Is Friendship Possible With Highly Avoidant Aspies?

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This is really an extension of an earlier post I made at the following link, but it is enough of a new question that it deserves a new subject.

> http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt137212.html

To recap the post above, I met a very unusual young guy nearly a year ago who was a total loner, has such severe communications difficulties that he cannot understand a simple sentence and shows many of the other usual Aspie traits. He clearly has no friends and is always driven to get back to his apartment to be alone (don't we all). Yet for some reason he seemed to treat me as his best friend and was always so warm and friendly towards me to an exaggerated degree. I felt an intuitive connection to this guy and have always wanted to get to know him and be his friend, but it was never possible to slow him down long enough to be able to communicate with him effectively at all.

He used to live alone in a 1 BR apartment, but this year he is in the larger BR of a 2 BR apartment with mom and dad there presumably to look after him and he seems much less happy now. There is one other classmate of his who attempts to reach out to him, but my friend shoves him away just as he is now doing towards me. (Perhaps there are too many people around with mom and dad always there along with the inability to be alone that this would bring)? Due to Aspie difficulties with spoken communications, I had been thinking of writing a note of friendship and simply handing it to him so as to not create too much of a distraction for him. I finally did so last week including my name, phone number and email address. As I handed him the note, he held it limply in his hand looking down at it without knowing what to make of it and made some barely audible gurgling sounds as he tried to speak. But I did not hang around long enough for him to become embarrassed by his inability to speak and left my message to him to be expressed by the note. At first he seemed overjoyed and two days later I saw him walking past my apartment holding his hand up to his head like a make believe telephone with a huge smile on his face as he looked all over the outside of my apartment. All he needs to do is to call or email me or meet me when I am out walking someday and let that friendship develop naturally, but that has not happened. I think that mom and dad may have possibly given him a warning about strangers because he now seems so fearful of me and is going well out of his way to avoid me too (he is in his very late teens or early 20s... my guess is 22-23... maybe 18-19). In effect they just might have corrupted his Aspie purity and put fear into his heart while also turning his Aspie independence into a closer dependence on them. This is so very sad because as lonely as he is he will probably end up leading an even lonelier life than I have.

Several days later mom and dad were leaving as my friend was arriving. They stopped to talk to him where they apparently knew it would be seen in what looked to me like a staged attempt to demonstrate that he had no problem with conversation (as long as it was with them). This simply is not credible because he has so much difficulty speaking one or two words, if that much even if given plenty of time to do so. He has become extremely avoidant of everybody this past week, even more so than usual. I also see the parents around more often now so I suspect that dad may be on vacation for an extended holiday time off and my friend may be very stressed by the inability to be by himself. He seems to be avoiding me and even the possibility of encountering his parents by walking home all the time presumably to be able to get those few moments alone. I have started avoiding him too in hope of taking some of the pressure off of him. He is highly avoidant to begin with and now he is even more so.

This may resolve by itself once things return to normal for him (and if it does), but I fear that the possibility of any friendship with this guy could be lost and that I may need to look elsewhere for friends. Does anybody here have any experience with highly avoidant Aspies and know how to relate to them while still maintaining the possibility of friendship? I am pretty avoidant myself, but this guy makes me look like an social extrovert by comparison.

Whew, so close and yet so far away.

It would be great if you could sit and talk with his parents alone to reassure them, but I know that is not a likely possibility. So, I would suggest just being sure you do nothing that might alter his positive memories of your past interactions while letting him occasionally catch a remindful, present-day glimpse of you ... and all of that without putting your own life on an indefinite hold ... and I hope the two of you might yet be able to recapture what you have had and move on along together from there.

If seems that spontaneous communication with strangers is too painful for him, there might be like a storm of questions in his head when he tries to speak. Try to give him another handwritten note where you just ask a simple question about him: "Hi my name is zzz, what is your name?" and let him respond in writing.
Just simple and precise questions at the beginning that are easy to respond, and a more and more, more open questions very gradually. He would feel more successful each time he responds to you and he would gain a bit confidence in himself every single time.

It may take some time, but if he gets enough confidence he will be able to come to you. At that point, there must be a common interest, and if the conversation points to that interest it will be easier for him to concentrate on it and speak, rather than directly speaking to you (chit chat is too hard at the beginning)

I am deeply touched by your interest in that person, because I was almost like him at 15, and a friend opened me to the world.

