Am I doomed?

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I agree with Mona on this one.

However, making new friends past age 30 becomes even harder than relationships.

Between 2012 and 2015 I think I formed 3 friend groups of mixed gender, and they all collapsed due to infighting between them (in particular....the ladies among each other, gossip), and each one wanted me to take a side O.o.

In my experience, most adults past 30 are not interested in expanding their friends circle.

... And you weren't trained in conflict resolution.

As I've said elsewhere, in the thread Autistic-friendly social skills vs. blending in with NT's, I think we should all work on developing the following skill sets:

1) Assertiveness (without being aggressive).
2) Active listening.
3) Giving and receiving constructive criticism.
4) Conflict resolution.

(See the above-linked thread for context and more details.) I don't claim to be an expert on these skill sets myself, but insofar as I have managed to learn them, they have served me well.


Perhaps most, but not all. Obviously we need to find those who ARE interested in expanding their friends circle. People like the new people in town, for example. Or fellow newcomers to whatever social group we've joined.

I'm unsure why many NDs have this strange idea, but it's not optimal and it is definitely not a requirement for a relationship. When NDs are asked about friendships it turns out they are much less likely to have (and want) friends, but many of their actually friendships are not real friends but want-to-be romantic partners. Not many NTs actually go about friendship in this way, so it is hardly something people learned from NTs. It might be partly because this idea is pushed on various autistic communities.

It's not my job to resolve conflicts between bickering ladies, and the conflicts were over silly little things. I've tried, but once there's grudge nothing can fix it. And since they have other older friends circles so they wouldn't make effort to fix the newer ones.

It's not your job a priori, but, in my opinion, if a person is serious about building a new circle of friends, then one needs to make it one's job and learn the necessary skills (which a lot of people don't have). Without conflict resolution skills, attempts to resolve conflicts can easily just throw more gasoline on the fire.


As I said in earlier posts in this thread, one needs to find people who are sufficiently motivated to make new friends.

I'd say we should order things on the NT-society - Autistic friendly communities - ND relationships continuum. That is, our relationships require a lot more of our natural preferences to be optimal than autistic friendly communities, simply because we only participate in these "gatherings" short periods of time, while we live constantly in a relationship. Thus, we should not build ND friendly relationships by looking at autistic friendly communities, especially since autistic friendly communities have been founded based on incorrect assumptions from psychiatry. The worse assumption is that NDs lack nonverbal communication and thus need very clear verbal communication, something that is completely wrong. In real ND friendly relationships AND ND friendly communities, the natural nonverbal communication of NDs should be the norm, just as NT nonverbal communication is the norm in NT culture. It's possible that a subset of autistics cannot handle ND nonverbal communication, but we could let these people continue to use the "autistic friendly communities" based on only verbal exchange. Although I have no idea how a verbal-only environment could be beneficial to low-functioning autistics that cannot speak, but still can use the ND nonverbal communication.

I have to say that I've completely stopped participating in autistic gatherings because of these issues. One on hand, these gatherings discriminate against low-functioning autistics, and on the other hand on high-functioning NDs that want to act naturally and not adopt a whole new culture that was built from NT prejudice. In fact, an autistic friendly community should be built in such way that it worked for the whole spectrum regardless of intelligence and functional level. Something that is the case for NT communities.

Makes no sense. A huge amount of NDs only want a romantic partner and has no interests in friends. Many of the NDs that do pursue friendships do so only to find a romantic partner. Now you are telling the NDs that only want a partner that they must pursue friendships before they can get a romantic partner (which is certainly a faulty assumption since there are plenty of NDs in only relationships). I'd say what you are doing is to make even more NDs involuntarily single for life.

Can you link to studies that verify this? Not that I can't relate to or necessarily disbelieve this, but I'm still skeptical, esp as almost everything I read- including WP posts- is that ND's want friends.

I'm basing it on a large survey with several thousand participants in Aspie Quiz. The paper is still not written, mostly because I don't know how to best present & interpret the results. Still, the empirical evidence of NDs having fewer friendships and the link to romantic relationships for NDs only is clearly there.

Where did you get the participants? Have you verified that they all have an official diagnosis?

ok, I've taken that quiz (as suspected ASD). Who was counted -only ppl who identified as diagnosed Aspie, or did the results include self identified?

The other way around. Aspie Quiz defined neurodiversity and the research was done with that definition. Thus, all participants were used. Those diagnosed with ASD fit the pattern, but cannot be used as a reference given that ASD is not defined based on friendship traits.

I think I get it but am also confused now- it's called Aspie quiz but includes anyone diagnosed or suspected ND?

For example: I can never really be an "Aspie" because I spoke at age 5 1/2.

doesn't that depend on when one is diagnosed? I've been told that while childhood is taken into account (when evaluating adults), a psych can only make a diagnosis based on how someone presents during an eval

of course I'm way off topic at this point

If there is a history of "classic" autistic behavior, which consists of one seeming oblivious to others when they are, say, preschool age, then the person is usually diagnosed with autism retrospectively, if some autistic-type symptoms remain--even if they are relatively mild.

"Present presentation" is important. But "past presentation" could be just as important.