I guess it gives a good framework to decide what to share.

Random special interests like Finnish grammar have no place with this persona. I just know NTs will fixated on that and try to figure out who I am based on that one meaningless interest.

I tend to agree with this part of your comment.

Well, that's just gross. I'd also not want to be friends with people like that. The first rule of friendship should always be mutual respect.


I think depressed artist is a completely valid persona. I married a woman very much like this, so I totally relate to people who obsess over expression through visual mediums as a way to deal with their feelings. I also studied art and I still enjoy it a lot. One thing that I always loved was figure drawing with live models. I didn't realize it at the time, but studying human figures and faces with a valid excuse was delightful to my autistic brain!

In my experience, most of the people in art classes would relate to you quite a lot. Have you ever tried that?

The "Depressed artist" persona sounds like it describes Squidward Tentacles from the cartoon "SpongeBob SquarePants"

It's good advice, it just turns out that it only works if there are other autistic people in the area and they don't have conflicting views.