Drifting away

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No would never do that Kraftie . . .. the reason this guy is so special (and possibly why people tend to imagine I have romantic feelings towards him) is that he was there for me at a time when things were very very black for me. Somehow he found a way through my gloom and made me smile . . . .. . So I will always be there if he needs me. I guess I just thought we were "soul mates" of some description and now know we are not. It is all ok though

How do you not see your expectations are erroneous? You expect him to act in a way that is unnatural to him. People keep telling you to take what he says at face value, but you reject that because it seems unnatural to you since you feel you need more to validate what he is telling you. You need to trust what he is telling you and stop expecting him to do something that likely won't happen. Like Rdos said, I also usually won't pry into one's personal affairs because that is an intimate thing to do while I have no issue with those that want to share that information, but I respect the others right to privacy.

I for one won't tell you it's fine to leave this friendship simply because you think differently. You have reported that you enjoy the time you spend with him. He can't provide a NT friendship, he can only provide a ND friendship.

And blackimenace if you had read what I have said fully . .. . I acknowledge and accept that. The difficult part for me was always he did offer me more for 2yrs he text me good night and good morning every single day and told me what was happening in his life. However it is what it is. I mourn for the friendship I thought we had, but I'm not going anywhere. . . However to me it would now be classed as aquintamces. If he is happy with that in what way am I hurting him.?

I think I've told you multiple times why he did that, and what you needed to do to keep it that way. Back then, he didn't aim at a friendship "NT style", but a relationship. Once he understood he wouldn't get past the friendship state, he moved on to an "ND style" friendship, which you regard as an acquaintance. I don't think there is much more to say about it.

I guess you were right Rdos .. . It's ok I don't come here for answers or fixes just to understand more . . .. . Anyway take care

I have a soul mate, but I can't even imagine that I could be friends only with her. A soul mate for me is intimately connected to an infatuation, a romance and ultimately, a relationship.

Show him this song lol - for the lyrics translation, click on CC at the bottom of the youtube window, and click on the gear to pick English.

Face of boo . . .. goodness it takes a while to get going lol . .. . . . .and nice idea but I know he would say "but we are friends what you going on about" . . .. . . .as for the soul mates thing rdos it's always an interesting debate . . .but I believe it is possible to have more than one soul mate and they are not necessarily romantic or sexual. . . . For me meeting someone who I think understands me at a very deep level is really rare. Although I'm not AS I struggle with finding people I really connect with although I have a lot of friends there are only one or 2 people who I have that deep connection with. Aspie man is one of those . . .. . Hence my reluctance to let him go. However c'est le vie . . . .. what will be will be etc etc. . . . . And the plus side is noŵ we're not yapping all the time I am getting loads of art done.

I might have a more strict definition of a soul mate than you. For me, at a minimum, we need to understand each other without talking and texting, and definitely without conversation. That kind of excludes online contact unless you do really strange setups.

I have the same problem as the OP, and I am also NT. (I do not have to "prove" that, by the way, I just am, just like my Aspie friend is an Aspie, he just is.)

I am going to try to explain what it is like for an NT to be involved in a relationship on any level with an Aspie. You will find a lot of what I say confirms everything that the OP said. That is because this is how we are in comparison to how most Aspies are (I try not to generalize, but it is a diagnosable thing for a reason, and a diagnosis is given based on meeting certain criteria for the common traits, so you figure that out...).

I have an aspie friend, who I consider a close friend. More and more I have discovered that to him, I am merely a fixture in the environment. We have shared some moments that I considered very close and I thought we shared a certain level of intimacy in our conversations. But these were isolated and surrounded by rather cold empty interactions. But as NTs, we hold on to those "close" moments because we cared about these men, and we wanted to be close because we truly cared about them. So we try our best to be understanding of the Aspie traits, we try to overlook them and not be offended by them. We try to be there for them and we try to be that person who they can turn to, the person who understands them while the rest of the world thinks they are a jerk or weird, because we see so much more in them. But guess what? They DON'T turn to us, they DON'T need or want us!

