Abandoned by a long-time "friend", need advice

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My social skills have always been crap; A lot of it has to do with the fact that I dealt with a lot of opression in school before my diagnosis, as well as 2-3 years after, so I've always been shy with interacting or connecting with anyone, usually falling into kind of a protective shell to keep myself from leaving myself vulnerable to another person. I'm 25 now and it's something that's really stuck with me over the years.

In a not so great venture I ended up relying on the internet for most of my social interaction; It's really only as comfortable as I can get. I've been able to make some progression there (though I wish I could do the same away from it.) but still, I tend to get myself in a bind at times.

It was about four and a half years ago through all the gaming I had done online that I met someone who I closely bonded with. In a sense she became a support pillar for me at times when I really had it rough, and although I could easily get mad at her sometimes she claimed that it's something she had come to expect of me and that she could deal with it. For most of those years she said she considered me one of her best friends and stuff and everything seemed to be true enough.

One of the first problems I noted was usually involving whatever boyfriend she had at the time. Now, I was never in it for her love or whatever and she stuck with me, but things always changed around when a boyfriend came into the mix. Now, there's always going to be the obvious type of thing, and I would try to keep myself from getting jealous, but I was able to see that she really was only able to handle one boy at all at a time. That being said, if she was in a relationship, our friendship kind of died off. Before this it had happened once or twice, and I had pointed this out in my mind as one of her traits, albiet disadvantageous to me despite my supposed close friendship with her.

This trait was the point of a lot of strife between us, as a lot of conversations would end up with me getting completely shut out by her. Obviously I did have other friends to turn to about it but she was the one that "knew me" best.

Over the past couple of years she's been seeing this one boy in an "on-again-off-again" kind of relationship. Now, I wouldn't usually have a problem with this, except for the fact that this guy is abusive, has been known to do some pretty nasty things to her and even mooches off her and her parents. (Or so I'm told.) I could never understand why she would continue to allow this to go on, but that "trait" that would usually pop up would get even worse.

By this time I had quit the game we had met each other on, but we would keep in touch by other means, using MSN, twitter, facebook, etc... Most of that was cut off because she decided to let him hold onto her phone. (really now?) The only way to get to her was through him, and I wasn't willing to do that.

Then earlier this year they "broke up" and became a lot more accessible. Our friendship unfortunately had waned quite a bit and she was no longer my "crutch" per se, but we still shared that bond between us.

Then a couple of months ago, it turned south really fast. I somewhat started having an argument with her because for the friend that she is, she was slowly starting to disappear, owing to the fact that she's still been playing the game we've met on and has preferred to keep herself off other things while she plays. I was trying to be reasonable as to my points about being upset but she wouldn't really see any of them. As if that wasn't enough, she then said that she had to do something and would be back. She never came back. If that wasn't as bothersome, shortly after she had "left" she tweeted, saying something along the lines of "this was going to happen eventually." (Though, this could have just been a poorly timed coincidence.)

It wasn't until about 3 weeks later that she got on MSN again... or should I say that her account was on MSN? I messaged her, but surprise! Turns out it was her deadbeat boyfriend of about nine-thousand times over. I indirectly found out that she was back together with "Mr. Asshat." I ended up sending a fairly angry DM over twitter as a result. Never heard anything from that. In fact, she stopped tweeting altogether. A couple of more DMs later on went with no reply, a message I sent on Facebook got ignored, I eventually ranted about it (anonymously as per forum rules) on another forum where she [seldom] goes to and somehow, that generated a response along the lines of "I'm expecting a resolution and retraction after I get through with you." So, thinking that she's going to yell at me, or at least explain to me what the hell is going on. Instead, I get nothing. I wait a couple of days, send her a PM on that forum, and it fails to get her attention.

A couple of days later, I made a difficult decision. As a result, I slowly started to remove her from all of my contacts, knowing that all hope was lost. The "crutch" I had lean on for the past four and a half years had seemed to abandon me.

The last couple of weeks since then have been kinda difficult. Most of the people I know that would have known her and maybe understood where I was coming from I don't really talk to anymore, so I haven't really had an outlet for a private rant or anything that would involve some understanding. At times I feel like I start to get depressed, but for me it's as if any need to feel sad or anything is automatically surpressed, and so it just sits there unless something drastic, urgent, or extremely stressful happens. More recently, looking at trends and the issues I've had with her for the time that she was my friend, I almost wanted to call her fake. I feel like she took advantage of the trust that I had with her.

Just tonight I managed to find someone that used to know both of us back in the days and talked to her about it, and I was told that she had changed in a sense, and that she "doesn't know why I had bothered with her after so long." All I had to say to that was "Not anymore, that's for sure."

Though, that line isn't completely true as I still deal with the after effects. I have to tempt myself not to post a rage-fuelled comment where I know she can see it, regardless of where it mentions her or not. The effects that this has on my already low will to interact with people will likely throw the advances I made in my social skills backwards a lot of years.

But a lot of things really go unanswered for me here:

Because of my experience with other people, I tend to jump the gun a lot and get angry for whatever reason if a friend seems to be neglectful of me, even if it's something that wouldn't be a problem to a typical person. Was I really right in feeling upset about it? I was aware of her trait when it comes to her relationship, and I was only ever in for things as a friend, but did I end up forcing this as the only way out? Could there have been other factors? Could she have really been faking the whole friendship even after so long?