I would welcome that chance and since I am minimally affected by communications difficulties, I might be able to talk to them relatively easily... at least the dad. If he could only know that I am an Aspie too then it might go a long way to reassure him.



My thoughts precisely. I am just laying low right now (sounds kind of like Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby) and watching to see what develops while trying to have the least impact for a while. One thing that does concern me considering that very rapid change in his reaction to me is that I somehow unknowingly did something or failed to do something that he expected that caused him to lose his trust in me. That is something that I may never know the answer to.

I would classify myself as "highly avoidant". I have people I consider to be friends that I haven't seen in years. Life just gets too busy and my interests have been evaporating except work.

This is what I had hoped to be able to do. Sit down with him somewhere for short periods at a time with a piece of paper and pen and have a simple conversation with him on paper so that he would be able to deal with those cognitive delays while still understanding what I had to say and being able to express himself adequately. I expected that this might happen if he ever did visit or email me (and I never did like the thought of having to use the phone because it is no better than spoken conversation). Alternatively a simple note passing situation between us every few days along the driveway could serve the same purpose. It is entirely possible that he may already have a note prepared to hand to me and is frustrated at not having the opportunity to do so. But once his mood changed and it appeared that there might be some mistrust present from either my friend or his dad, then it closed the door on my ability to appear to him in person in the only place and time of day that I can do this reliably. So I myself was forced to become more avoidant towards him out of fear of adversely affecting his fragile mood. Now the Thanksgiving holidays will interfere, but it is time for a time out anyhow. Sadly, next Wednesday marks one year since the day when I met him and I had so much hoped to be able to share that knowledge with him, but instead I will only know that detail alone.

I myself was deeply touched by this young guy one day last January. We had only met that one time two months earlier and did not even know each other at all. I was returning to my apartment and he was about 75 feet ahead of me, also returning to his apartment. He began climbing his stairwell and when he reached the first landing and saw me off in the distance, he stopped right in his tracks, watched me approaching and suddenly held his hand high in the air waving a big wave to me like we were long lost friends. You must realize that this guy is very tall... about 6'3 to 6'4 and when he does something in a big way like this, it looks all that much bigger. That moment deeply touched me and life has not been the same for me ever since then.

I could be wrong, but I think when someone does the 'telephone' gesture, they're asking for a phone call. Maybe he doesn't realize that you don't have his number? What if you asked him (or wrote him) point-blank, "would you like to be friends?" At least then you could get a straight yes or no.

If he answered yes, you could approach his parents, explain the situation, and see if they'd help. Maybe go for coffee or something?

Sounds likely.

Also, with speaking itself being an issue, getting a speaking aid might help.

I think this gesture was more likely a thought to himself rather than a message he was trying to send me because it is very unlikely that he saw me where I was located at the time I saw him doing this. I just happened to be passing by my balcony door at the moment, looked out and saw him passing by as he did this. A few seconds difference in either direction and I would not have seen it at all. I saw him through the window of my 3rd floor balcony door and through the slats on the balcony railing. The outside was much brighter where he was standing so all he would have been able to see would have been a little bit of a dark looking window through the light colored slats of the balcony. Under the circumstances, rather than "asking for a phone call", it seems more likely that he was either fantasizing about what it would be like to call me or else saying to himself that he wished I would call him. Of course as you pointed out, he may not realize that I have no idea what his phone number is. Even if I did know, until we have established some kind of basic friendship I would feel quite hesitant to call him out of the cold and can easily understand why he must feel the same way for the same reasons.

This kind of coincidence (ie the chance occurrences) is happening so often these days that I often wonder if there is a mind connection between the two of us (although as a man of science and engineering, I find such things hard to believe). Just today at the instant I stepped out my door to go shopping, I saw him riding out the entrance gate with his dad and about 30% of the time in recent months I find that he has matched my shirt color from the day before or even the same day. Sometimes I even think he is watching me, but there are many of these times when he could not possibly see me to make this kind of behavior copying. Only a mind connection or some kind of supernatural chance could explain it.



Do you realize how very NT that sounds? Aspies do not like crowds, noises and places where there is more than one person talking at once. Even I do not like such places and I have never been to a coffee shop in my life. For someone who has such difficulty in dealing with one person at a time, such an outing to a place filled with the distractions of countless conversations would be pure torture for him and I would never in a million years want to subject him to such brutality.

