Note: I am not here looking for advice or help. I just feel like sharing this. It is unlikely anybody will change my mind about trying to make friends, but you are free to have a go at it. You are free to express any thoughts you want within the bounds of the forum rules.
I've determined that it is absolutely impossible for me to make friends and keep them; my brain is simply not wired for serious social interaction. I've only had one close friend in my entire life, and even with him it was a huge chore; it was always on me to plan all our hang-outs, and he'd cancel at the last minute half the time. He genuinely liked me though, or if not he did a phenomenal job of pretending to. I was friends with him from November 2018 to November 2019.
To describe my difficulties I use a metaphor with pushing a bowling ball. When other people make friends with each other, they both push the ball along a flat plane. They push it a little, give it some momentum, and then let go, and the ball keeps rolling. Friction slows it down a little bit, but they just give it an extra push every now and then to keep it rolling.
But when I try to make friends, it is like I'm pushing a ball up a slope against gravity. It is only me pushing the ball, and as soon as I stop pushing, the ball quickly stops and rolls back down, and I have to start all over.
I'm far too shy to make friends most of the time, and chicken out of talking to people. When I do gather the courage to talk to people, well, it's like the bowling ball analogy: it is always on me to push things further, and as soon as I stop or let off, we are finished and the other person never puts in any effort.
I've tried making friends with a guy once in college, let's call him John (I don't think it would hurt to use his real first name, but idk). I took the Putnam exam with him once (a math competition), so we knew each other's names. I said hi to him on twitter DMs, and he said "Hey what's up?". I instantly thought "oh snap, what do I say?". I eventually went with, "not much, how about you?", and he said "oh just working on the current math challenge so I can end my losing streak", and we talked a bit more about the math challenge. I tried sending him a few more chats later on, and each time, there was a short back-and-forth that stopped.
A year later, I decided I wanted to try again with him. I made myself say hi to him a few times when I caught him somewhere, but only got an awkward "hi" back. Then I told myself I would twitter DM him again, this time I will get to a point where I ask to hang out. I was very scared about doing this, and would make myself deadlines for when to send the message. I would often have a message typed on the screen and counted down until sending it. But each time, I chickened out and kept postponing the date, and eventually decided to stop deluding myself into thinking I was going to become close friends with him. So I tried seeing if I could befriend other people.
I remembered a piece of advice my brother gave me on making friends, that you talk to your classmates in class. But whenever I'm not too scared, I can rarely think of anything to say, and when I do think of things to say, the conversation never goes further than where I bring it. And when other people are talking, I rarely have anything to contribute, or if I do, it is only a few sentences, and I am right back out of the conversation.
Later on, after I had my one real friend, I did get the courage to ask a few other people to do board games and strategy games. They said yes and it was fun, and we occasionally discussed math topics, but our friendships never grew beyond what I invited them to do.
I think other people view me as merely an entity that exists. They don't think much of me. In some ways, this is good. Many people with autism get bullied as kids and teenagers, but I wasn't. Nor have I ever routinely gotten into fights with people. People bully those they perceive as losers. People fight with those who they perceive as bad. But people don't perceive me as a loser or a bad person; they simply don't perceive of me at all. They leave me alone, for the same reason they leave alone a random piece of furniture in a room nobody ever needs.
So, I gave up on making friends in November 2019. This does not mean that I gave up on social interaction; when the pandemic is over, I plan on attending events and asking people to play games again. But I'm not going to try making friends in the sense that I really get to know someone who really gets to know me in turn. That is impossible, at least for now. And I'm fairly sure I can live with this.
But what does sadden me is that if what I'm saying is true, it will mean I will probably be single for life, which I don't want. I've never been in a romantic relationship, and I think the only remotely realistic shot I have is online dating. But I'm skeptical if there is anybody out there for me.
11 Apr 2021, 2:13 am
