Do you make a lot of new friends

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I'm not working at the moment. I do a night class once a week and take my daughter to nursery. I meet a lot of women, sometimes of a similar age. I see friendships developing at the nightclass and among the mothers at nursery, bonds forming. This is so alien to me because I'm aloof and feel like people are getting under my skin if they get to know me.

Has anyone found ways round this - managed to let their guard down? I know it would be good for me to have friends but I just can't get close to people. I used to avoid meeting people but now I'm meeting them I just can't make the next step and become friends with them.

Just be around them and let them approach you more and if and when they do don't push them away or run away. If you grow close with them then you can let down your guard but it's really up to you to decide when.

I've never found a way around this and I'm not sure I want to. I can't help seeing friends as a hassle. I have one friend now who I talk to on the phone every couple of days, not sure I could sustain anything more than that.

Usually, I can't get past the acquaintance stage. I have one true friend, and only because she and I were forced to stay together for a week in a hospital. ^_^'

Well, for me there's always that "glass wall" between me and them, even when I've made friends with them.....I don't think I ever did let my guard down completely, I can cut them dead after years of apparent friendship without feeling any great loss. Though the "glass wall" seems to be more than my own trust-phobia......apart from the physical stuff with girlfriends, social interactions somehow fail to impinge on me emotionally.....so a visit from a friend doesn't feel like the strengthening of a social bond, it feels like some dude sat in a chair in my living room for a couple of hours. The very stuff of social bonding just doesn't feel all that social to me, and it doesn't make me feel a lot less lonely. I even have to think if somebody asks to play a game with me, and to tell myself that it's a social thing, and not just a few dudes doing something logical but pointless with dice and bits of plastic. I do it more out of faith and intellectual deduction, because I look at the number of friends I've ditched or lost over the years and that feels wrong - it must be great to have old friends where you know each other so well that there's very little risk of the thing going sour.

As for making friends quickly, it depends on the circumstances. I won't even try if it's a crowded or disruptive environment, or if I have anything to do that I need to think about, but relieve me of heavy duties and put me in a quiet room with anybody, one-on-one, and if they speak to me reasonably cordially then I'm as personable as it gets. I'm unlikely to initiate conversation unless the other person has already made it safe by talking to me first, or maybe a cordial smile could be enough to tempt me into being proactive.

So if I wanted to make more friends quickly, I'd not throw myself into a pool of people just because there are a lot of potential chums there. I'd be more likely to try to spend more time in places where I'll meet people one-on-one. On the other hand, I haven't been that eager since I was very young. I'm strangely complacent about doing anything deliberate and specific to make new friends as such, and prefer to leave it to chance, though if I spend too many nghts in on my own then I might see the value of getting out of the house a bit more....yet even there I can't recall doing that purely for social reasons - I'm a musician, so I guess a lot of my "social outreach" rides piggyback on my musical projects. It's probably less socially risky to say "I want you to play your bass on my new song" than it is to say "I want us to make friends." And I have no great problem showing off my own musical skills, which have aroused a lot of interest and invitations over the years, and given me a status that I couldn't have had without being able to do music. So I'd go for shared interests rather than "pure" socialising every time.

I don't want large numbers of friends either. Two or three is plenty, and gives me the chance to try to forge high-quality links...it takes me a long time to suss out what makes one person tick, and everybody seems different, one guy gets upset if I call him fatty, another gets upset if I don't. There's also lots of judgemental people out there who need not apply, so really I'm looking for rare specimens

Nope, not at all. For some reason people like me and the acquaintance level is fine, but I don't feel emotionally close with very many people at all. I find myself being very distant when I first meet someone, until I can figure out what kind of person they are. If they are artsy or weird or into the same kind of stuff I am, then I feel comfortable taking the next step in trying to hang out with them.

But overall, this rarely happens.

I'm very selective about my friends, so I only make a few good friends, at once.

i make a fair amount of friends the only proble for me is keeping the friends

Last time I was in a situation where I noticed bonds forming with people around me was in a computer programming class. It really made me nervous and I gave into the urge to flee.

If I were in that situation again and I actually wanted friends, I would probably let them do most of the work. I wouldn't go out of my way to talk to anyone, but if they talked to me I would be as friendly as possible and hope for the best. If I were the one making friendly gestures first, I would be very uncomfortable and probably come off as insincere.

The only real friends are my coworkers and they are really just acquaintances. I still like to think of them as my friends though.

No I do not. But I get lot of acquaintances. Talking to people at work doesn't make them my friends. Talking to people at the aspie groups doesn't make them my friends. Going to the events my autism groups host does not make them my friends.

Honestly making friends has always been hard for me but them coming to me made it easier. As a kid if there was someone I liked, I would follow them and hang out with them and they didn't like it for some reason, not even my own friends. Only about two of them became my friend while the others kept pushing me away. I was only six then when those two became my friend. Even at three years old I was trying to be with the older kids in my neighborhood by following them and hanging out with them but they always told me to go home and stuff and they even go running to my mother so she come and get me. But no older child wants a little kid hanging out with them and these kids were maybe eight years old or ten and I was only three. Maybe they were 12 or 13.

I don't think I have had a friend in years. Last time I can remember having a friend my own age was when I was 13 and 14 and I would play with this girl or talk to her on the playground and she was also a social outcast. She come over to my house with her little brother and we both play. Then she and her family moved. I remember having another friend when I was 17 and 18 but he was 7 years younger than me. I tried being friends with the 16 year old (his sister) who was my age then but we didn't connect and something happened so she ended up living with her father.