A much better place would be someplace quiet away from the distractions of other people. A month ago he provided such an opportunity that was ideal, but this opportunity failed due to my own Aspie reactions. One night I was out on my nighttime walk (the only exercise I get and I like the quiet of a walk in the night air to help clear my mind of the jumble of thoughts). Suddenly I saw this imposing figure about 50 feet ahead of me fly across the driveway at warp speed then across the next driveway before he disappeared into the woods on the other side. It was my friend going somewhere. He does not seem to like going out in the daytime when he is likely to encounter other people and even goes to do his laundry in the dead of night when he will encounter nobody. Immediately my Aspie fears kicked in and I pictured him as an NT headed out to socialize at some apartment on the other side. I did not want to have to face the disappointment of finding out that this was true and that he was indeed an NT with many friends that I did not know about. So I turned back, made several false starts to resume my path and finally retreated. Eventually my own curiosity got the better of me though and I began to wonder where on earth he could have gone on the other side since I knew of no pathways in the area where he was heading. So I resumed my walk again just to take a look out of curiosity. When I reached the point where he disappeared, I found him sitting alone in a two person swing in a picnic area that I did not know existed and swinging high just like a child. (Swinging seems to be his biggest public form of stimming, although I have also seen him doing some really big scale rocking and foot shoving too). Due to my own Aspie cognition delays, I was already 20 feet past him before I finally understood what I had seen and by then it was too difficult to turn back to try to talk to him. I regret this so much and fear that he may have felt snubbed by my failure to stop to talk to him, but as Aspies we all make endless blunders like this all the time. I don't know if he went to that swing in an effort to encounter me on neutral ground or if he only went there for the stimming benefit of the swing. If this truly was an effort to meet me, then this was a superb move on his part that I really do wish he would try more often. But he may have become discouraged by the fact that I kept on walking and simply gave up as a result. It would be an ideal way for us to meet quietly on neutral ground and away from all the crowds. Unfortunately the weather is now turning too cold for this to be a viable option even though I still walk past that swing at least once almost every night. Now that I know what to do, I think I would stop to try to talk to him if I ever saw him there again. But hindsight is always perfect, isn't it?

Sounds like the stress of living with parents is getting to him. It can be really difficult. It's like being two different people, one kind shows up when living with parents, the other while living alone.

can't you write all you just said in a note? express how you felt, tell him you regretted not going up to him but you feared he was only there to swing and didn't want to force your presence on him....i wouldn't do it myself, i would be too scared of rejection to write a second note...but if you are braver than i am, i think you should.
this whole story is playing in my head like the beginning of an aspie version of romeo and juliet
what would the scenarist decide next? what should the girl do if the guy does nothing?
the note seems easy enough to do if you have the balls ( again) , coffee with the parents would exclude him and might ruin any chance of friendship,making you pass to the NT side of the force in his eyes....
what would fate do?
fate might spy on him and follow him next time he goes to the swing at night, and make you two meet unexpectedly.
is it safe to be there first and by yourself?
won't he be too surprised to handle it?
this is killing me i have no good idea......

There are several good points here. Originally when I thought this potential friend moved away last June, I DID write a long letter saying all (7 pages, fine print) because I did not want him to have to go through life without knowing that he had a true friend in me. With my Aspie perfectionism and the fear that I had become too close to see the forest for the trees, I showed this letter to the psychologist who had diagnosed me to get her view on it all, before I would even consider mailing it to his old address. She told me that "it was way over the top and that the whole thing might backfire on me". Still the idea of a written note made the most sense to me so I created the very simple note of friendship that I gave to him (about a half page) and think it was an all around good statement of reality. Right now considering his mood change last week, my hands are tied and there is nothing more that I can do until I get some sense of how he might react to me in the future. So I am back to the drawing board again until I know what I might expect. I certainly don't want to make matters any worse by being too pushy.



Following him is not an option considering how avoidant he seems to be since I do not wish to antagonize him. I do not care if he is watching me (and he may very well be doing so), but I do not want him to feel that I am watching him because that might possibly make him feel very uncomfortable. However you do raise one excellent point that I myself have considered in recent days. I could just go to that swing (the picnic table next to it might be more suitable for me) and wait for a while to see if he just happens to show up. If he is watching me, then this just might be what he wants to see. We had a crime wave going on here a couple weeks back (overall it is a very safe neighborhood though) so it would not be too good to do this too often and look suspicious and out of place as a result, but eventually it might become an option. Right now I've gotta get Thanksgiving out of the way first.

are you actually a retired male, as it says in your profile? can you see why some would find that to be a little weird? and maybe his parents would encourage him not to communicate with an older man giving him a note? unless you were very successful and retired young, or hit the powerball. i guess its possible you were just clicking random stuff and thats not really who you are, as your avatar is a picture of a girl.

oddly though, this seems like a kind of metaphor for something i've been experiencing lately.

