Are your friends losers/social outcasts?

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LOL...I just found out you're an RN. My wife is an LPN.

Would you say that nursing is the "practical" equivalent to an MD at times, especially once a nurse becomes a "nurse practitioner"?

Do you work with autistic people in your capacity as an RN?

I only have two friends offline. One is a social butterfly and the other, more like an acquaintance, also has Asperger's and isn't much for company. Most of my online companions and friends live solitary lifestyles or only have a few friends that they see occasionally, though.

I don't consider it a negative. They're smart, ethical, and understand what it's like to be outside of the norm. That's all I see.

Excellent post. This is a much better description of the friends I've had throughout my life than "losers and outcasts."

I would not consider calling my friends losers and outcasts (if I had any) I would consider myself lucky to have friends.

My few close friends are all unusual. I wouldn't call them losers at all, I see them as winners. How else could it be, when I like them so much that I let them be close to me? Possibly some of them are outcasts to some extent, but not in a bad way. They're mostly autistic, I don't quite know what's odd about the rest of them, but they're not dyed-in-the-wool mainstream pro-establishment, that's for sure.

It's been that way since I was a teenager. After a few years of hanging onto normal society by a thread, I found that the kids I could relate to best at school (in the late 1960s) were all into blues and progressive music rather than the mainstream teenybopper stuff. They had strong noncompetitive hippie leanings and had a disdain for suits and for "straights" as they called the mainstream. Typically we weren't total dropouts, we kept up our academic studies and got married, but we were proud of being different, and called ourselves freaks. I lost all motivation to socialise with any other type of people. I gather it's called "youth culture." I guess we're all supposed to all grow out of it, get jobs in banks or something. Some did, others compromised to varying degrees.

Later in life I found a district of nonconformists, moved in and was in hog heaven for a couple of years. Interesting that the OP mentioned his wife thought his friends were losers. I often found that my sexual partners disliked my preference for nonconformism. The biggest problem I had was to reconcile it with relationships. The ethos of the district was rather against closed relationships, but that was the one thing about mainstream society that I wanted to keep, and it became even more important when I started to want to have children. So there was often this tension between a "straight" relationship and the bohemian lifestyle I did so well in but was only really suitable for a single man. So the nonconformist district and I had to part company and I got married and procreated. I missed the bohemians terribly.

There's a lot more to the story (which I've only related up to 1986), but I'm still piecing it together myself.

I don't have any 'normal' friends I don't think.....nor really acquaintances. Not sure about the losers/outcasts bit, I mean doesn't seem like they're all social outcasts per say though maybe if you stuck one of them in a room with a bunch of squares they'd feel like an outcast...I know I would. And hell according to some people if you smoke marijuana you are a loser which would make me and everyone I know losers...according to some people its if you sit in your room all day playing video games, to some if you don't have a job you're loser so as you can see it is a lose term.

Yup. I reckon "Loser" is just a way people have of saying they don't like a person. I think people have trouble being objective, they often try to describe the outside world when they should be describing the relationship between themselves and the outside world.

One of my objectives is to have friends of all stripes--outcasts, incasts, rightcasts, leftcasts.....who cares?

I have some 'normal' friends too, but I do seem to be a bit of an oddball magnet. I wouldn't call them 'losers'. I am not autistic, but I've always been considered a little odd myself so maybe that's why. For some reason, I have found that I connect more genuinely with slightly unusual people, ha.

I agree that it's good to give every individual a fair chance as long as they're not obviously harmful. On the other hand, the likely advantage of giving preference to outcasts is that they often share our resistance to the conformist expectations of the mainstream, neurotypical world. If you want an agreeable friendship, you're probably better off selecting people with preferences and values that agree with your own.

My experience is that oddballs tend to be less judgemental, perhaps because they themselves have been judged as weird by "normal" people. That can be a great boon for an Aspie. Also, if you can find a whole group of oddballs like I did, it becomes difficult for the Aspie to stand out as being particularly odd, and difficult for the group to achieve the consensus required for effective victimisation. When I lived in a district of relatively homogenous people, I was judged for not working in my garden on Sundays, for not keeping to the unspoken, arbitrary standards of the neighbourhood - standards which, even if I'd them had explained clearly to me, were things that would have been painful for me to conform to, and would have prevented me from being myself.

I am in my mid-40s, very mild Asperger's or PDD-NOS.(31 on the AQ test out of 48, for instance, right on the cusp in a few areas, empathsize well but overly so a lot 7 don't get nonverbal cues, hints as to what makes one problem worse for some than others, etc., right away at least.)

