Making Friends with Guys Without Having Them Fall for Me

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Well even that is being stereotypical in my opinion. I have read posts on this forum who were written by guys whose profile says they are diagnosed, who claim to experience women in a sexual way first, and guys who are guys who are neurotypical who are not like most men.

Actually, when I encounter a woman who has this attribute, online or otherwise, she feels like she is another of me, and with online friends, it throws me when she talks about things like typing with long fingernails, or wearing jewelry, because she feels like she is another of me, and I'm a guy. Also most women who have this feeling to them, often complain about how they find that the behavior of other women they know is puzzling to them, and they don't feel like they fit in, in much the same way that I feel like I don't fit in with most men.

Last edited by willmark on 01 Jul 2009, 12:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I'm a diagnosed aspie and a male.. and I have an extremely high libido. I've had many girlfriends/sexual encounters..

I think it is definetly stereotyping to say that us aspie males are all somewhat dys-sexual. I think that my being an aspie DOES affect my libido, my feelings for girls and/or my understanding of those feelings.. but it's a lot more about my perception of things, that's how it affects those areas of my life. I've always been a very passionate person when it comes to girlfriends, both with regards to sexuality and the feelings involved.. the AS affects it all by making me anxious about the relationship itself, overanalysing everything.

I still hold to the view that I am not like "most men" however, regardless of said libido etc.. I can't relate to the machismo and I'm incredibly oversensitive.

As for this idea of viewing women in a sexual way first and foremost, there's evidence to suggest that on a subconscious level (think it was good old Sir Robert Winston who explored this briefly in one of his documentaries), we all, both males AND females, "scan" a person physically, in a sexual nature, within a split second of laying eyes on them. It's the literal "checking them out", to see if you find them sexually attractive. Hence this idea that making friends with girls and hoping they "might begin to become sexually attracted to you" being incredibly flawed... because as we've already heard on this post, girls know if they fancy someone straight away.

That part is apparently beyond our conscious control ..

It's hard. I genuinely like most men as friends, but there is often that problem. I have no solution to a male friend getting the wrong idea, other than simply removing myself now. Not perfect, but I deal with life as I can. I don't want to be in that situation.

Same here.

Thanks for that bunny-in-the-moon, really interesting about the research.

Glad to help!

try dropping a lil "random fact" like "yesterday when i was washing diahrea off my bedsheets, the STRANGEST brightly colored blue bird flew past the window!"

girls need to be more inventive.

yeah that'd do it!!

In fact, the girl I'm closest to in terms of friendship.. I was attracted to her for a couple of months at the very least. Then she showed me a pair of her pyjama bottoms that she'd used to wipe her nose with whilst she had a cold...

No attraction now, whatsoever .

One needs to be careful in doing/saying something disguisting may result in that the person would not even want to get close to you afterwards. I'm afraid that if I do this, he might think that I'm strange and not want to be associated with me in any way whatsoever. It has happened to me in the past... I just blurted out the most inappropriate things and then people would ignore me.
So, it can be really risky, not always a good solution.

If anything it would make me think more that she might be open to something physical, that she'd trust me enough to tell me something like that that without thinking it would ruin the friendship.

Ive discovered that once you get to your mid 20s and beyond(that is, once you graduate from college and move into the *real world*) it becomes Harder and HARDER to forge and maintain strictly platonic relationships with the opposite sex if you're straight.
EVEN THOUGH Ive learned not to fall for female friends just because they happen to be single, whenever they get a bf they discontinue the friendship. If they have a bf in the first place then they quickly lose interest in being friends with me. THAT is why Ive reached the point where I am VERY Wary of befriending women who arent sngle and if there is any sign of sexual tension I tend to withdraw from the friendship UNLESS the interest is mutual.

I've had opposite-gender friends most of my life, but I don't have much advice for how to achieve that, because it's just never caused problems for me.

As a child, I tended to be friends with boys, and we were often teased for being in love (which we weren't, to the best of my knowledge - certainly I wasn't), which drove me crazy, but it didn't stop me being friends with them. But of course things are different before puberty.

As a teenager I didn't really have friends my age.

As an adult I've had quite a few friends who are guys, including two of my three current closest friends. One of these two friendships was never complicated by romance at all; I have never been at all attracted to him, and I don't think he has ever been attracted to me. In the other case, it was actually me who was attracted to him; I eventually told him of my interest, discovered that he wasn't interested, and we just went on being friends. This actually worked out surprisingly well - I thought that there was a good chance I would lose the friendship if he wasn't interested, but after a brief awkward period we've only become closer friends. I think part of why it worked was that even though I was romantically interested in him, friendship was more important to me than romance; yes, I would have liked to go out with him, but I wanted even more to be friends, so even once I knew he wasn't interested in me, I made an effort to maintain friendship.

My big fear was that things would become very awkward if I told him and he wasn't interested. I put a lot of effort into avoiding anything that would make him uncomfortable - avoiding any mention of my interest after the first exchange in which I revealed it, trying to avoid showing my feelings for him, trying to make enough effort to keep in touch that he didn't think I was avoiding him, but not so much that he would think I was clinging to him or always in the way, trying to avoid showing when I felt awkward about the situation, etc. Pretending to be natural. It helped a lot that I didn't perceive him as feeling awkward or uncomfortable, which made me feel more at ease and less awkward myself. He has said that he did feel awkward/cautious at first too, but it faded pretty quickly.

I don't know if that's at all helpful, since it's from the other side of the equation, and I know that I deal with romance and friendship differently from a lot of people, so what worked for me might not work in other cases. I suppose my point is primarily that opposite-gender friendships *are* possible: sometimes there is no romantic feeling on either side, but even when there is, it is sometimes possible for them to go well as friendships.

I may have an easier time of things, though, because guys don't often seem to be attracted to me anyways. I only know of one guy who's been attracted to me that I've actually known (as opposed to random people in public places, and that doesn't happen often either).

Me either. Where were you when I needed you? I'm kidding. I was a very late bloomer. Most girls that were my age were interested in boys that were two or three years my senior.

If you are an attractive female, 90% of the time, guys only hang out with you for one reason, and I guess you know what that reason is. Like you said, even though you tell them you aren't interested, they just don't get it, and some probably never will. Guys, are guys, and they aren't gonna change anytime soon, so my suggestion would be to stop hanging out with them, and find some friends that are girls. Maybe tomboys would be a nice compromise?

I'd like to think that all girls can just get along, but it really doesn't work that way. I've talked to lots of women who tell me that they can't stand being around other women. The stereotype is that women are backstabbers, this stereotype is hard to deny if you're an attractive female, other women just feel threatened and the tomboys could get the wrong ideas themselves. Not to say that she shouldn't look to those groups, but there are perils no matter where you look.

If you ask me though, walking on eggshells isn't fun either, just ask my ex-roomate/ex buddy.

Welcome to adulthood. As much as we try to adapt our natural wiring towards some lofty and unattainable philosophical ideal, it's always there and eventually it catches up with us.

I don't have the same friends I had in grade school and junior high because as our interests changed we outgrew the relationship. Not too many adult relationships are forged on swapping the stickers out of Wacky Packages.

I read an interesting study a couple of years ago. Sorry, that I cannot refer to it via a link. But it found out that it would be better for relationships to be initiated by the female. Males seemed to be able to develop feelings for females interested in them. Females, on the contrary, were not able to do that, unless they had the feelings to start with.

It might be a good idea to discuss with the male in the beginning of the friendship, when they have not yet developed those romantic feelings. If they have been told that it is going to be only friendship, then they could deal with those feelings easier, when they come, and not get themselves in an awkward position. What do you think?