I am indeed a retired engineer who worked in the space program overseas for 60-80 hours a week for nearly two decades with all expenses paid under the most horrific conditions imaginable. I wouldn't wish that life upon anybody. This allowed me to retire at age 43 although that was not exactly what I had planned. When I returned to the US 17 years ago I planned to look for another job as a matter of course, although I did not really need to do so. One of my coworkers had told me that I should just go ahead and retire and when my Aspie senses reeled at all the BS of the job market and expectations of applicants, I ended up taking her advice and did indeed retire, although I did not really call it that for another 5-10 years. I was doing very well for myself until King George ascended to the throne and since then a large part of my savings has been destroyed just as has happened with so many other people. I get by OK, but not exactly in luxury. But show me the purported Aspie who is concerned with luxury and I will show you confusion or the deceit of an NT. Aspies are typically too sincere and genuine to be concerned with such things as luxury or with the kinds of concerns that you expressed.

I just turned 60 a few months ago, have no more friends than my tall friend has and I should point out that he was the one who befriended me rather than the other way around. I can easily understand any concerns regarding my age though, but many Aspies are age blind as was also the case with me for decades when all of my friends were old enough to be my dad or granddad. Personally I could not understand what this guy saw in me unless it was the similarity to himself. Somehow I ended up drawn into it all though.

The avatar is not a picture of a girl. It was extracted from a very colorful picture I have always liked called "Princes" that shows two androgynous looking young princes wearing colorful clothes and standing on the side of a rugged mountain slope with that brilliant blue sky in the background loaded with stars. I have always loved that picture, which I found on usenet years ago and chose that particular prince as my avatar (the other looks more jock-like) because the lonely longing in his eyes expresses my own self-image from those days so well.

This guy may be mirroring my actions and behavior!! ! At least I think so. I knew what mirroring was because years ago I used to intentionally do that myself as a way of showing approval of people whom I liked. However I did not know that it was called mirroring and I had no idea that it was an AS trait. Last night I was looking at another post here (link below) asking which traits each individual has when I found mirroring listed. Since I didn't know what that meant (it seems that half the other replies didn't know either) I did a search for it here and found out it was something I already knew about... kind of like a game of "Simon Says".

> http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt140723.html

Well, last Friday I was in high spirits when I walked to the mailroom in plain view of a window where my friend spends a lot of time. I was wearing a bright blue shirt and looking all around including up in the air since I was feeling happy and in high spirits that day. Today when he arrived, he was wearing a bright blue shirt that he does not often wear, looked up towards my apartment for a fraction of a second and then started looking all around him with his head held high including up in the air. Early last week, I was upset about something and I was was more avoidant than usual for a day or two, It is possible that his avoidance of me late last week was simply because he was mirroring my own behavior from a couple of days earlier. This might also explain why his shirt colors have matched my own so often over the past couple of months. He did have a chance to see me late this afternoon when I went to the store so it will be interesting to see if he is wearing a black shirt tomorrow like I am wearing today. Of course, he often seems to like wearing black anyway... but so do I. Tomorrow I will be wearing another blue shirt to mirror his behavior from today. And oh yes, he often seems to have a scruffy unshaven look mimicking his dad who has a beard. But the day after he sees me up close he is always clean shaven like me.

I think this is very intriguing and it opens up all kinds of doors to communicate with him without having to speak one word or even having to get close to him at all. I am going to try to test this theory over the next few weeks by making various small gestures at times when my friend might be able to see me and see if he copies them the next day. Of course this also makes it impossible to ever know if his behavior towards me is genuine or only a reflection of my own behavior... or if he is even NT (highly doubtful) and trying to manipulate me in some manner as I have sometimes believed (we Aspies get way too much of that). Overall it may only complicate any real communications efforts.

Don't let anybody ever say that WP is not an invaluable resource for learning so many new things that we did not already know about our own autism and that of others. This is a good case in point.