BUT, the problem is that after a while, it becomes very hurtful, empty, and unfulfilling because in reality, the Aspie probably does not care for us the same way we care for them. The "moments" shared were more likely anomalies while the hurtful and empty moments were really the norm. Or these "moments" were purely accidental, sort of like the OP mentioned in a different post when she said that her Aspie friend mistakenly treated mere acquaintances as if they were close friends, and was seen as "weird" as a result--what if those "moments" we shared with our Aspie friend were more likely a similar situation and we only falsely interpreted them as a sign of closeness? Not saying that was her situation, but I am fairly certain it is mine.

So what happened with me is that we communicated regularly when the job dictated daily contact. But except for isolated incidences as mentioned above, the communications seemed to be unfulfilling, like I always felt like a conversation was "just getting good" or that we were making progress on becoming even closer friends, and then the next day it was like we went back to the beginning to have to start all over again. So when you are expecting to build, you find you never really got started at all. Then when there was no daily contact at work due to a job change, communications came sporadically and when they did come, via email or whatever, it was short, a few interchanges that seemed empty. And I have an entire post on Aspie friend withdrawal, so you can see how that went down. Yet, the Aspie claims to be a friend. I think the major problem could possibly be that the Aspie in that situation does not really understand the difference between an acquaintance, friend, close friend, or intimate romantic relationship. One human is the same as the next, and I am not special in any way more than the mailman. So at certain times when the Apsie in this case felt a need for a close friend, he treated me as one. When he had no need, he was polite or absent, completely ignoring that I had desires for friendship (in the real definition of it) and needed to be appreciated and, frankly, at least acknowledged.
So many unanswered questions, so much left unsaid, so sad.

As an NT, you are left feeling empty, invalidated, devalued, humiliated, and unsatisfied with the less-than meaningful interaction. You always hope for more, like the conversation was longer, or that you can be together more, or that the Aspie would take even the slightest initiative to maintain a friendship...but it is a disappointment. There is no growth and no deepening of the relationship as true friends even though the aspie claims to want to be friends. On our end, it seems like we are trying to have a friendship with an empty shell. We know there is more under the surface, but the aspie just will not or cannot let it out. So we're left with this void of emptiness. It is not okay.

Now, this IS NOT about not understanding the Aspie, it is not about not accepting him "as he is". It is about the relationship being one-sided and entirely devoid of an emotional connection. A person you know but do not have an emotional connection with is NOT a friend. That is an acquaintance, like a person you see on the same train everyday, or your boss or co-worker who you never contact or see outside of the environment in which you are forced to interact with them in--even if you have a positive working relationship, that does not equate to friends. So the Aspie expects for the NT to put aside all their own needs that the Aspie is not able to meet because they can't or won't or don't want to because it is entirely foreign to them and they don't understand why it would be so important because it is not important to them. But do you not see that this is doing nothing more than asking the NT to do something that is exactly just as foreign to them, and exactly just as painful or uncomfortable to their inner core as emotive expression is for the aspie? No matter how you slice it, it is not about being discriminatory or uncaring. In fact, this issue is a direct result of caring for the Aspie, otherwise, why on earth would anyone, NT or not, put up with that kind of treatment from someone? We care. But we also have needs. It is very painful when you care so much about someone and do want to understand them but they have no desire to let down the walls and let you in. It is irrelevant if there is a disorder that makes them be that way or not--the interaction is disappointing and unfulfilling, and that is incredibly sad when you love someone so much. There is only so long a person can deal with that before they find themselves needing to drift away out of self preservation.

I do not mean any of this to be mean or unfeeling. Like I said, this is EXACTLY the opposite. It is about caring too much. But if an Aspie ever wonders why they have so much difficulty finding a girlfriend or maintaining a relationship of any kind, including friendships (that are more than online fake buddies), then take a good look. This is why. And it saddens me greatly. I care for my aspie so much, but he will never ever ever return that expression of caring to me, and therefore I am left lonely and sad as if there was no friend at all standing there. I miss him terribly. He doesn't give a damn--whether he does or not is irrelevant if a damn is not expressed and received on this end!