Seeing as I had put my trust in a four and a half year "friendship" that turned out to be bad, and that being the only reason why I started to slowly open up to people outside of my kind, what can I do to get myself back on track socially? What do I do now?

If she were to eventually try to contact me, what should I do? At this point, I'm not in any position to go through what she's continually put me through so many times.

Have I misunderstood or underestimated her with how she values her relationships and the impact that it has on our friendship?

Am I too possessive over my close friends? I've said to a couple of people that I likely value and cherish the close friends that I do have on a much higher level than the typical person, and sometimes react negatively when things starts to shift away from me even for a couple of hours. How could I change my way of thinking to cope with this better so that I can understand that I can't be their only friend or their absolute center of attention and to not let it get to me?

Musicman, I had a similar thing happen to me... a friend I met online whom I thought was my soulmate (as a friend... he is gay and I've been bi all my life but am mostly into women as I get older) abandoned me completely in the most impersonal way. I actually had moved to another state, in part to be closer to him and his boyfriend. We are still neighbors, but when we pass each other on the street we turn the other way. It sucks. Why did he abandon me? I still to this day don't know. My girlfriend thinks he became jealous when I met her, which is probably to some degree true; he was negligent at times and I was okay with that (we are both artists and very reclusive, so often he retreated into his shell for weeks at a time but had clearly and sensitively explained that I should never see this as indicating a lack of caring on his part, just an inability to deal with social interactions sometimes), but I feel like on some level, he liked be best when I was dependent on him as my primary connection in the world. He even used to joke with me that if I ever start to date guys again, I'd better not forget that he's always going to be my real man. It was a gay joke, but there was some grain of seriousness behind it. We were so close he used to say we were like the two ends of one shoelace.

One day, he just decided to dump me. We had our ups and downs, for sure. Things weren't always rosy, but one day he just unfriended me on myspace, refused to answer any more email from me, or return my calls, and that was it. No explanation. Oh yeah, and we had the same job too (his boss had offered me a job when I moved here), and he was friends with his boss, who laid me off literally the next day after this. Coincidence? I will never know but it was all very disturbing. It shook my trust up so much I still, about a year and a half later, have not fully recovered.

Not to minimize the depth of online friendships (which as an undiagnosed Aspie myself I completely understand how vital they are as I tend to be very reclusive and get exhausted by too much in-person interaction, and words/written contact means SO MUCH to me), but it sucks even worse that I made the friendship live, and moved to his neighborhood and now have to deal constantly with seeing him and that awkwardness of being faced with the friendship of my life, gone wrong. And I have a child (also an Aspie, diagnosed) enrolled in a wonderful special ed program in her school here, so I really can't just pick up and move. I can't do that to her. Oh yeah, I also am engaged and my partner is enrolled in school locally, so I am stuck here until 2012. ;P

I wonder actually if he had some type of mild autism himself and maybe that's why we bonded so much, and maybe that's why we separated as well. He had obsessive interests, was a music savant of sorts, and definitely had the extreme sensitivity but not the cool logic of aspergers... he was extremely emotional and at times, prone to depression. I feel like he definitely had some kind of personality, I don't want to use the term "disorder" but something.

Anyway, not to rant about myself (something I'm prone to do) but I feel your pain. The thing is that really, online relationships can suck even for AS people because while the friend may understand your deepest secrets and know how your mind ticks, they may not have some basic connecting things with you that are needed to cement a friendship in real life. And their real life concerns then become more pressing (like the as*hole bf). In any case if she is in an abusive relationship, you have to understand that she is going through hell and being psychologically manipulated. And he is there in real life, controlling her. She can't ignore it like she can someone on a computer screen, no matter how much intellectual and emotional intimacy you both shared.

I think it's important especially for aspies and AS people in general to find real space friends. It is hard for us because we care less about body language and voice tone than most people, I am perfectly satisfied just by written words much of the time (unless I'm craving physical intimacy with someone, obviously). But I don't like all the small talk and forcing myself to be normal of a real life interaction. I personally HATE the phone. I am afraid of it. Email saved my life. But we do need that real life connection of friends. Not a lot, but just one or two who really get you IN PERSON. And be cautious about how much intimacy and trust you build online. People used to tell me that and I thought they didn't understand how capable I was of intellectual intimacy through words, and that may be true, but the danger is that if you don't know someone at least from phone conversations or a few meetings in person, you don't know their face, you are to some extent disposable to them. They can use you as a crutch when they are down, but not understand to what extent you consider the written/verbal exchanges THE REAL THING of friendship. This causes misunderstandings and rifts.

I had another friend online who was a little strange, but we had a bond for years and I accepted him as he was. Later on he ended up becoming this white supremacist rage-filled freak who got kicked off our blog community for writing hateful posts about gays, Jews and anyone who wasn't white. It was scary because I am both gay and Jewish and my daughter is half black. People are strange and as an aspie it can be hard to get people outside of what they say literally. I am lucky that I do have pretty good intuition with people, but it is not based on their body language or cues, more just on gut feelings I get when I see them in person.