I would say my friends are a mixture, but the ones I have stayed closest to have been very outgoing socially. Perhaps becasue I never drank, swore, smoked, did drugs, or any of that stuff, I may have been a bit Pharisaic about it, but I attracted people through always being nice to others who were the same and jsut never could stand hanging around ones who would be lie the "losers" you decribe.

That's what caused one of my best friends since childhood to drift away from me in our 20s, but I didn't recognize that's what was happening at the time. He has since improved quite a bit, from what his parents say, I think he learned his lesson the hard way, as they say.(He never drank but his attitude became...well, I won't get into it.)

Another high school friend was a bit disturbed, perhaps from emotional abuse as a child before we met, and our group of friends helped encourage him a lot, but we have no real contact now, though i guess he's doing well, too.

The others from grade school/high school: two married with kids live out of state, are very happy and well-adjusted, we keep in touch via computer now, one the same but in state, and one got PTSD in the First Gulf War and has had problems, he has said my writing really lifts him up, I don't know how well he's getting along socially.

My best friend from college, we talk once a week and he's very adept socially, nice, considerate, etc. - but he introduced himself to me that first week, it's through him I met the others I sometimes keep in touch with, like in grade school/high school most of my closest friends came becasue of one very social, outgoing person who mde a difference.

And, since I became an adult and got involved in church, it's been the same way. 2-3 very outgoing people have been the ones to really help me to find the friends I have.

Which is probably why I stuck with that first friend from childhood longer than I should have when he changed in his late teens/20s. I've relied on 1-2 people at each stage of life to help me figure out the right connections. he left me, and it hurt, but the others have stayed. One of the main ones responsible for helping me as an adult now has cancer, but I am confident enough that I have called a few others when he's been too sick to host a game to watch a football game at my house and ordered pizza, I've gotten the group together othr times, too. I would do these thigns with my grade school/high school friends with parents' help, of coruse, but I've really learned to be more confident and social because of 4-5 people over the coruse of my life.

So, sorry this has run on so long, but I think a lot of times, it's who winds up taking the time to be a friend. It is something i often talk to the kids about at our church, too - encouraging the social ones to make sure they have consieration for and include those who might not be as adept socially.

YOU care - you just said it's one of your objectives to have some of each

Stupid nitpicking aside... are my Friends Losers/Social Outcasts?
I've been a bit low on real-life friends for the last few years because, like Adamantium, "I put all my emotional energy and time into my relationship with my wife" and also the kids and work, plus I've moved countries way too much to keep most of the old friendships going.

Generally, I do seek out people who are "not part of the herd" - which can take many forms. Some may be considered losers, others extremely successful people. What I look for is a one-to-one relationship between human individuals - not between members of whatever social group. Of course most people are members of some social group, or even of many, but for me to be friends with someone they have to "leave that at the door" so to speak, and relate to me as just an individual to an individual. It seems that many people - I call them "herd people" in my mind - cannot actually do that (except perhaps with those who are members of their own herd - I wouldn't know). Luckily for me there is also a good number who can, and as I grow older I find I can spot them more easily.

In some ways I stay away from "losers". At school I often felt that I was the second most socially inept in the class, i.e. second last in the pecking order, and made a point to stay away from whoever was at the very bottom, even though I usually liked them, to avoid getting "lumped" with them and having to take the s**t they were getting from the herd. It mostly worked but I still feel mildly guilty about it occasionally. Nowadays, a person's position in some pecking order is no longer a factor in my decision to spend time with them or not, but I still stay away from people who have problems that make it too draining for me to be with them.

Way back when, in middle and high school, I remember feeling that I was in my own “social grouping”. I never found a “group” that both I wanted to belong to and that was interested in taking me in. So, I basically was a wanderer. An island. I am glad those years are over.

Sounds somewhat familiar. I've been lucky though, in that I've often been in environments where the "social groupings" were somewhat loose, so that I was able to hang out with various groups as a sort of "non-member guest" and find some people there with whom I was able to develop good one-on-one relationships.

Rocket123, you started this thread last year and have had some very good discussion both then and here in the last month or so. I would be curious to know if your wife's opinion of your friends has changed any?

Also, in telling your story in the Original Post, you said "Afterwards, my wife commented, ... Sorry, Rocket, but your best friend?s is a loser."

Does your wife really call you Rocket? Or that was edited for our benefit?

I have had some good friends who were very normal (NT) and had successful lives. Trouble is, after job change and moving to other places, I didn't keep up with them.

I have one normal (NT) friend at work now, who I probably won't keep up with after I retire.

I have some other friends who had successful professional lives that I keep up with sparingly.

Mostly I have shrunk into a social sphere of just my family. Might be a result of aging and disability. Might be it's too hard to fight my own autistic tendencies at this point in life.