To come Out or not to come Out as AS?

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So, the short version of my story is this...

- I developed Depressive symptoms when I was 12, and have struggled with suicide attempts, catatonia and Depression ever since.
- I've had loads of therapy, none of which seemed to solve the problem. In fact, no one was ever really sure what the actual problem was! I've had all sorts of conflicting diagnoses over the years .
- One thing is for definate: my emotional age is 9 years behind my physical age, and my intellectual age is 9 years ahead. So when I was 16, I was emotionally 7, but intellectually 25.
- Things got much better for me when I made real friends for the first time with a roleplaying group of men approx 10 years older than me. I really fit in, and for the first time, people actually seemed to like me!
- I have made social mistakes over the intervening 20 years. Sometimes they had to be pointed out to me, but when I realised what I'd done, I always apologised and moved on.
- One of my friends (P) has been holding a grudge about one of these mistakes for the past 15 years, whilst acting like he was still my friend. But in his own words, he was only tolerating me as part of the group and would have been happy if I had been thrown out. All this time, he was talking, smiling and laughing with me as if I was one of his best friends. I feel extremely betrayed by his behaviour, especially since I have apologised several times about the incident in question. Not to mention it was 15 years ago!
- I was finally diagnosed as AS a week or so ago.
- P has been acting extremely oddly over the past few months. He has a mental health problem himself, and I strongly suspect he's had some sort of episode. Somehow, this has brought up a lot of aggression towards me, and he's been excluding me from emails, refusing to talk to me and subtly probing people in the group to see if they still want me as a member. I have genuinely done nothing to bring this on. One extremely disturbing incident involved him emailing my BF with a diatribe against me, obviously expecting my BF to support his views. He is now excluding my BF because he is dating me.
- I can explain the entire situation and have tried several times, but he refuses to listen. He also has begun overthinking everything I do and attributing all my actions to selfishness, manipulation and virtually every negative emotion you can think of. This is affecting me badly.
- So far as I interpret it, everything he is seeing is AS symptoms, but put in the worst possible light. For example, if I say I want to play a certain game, P calls me selfish and manipulative, whereas I believe I was simply answering a question in a factual manner.
- Things have become a little worse, as he now has recruited another member of our group to support him against me, and as someone who was bullied quite severely, I'm starting to feel the peer pressure.

Question: I am seeing my friends tomorrow, and I am pretty sure that none of them really understand what AS actually is. I've explained that I have it, but not what that means. I am extremely tempted to create an information sheet and give it out to them tomorrow, in the hope that it will get back to P and he'll quit his campaign. However, I also don't want to use AS as a generic excuse, which is something they might interpret the info sheet as. I'm not asking for a free pass, simply trying to prevent a scism. Remember, these are repressed men, and they are extremely uncomfortable when presented with emotions or mental health issues. However, the information could present a new interpretation for my mistakes in the past (ie, I wasn't flirting with someone's husband, since I don't actually know how to flirt!), which I am hoping would form a better understanding. But, it could also be interpreted as too much information and make them retreat. As friends of 20+ years, they surely need to know this stuff, and relate to me accordingly, don't they?

I admit, I am really fed up of my actions constantly being misunderstood and negatively interpreted - so much so, that I barely make a ripple in our little pond nowadays, saying nothing and doing nothing in case it causes an issue. I wish them to understand what is going on - but I don't know if it would be interpreted as an overshare. Help?

yes tell tham you have AS it will realy help you get along in life

Well, I couldn't do much worse!

Trust me no matter how good you are at acting NT they know or at least suspect something is not quite right with you. Its better that you just come out and telling them before they make somerthing up like saying you are crazy or gay some other thing you are not so they can make fun of you behind your back. Its better that you tell them so you can tell them what Aspergers Sndrome really is before they get bad information from some idiot or bad info off the internet.

I am in my mid-50s, was diagnosed with AS only during the last year or so, and I have no intention of ever "coming out" about it.

I have to admit, it is tempting, but you know how men can be about Too Much Information.

I'll give it a tentative shot and see how they react. What's the worst that could happen, right?

Its not worth it ppl dont care.

I have to agree with Panic.

Reactions varied from "oh puhleeeeeeze" (my cousin) to complete indifference (my father). I wish I had never said anything to anyone.

I wimped out anyway

Get a diagnosis before telling them.

I wouldn't say come out as AS, but tell them you are autistic/high functioning autistic. People unfortunately view aspergers as a non condition now due to bad press from the media and various dumbfuck psychologists who call it a "myth"

Everybody I meet knows I'm autistic. But only my close family and friends know that I have aspergers really.