Help me (NT) understand my friend (AS)

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I kind of think the same thing but think it's best if the OP moves on at this point considering how difficult it is for her to grasp how direct she has to be; a relationship with him would be filled with communication problems.

Then we are in agreement. I wanted to leave that last tidbit though, just in case. But you are right; time to move on.

My question about this point was very direct. And his answer was that he is not interested in me as a person. Sorry, I do not see a common ground for a relationship here.... whether he is attracted or not.

If you told him explicitly that you like him as more than a friend and he did not reciprocate then there's not much to do, you tried. But this is the type of "you must be direct" that we are referring to: not "I like you", but "I like you as more than a friend, in a romantic way".

When you tell an aspie "I like you" some of us will read it the same way someone says "I like cats" - you like cats, but it doesn't mean you want a relationship with them.

At the moment I'm mainly interested if I can still have a friendship wih him or not. And I don't see that if he is not interested in me as a person. Please explain: How can you consider it possible to have a relationship with somebody who is not even interested in you ???????

It depends on what forms of 'interested' he implied. He may have meant he is not interested in you romantically. Chances are if someone likes talking with you, they are open to being your friend.

@deuterium

Yes. I fully agree with you. His answer only makes sense when he meant that.

because as you said

It doesn't make any sense to say that you like to talk to a person, but that you are not interested in that person (as a friend).

Wouldn't you agree Troy_Guther and Nick007 ??? The problem isn't that he still didn't get it, the problem is that he already got the message but is not interested romantically.

At the end of the day, all we can do on this forum is speculate at the interpretations happening. If there is any grounds for multiple interpretations of what he said, ask him to clarify. And if it's not clear enough, ask him more questions. Get him to be so specific that you don't have to wonder what he really meant, because what he says is going to be more accurate to his feelings than what any of us can guess at.

i would take what he said at face value about liking the subjects you talk about & not needing to talk more often. He simply means that he likes your friendship the way it is now & doesn't desire to change anything. I think now you have to ask yourself if you can accept your friendship exactly as it is now & end it if you cant.

Yes, you are right. I will do that.



I need to know whether I am an exchangeable random interlocutor before I can decide how to proceed.

I don't know if it's acceptable in your culture or not, but my people, if they are not able to be direct, they ask someone else to be direct for them.
Not everyone can change the basis of their character. I don't know, maybe it's too late for that?

Honestly, I think you're making things too complicated with all these various labels. Instead of worrying about whether he's a "friend" or "potential romantic interest" or whatever, instead focus on what your relationship brings to you right now. You enjoy talking with this guy, correct? You get something of value out of talking to him, right? And, at the very least, he seems to put up with you. He likely even enjoys it. That sounds like a good thing to me, and I see no reason to muck it up because you want a definitive label for him. Although, it would be my guess that he considers you a friend, which leads me to my second point.

Now, I'm largely only speaking from my own experience here, but I've found that when guys are friends, their friendship is not contingent on knowing that much about one another. For example, I have one guy I've been good friends with for nearly 4 years, and I still don't know how many siblings he has. And that's a pretty common thing among guys. Frankly, the little details like that just aren't relevant to our friendship; all I know is that we enjoy each others company. I have another friend who I spend about 15-20 hours a week playing League of Legends with, and yet I know pretty much nothing about him, other than his first name and that he lives in Colorado. We enjoy spending our time in a way that happens to involve this person, that's pretty much the definition of friendship when it comes to guys.

However, I do have some female friends too, and our friendships are different because I recognize that girls have different needs and expectations when it comes to friendships. As is the case with you, most girls need a certain level of mutual self-disclosure and emotional bonding in order to be friends with someone; common interests usually aren't, on their own, enough. But I, and most NT's, recognize that relationships between two guys or two girls are very different than ones between a guy and a girl, even if it's not a romantic relationship. I would highly suspect that this is not the case for the aspie we've spent the last 3-4 pages talking about. To him, what you've been doing is friendship, and I imagine that he see's no reason to change anything at all. After all, he's an aspie; he's not really capable of understanding your needs and desires. At least, not without more help and experience doing so.

And while I've already written quite a bit, I'd like to address your most recent point about being a random interlocutor. To me, this translates to asking, "Am I special to this person?". And, to be perfectly honest, the answer is probably no. But that's okay. So your friendship is contingent on talking about mutual interests; so what? I've had plenty of friendships that were built around a mutual interest. That doesn't make those friendships any less real. Hell, that's how all friendships start: through the sharing of mutual circumstances that leads to spending time with that person. I've been best friends with same guy for nearly four years, but if we hadn't hung out because of a mutual interest in the beginning, we would have never become friends. Sure, we're much closer friends now, but that took years, 3 of which we've been roommates. But we didn't plan that out, it just ended up happening over the years of constant contact with one another. But let's bring it back to you. You like this guy. Whether it's in a romantic way or a purely platonic one is for you to figure out. The point is that you enjoy spending time around him; you enjoy doing things together, even if it's just talking. So continue to do those things. Forget the labels. Don't worry about the future. Just enjoy the moment.

@Troy_Guther

Thank you very much for sharing your thoughts about friendship with me. I guess you are right and what you have written helps me to appreciate what I have with this guy without the need for labeling it

He's not interested in studying you or discussing you at length maybe, but from your previous posts which mention him asking about your life he's clearly interested in you as a person and clearly enjoys your company.
If you want to know is an aspie is interested in you romatically ask him specifically that.
Otherwise all you're going to get, in general, is a bunch of replies to literal interpretations of your questions which you may have ment to imply things he did not infer.

Seriously, others have said it, I'll reiterate it: you must be extremely direct, or you will never get an actual answer to the question.
If you can't be then I doubt you'll have much success in a relationship with an aspie since we don't get hints, or clues, or cues to ANYTHING for the most part.
You have to say what you actually mean for us to understand it.
We may be intellignt, but we do not infer well or at all in some cases.

Stop beating around the bush and just ask directly ffs.
You're just prolonging your confusion by doing otherwise.

Seriously.
Be Direct.

You've been told this time & again by the people here.
Why won't you just do it?

It's the only way.