Last edited by imhere on 09 Aug 2017, 11:11 pm, edited 3 times in total.

I am thankful for the friendships I have had. I have not had many and most people never fit the criteria that I would consider friends. Here is an example of a simple misunderstanding. One day I stopped by my friend's apartment to hang out. He answered the door with his bedspread wrapped around him so I thought to myself "He must have slept in." I greeted him and entered the apartment then sat down. After a moment he sat down and turned the tv on, a few minutes later his girlfriend at the time came out of the bedroom and gave me a very nasty look. I couldn't for the life of me understand why she did that. She often gave me nasty looks but I always treated her with respect and kindness because I cared for my friends happiness. At the time I never could figure out why she disliked me so much. Fast forward years later during introspection, I figured I had accidently interrupted them while they were having sex.

Look ladies, especially imhere here, the OP's friend was in love with the OP - no guy on earth, whether aspie or NT or Alien would text a good morning/night every day to a female friend unless he is very interested in her for more than just friendship (and that goes both ways).

But the OP is not romantically interested in him but just see him as a close friend, he figured out that, he gave up perusing her, he probably got hurt; and therefore he decided to stop pursuing, hence why it looks like now that he's "drifting away", It's natural to feel this gap.

The guy is not immortal, and therefore at some point, he should give up on a one-sided love and move on. You can't expect a guy to care that much for a girl romantically forever if there's no returned interest.

So what was one-sided love, is becoming one-sided close friendship.


Out of curiosity, Anngables, since you care that much for this guy and as if he sounds to be the most important person in your life (you made several threads just about this man) : Then why didn't you accept him to be your boyfriend/partner? Why weren't you able to return his feelings equally?

What does this man lack in order to make him not a boyfriend material in your eyes?




By not accepting him as a partner. As simple as that. Rejection hurts whether directly or indirectly.

Old classical songs are like this.

Btw, in the lyrics, the 'And forget about my mind' is a wrong translation, it should be 'why can't you realize what's in my mind' instead.

Why should we? ND friendship is not connected with attachment and typical relationship traits like turning to somebody and discussion intimate life happenings.



It goes both ways. If the ND does care a lot (has romantic aspirations), then it becomes very hurtful to them instead when they are rejected and only offered a friendship.



Actually, I think it is NTs that have huge problems with those differences, and frequently jumps between them in all kind of directions.

I'm really curious about how a friendship could get into a relationship, and how close friends seems to imply an attachment that I can only envision in a romantic relationship. Does this mean that NTs attach in similar ways to friends as to romantic partners, and the only real difference between a close friendship and a romantic partner is regular sex? Can you just decide to start having sex with a close friend, and then it is suddenly a romantic relationship, and the reverse, decide not to have sex anymore and return to being close friends?

For NDs, it is really simple. There are ND friendships and romantic relationships, and those do not cross-over into each other easily. That means you should be lucky if an ND has romantic aspirations, because it is unusual and not likely to happen from the friendship state.



If you want to be special, go for the special route instead of the non-special, and pursue an romantic relationship, not an ND-style friendship.



No, it is not why. You are mixing up friendships with relationships as if NDs had the same view of this as NTs. NDs have a lot of trouble finding relationships because they care too much. When they fall in love with somebody that is not interested or have lesser ambitions, it causes them a lot of suffering. It's no wonder that many give up instead of suffering more unrequited love.

Like the proverbial log, and woke grumpy n grumbling wondering why I didn't get to bed sooner

Least you were being productive, unlike my lazy bottom

rdos missed the entire point.
Additionally, the difference between friendship and romantic relationships is not sex. But seeing it so black and white like that is probably the whole reason why the whole point was missed. This is not about anything more than the dissatisfaction in a friendship with an aspie from the NT perspective. I don't think in either case, mine or the OP's, was there romantic feelings towards us from the aspie. Not even sure how that even can be deduced from what was said here. The bigger issue is how they have effectively ignored us, for lack of better term, which would hopefully not be the case if they actually had romantic feelings for us. This was about us feeling unfulfilled because of lack of connection or reciprocation from these men.