Anyone else had this type of friendship with an NT?

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wblastyn
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04 Dec 2016, 5:23 pm

Obviously, as someone with AS I struggle to make and keep friends. But there's been a couple of times where I appeared to have managed to forge a good friendship over a single interest, only for them to fizzle out once that interest was gone. The first one was when I became friends with a guy I work with over the TV show Lost. We used to discuss it obsessively during work. Then when the show was over we didn't have anything in common anymore and we stopped speaking as much, now we don't speak at all.

The second one was when I introduced someone to Star Wars. We talked about that obsessively, after I managed to convince him to watch it. We seemed to be good friends and went to see the Force Awakens together. A year later and our friendship seems to started to fizzle. We no longer discuss Star Wars and I guess haven't much else in common.

It hurts because for a while I knew what it was like to have a good friend, only for it to vanish. I feel envious when I see them getting along better with other NT's. I've been practicing mindfulness to help with these emotions.



the_phoenix
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04 Dec 2016, 6:11 pm

A good friendship has to be based on more than a single obsessive interest,
or else,
yes, the friendship will fade when one or the other of you gets bored with whatever the interest is.

...



FandomConnection
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04 Dec 2016, 7:17 pm

This happens to me a lot. I usually don't mind very much, because my interest in the person was based on the mutual interest, not really on them as a person. Often, I don't really get to know them because I'm so absorbed with talking about the mutual interest. It sounds very bad when I write it like this, and it might be, I don't know.


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DataB4
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04 Dec 2016, 7:30 pm

I've had this happen where I'll hang out with someone based on an interest but the friendship doesn't really blossom beyond that for some reason. It can be fun, or it can be frustrating, depending on how I look at it. Either way, it'd be worse if I tried to force a stronger connection.



johntober
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05 Dec 2016, 12:49 am

I have experienced this quite often. I just don't understand why people's interests fade! It's not like we could ever run out of Star Wars stuff to talk about; without being repetitive.


wblastyn wrote:
Obviously, as someone with AS I struggle to make and keep friends. But there's been a couple

of times where I appeared to have managed to forge a good friendship over a single interest, only for them to fizzle out once that interest was gone. The first one was when I became friends with a guy I work with over the TV show Lost. We used to discuss it obsessively during work. Then when the show was over we didn't have anything in common anymore and we stopped speaking as much, now we don't speak at all.

The second one was when I introduced someone to Star Wars. We talked about that obsessively, after I managed to convince him to watch it. We seemed to be good friends and went to see the Force Awakens together. A year later and our friendship seems to started to fizzle. We no longer discuss Star Wars and I guess haven't much else in common.

It hurts because for a while I knew what it was like to have a good friend, only for it to vanish. I feel envious when I see them getting along better with other NT's. I've been practicing mindfulness to help with these emotions.



johntober
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05 Dec 2016, 12:25 pm

I have experienced this several times. My question is how could someone run out of items to discuss about Star Wars; or a host of other topics. My conclusion is that they weren't interested to begin with.

Equally annoying is when someone doesn't know enough about a topic and tries to speak about it.



stevens2010
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05 Dec 2016, 12:46 pm

wblastyn wrote:
Obviously, as someone with AS I struggle to make and keep friends. But there's been a couple of times where I appeared to have managed to forge a good friendship over a single interest, only for them to fizzle out once that interest was gone. The first one was when I became friends with a guy I work with over the TV show Lost. We used to discuss it obsessively during work. Then when the show was over we didn't have anything in common anymore and we stopped speaking as much, now we don't speak at all.

The second one was when I introduced someone to Star Wars. We talked about that obsessively, after I managed to convince him to watch it. We seemed to be good friends and went to see the Force Awakens together. A year later and our friendship seems to started to fizzle. We no longer discuss Star Wars and I guess haven't much else in common.

It hurts because for a while I knew what it was like to have a good friend, only for it to vanish. I feel envious when I see them getting along better with other NT's. I've been practicing mindfulness to help with these emotions.


First my answer: Yes, all the time.

But here's a different spin on it, because most of these "friendships" were at school or college. Sometimes in a class whose subject interested me (to aspie-level proportions), I'd attract people who wanted to talk about that subject. In any social interaction, the subjects sometimes spill over into other areas that seem like a broader conversation. I, of course, might tend to mistake that for a broader, deeper connection.

Then afterward, I would discover that the other person's interest faded, but of course mine didn't, well, because I'm an aspie. Sometimes this would leave me feeling a bit used. Most of the time, though, it was because the assumptions and foundations of that "friendship" were viewed quite differently by the other person than by me. The incorrect perception on my part of course led to episodes of depression, and all that.

This is not to say that I haven't had genuine friendships with NT's. It's kind of rare though. I think at the moment I have basically two, that have lasted quite awhile, through job and life changes. We don't just talk about one thing, when we socialize. I really have to try hard to avoid getting started on a particular subject or detouring into that "aspie monologue" too much. Incidentally, both of these two friends are quite socially talented, and they have been kind enough to answer questions sometimes or to give advice to me on things I've found difficult. This isn't often what we talk about, but I value them because they take me seriously and seem to genuinely like me.

Then again, after many decades of life, two friends with whom I talk about personal stuff is not exactly professional-politician-level, is it? :mrgreen:



crystaltermination
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05 Dec 2016, 2:26 pm

Yes, I think this often occurred to me more when I was younger though, before I retreated completely. In primary school I would hang out a lot with the other boys because playing with my older brother at home caused me to absorb his interests - we did lots of running around and play-fighting, that sort of thing. As we got older though, my being a girl meant they moved away from me as I wasn't 'one of them'. Perhaps there is more to this than meets the eye. I recall, painfully, my first couple of weeks at high school before it became accepted that I was a loner and target for bullies, I'd walk about fairly confidently approaching kids in my year asking if they had seen so and so film, or read this or that book. I would be brushed off. I felt my interests were the only things I could really use to gain friends, but it didn't work out.


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pasty
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05 Dec 2016, 4:03 pm

If not for this type of friendship, I would never have had any friendships.