People with Asperger's who have multiple friends

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I have started going to more gatherings and meetings with other Austic people to learn about the condition. I have started to notice lately (after several meetings with various different Asperger's people) a cohort of those with a Asperger's diagnosis who seem to have no problem in making friends and forming social bonds.... I find this ironic and cannot fathom how they are getting by so easily because socialising is the main thing that I struggle with.. Almost constantly. Any friendships that I do form take extended time periods i.e a year to form in anycase. Some of these people who manage to make all of these "friends" appear to be highly impaired by the disability i.e it is obvious that they have a disability because they talk loud, talk incessantly about one topic, don't give people a chance to talk, miss social queue etc e.g someones discomfort at a proposal so I keep wondering how they are pulling it off. Is it possible that this is all a front and they have no friends at all? Or it is possible that the straight out obviousness of their condition makes people aware and more sympathetic to them whereas with someone like me it's less obvious and so they're not going to be as sympathetic? I just cannot fathom how someone who supposedly has Autism can go to all these parties and form all these relationships without getting stressed with all the noise etc. I would love to know what their "trick" is.

what's friends? it's a very unspecified thing anyway,
back in the days i had many friends and aquintances, you notice that they stop giving you a thought the moment someone else gets in the picture, i accepted being not interesting enough, or of not enough interest.
when your status drops (div) you find those in the same hordes as the rest, trying to crush you, for some important reason i still don't get.

I think it's actually BECAUSE they are more disabled that they make friends, because one their friends notice they are disabled easier and thus judge their behavior in that context, and then they have less social anxiety which makes it easier to make friends.

Assurance of trust, understanding and respect...when you're not comfortable with loud noises... Does anyone think less of you when you find a quite place to rest and recover...?when you have aversion to touch do they touch you without you're permission?.. If you don't wanna be around people.. Do they force you to join their group?...if you talk for long periods of time about your interest don't they give the effort to pretend to be interested in you're topic ... .I think this is the main reasons they like having this kinds of friends near... or afar...which ever they are comfortable with...

I have a great friendship. We talk all the time and hang out together. Are drinking buddies. Attended festivals and parties. Do a lot of traveling. All that good stuff.

Thing is he's someone who lives in another country and we hang out together in a video game as cartoon versions of ourselves.

That's what I was wondering, maybe they follow a loose definition.. For me, a friend is someone that I have a strong connection with and someone whom I know would contact me if I stopped bothering; meaning that I am valued as a "friend".

He (one of the members at the group) seemed to be insinuating that the people in the dorms here at my university where his friends.. He would say "my friend" etc and I kept thinking "but if you left tomorrow would they contact you?"

You know what I mean.. Someone you chat with isn't really a friend. It takes time to form that relationship. It's not realistic to call someone a "friend" after two months. Definitely a strong relationship can form but it has no depth, it's fake.

I've always thought this but was wary of raising it..I've noticed it a few times..

I think in general people give more leeway and don't expect as much from people who are clearly disabled.. Whereas with me, I get no leeway because my Autism isn't obvious at all which is why I don't enjoy being a borderline case.

That's not a true friendship.

That was my point. He is a good friend though all the same. But I think for someone with autism, someone you know and like can qualify as a friend. I had an argument about this on another forum when I said I regarded another member as a friend. As in there's a friend or foe list and he's on my friend list.

I have several people that are aquointances but very few actual friends who whould spend any kind of real time with me. I do admit however to a degree that I can only handle so many friends as beyond those few I get overwhelmed with social demands & I'm not that social of a person.

I had friends growing up - or at least people I considered friends. One of them was my cousin, who is a year younger than me. I had maybe 2-3 good friends up through high school, but not typically more than one or two at a time. I was never part of any particular social group in high school as I'm not very skilled at group interactions. My cousin and I are still friends but we're separated by many miles so we only get together once a year at best. Another friend from college is hundreds of miles away, although we do text somewhat regularly and I've been down to visit him now and then.

Outside of him, I don't really have any friends that I can spend time with now. I have "work friends," and a few other people I bump into now and then. I'm not really too sad about that, as I keep busy with my special interest during my free time. I am friends / friendly with some of the models I photograph, but it's not the sort of thing where we hang out regularly. I have far more friends on social media (especially Twitter) than I do in RL.

Of course, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that my wife is my best friend.

One of the more out-wardly affected by autism women I know has a long term boyfriend with whom she is wildly into.

Part of me is like "hey. That's not fair." But the bigger part of me is happy for her. She really lights up when she talks about him or spends time with him. It's sweet.

You don't need to be wildly popular. All you need is one person who gets you. Or a handful of friends who get you.

I do qualify as an aspergian who has multiple friendships. But it took years to develop them, and I'm not as close to the people in this circle as they are to other people in the same circle. Does that make sense? I'm afraid that a good number will fade away because I got most of them through this organization that no longer exists. We'll see.

You can still be friendly if you can't pick up social cues. Some people are open minded enough to still be friends even if you have an obvious disability. Sometimes it gets awkward but people have short memories.

Perhaps the biggest impediment to making friends is the black/white thinking some Aspies have--this can easily set up roadblocks to friendship. Aspies get stuck and can't find a way around these roadblocks.

Exactly.

And this is true even in the NT world (though they don't want you to even suspect it).
My grandma, who was a really sociable NT, used to tell me that if you had only two or three real friends in life,
you were doing really good,
because the others were just phonies pretending to be your friend.

One true friend
is worth a million false ones.

I'm really confused...do I focus on the definition of friendship part of this topic or the happiness of those aspies socializing...?

Well why not?