No friends and no relationships - totally alone in the world

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bro i prefer to stay alone. but thats just me, these days you cant trust any one, try the advice board on 4chan if any thing they can help you, but know this YOU ARE NEVER ALONE!! !

all things considered, aspies have been nicer to me. but there were a few NTs i've known of impeccable decency.

A1) I am living with my husband and Kid. But my husband is extremely busy with work and rarely talks with me. About my son whole day i have to chase him and keep telling him not to do crazy things.

A2) I have a job but unfortunately i dont have friends at my workplace they are more like acquaintances. I eat my tiffin alone. And i dont attend the social do's in my office

A3) My mom, bro and sis in law live couple of miles away. But my mom is psychopath and same with bro. About my sis in law she is a jealous b***h.

A4) I had a friend who lived in the same colony she shifted across to another neighbourhood couple of months ago.

My social life is boring, day in day out i feel frustrated with the loneliness surrounding me. I have difficulty intrepreting social cues and
yes people generally fool me.

A1) If everyone around was having same issues then it wont be a issue at all it would be the routine behaviour of the species. But since only few of us face this problem then it makes us odd one out, diseased, sick and different.
I am ostracised by society and called different...i dont fit in
I often i feel suicidal.

A2) There is extreme loneliness....how do you deal with working in a office and being isolated and not invited to have lunch with others....you just have to end up sitting alone in a corner and eat your own stuff.

A3) No you cant be OK with your life with no significant relationships. You are handicapped in some way and you will keep trying to get over the handicap. Just like a blind person would try braille or a lame person would use prosthetics legs similary a socially handicapped person will try hard to fit in socially and fail miserably several times without help of a guide, mentor or counsellor, therapist

The first part no. Second? Yeah; I've gone through ad nauseum why I do not have a GF.

Interesting and thought provoking.

1. I love, just love, my times on my own (like right now) - I can think clearly, do my own stuff, make some progress on things that mean something to me.
However I'm not sure
- if I'd feel that way if I was on my own all the time. I think I'd be fine, but I might be fooling myself; there may be some deep apeman need for society and connection.
- if my deepest pleasures on my own stack up as real pleasures, the sort that are worth staying alive for. Sailing a Hobie cat (alone) on a warm sunny day maybe, but maybe that would decline if I did more of it. Walking in the country probably not. Saving the world (haha) with some brilliant (haha) intellectual thinking probably not. Caffeine and/or alcohol probably not (except those first few caffeine hits after a break, before my body has habituated again to it).
Maybe 'doing stuff' is an escape from the social pain - rather than a pleasure in itself. And is an escape from pain worth staying alive for?

2. I have significant relationships (wife, children, wider family members, social links), which are the major source of my pain - because those relationships seem to be a consistent source of pain, disappointment and upset to the other person, and I pick that up. I am not as interactive, warm, funny, happy etc as the other person consistently expects and/or wants me to be. Despite years of evidence, they keep on expecting to be normal and NT-like. And to blame me when I don't do it. NT behaviour is the social norm, the expected standard. Slips from that cause disconcertion and pain. Sometimes I can sort of hold it together so an evening is ok, or a meal goes well (especially if I get a chance to talk on one of my interests), the floor does not give way. But it's only time until an intense and complex social situation blows my cover apart again, causes my systems to overload and lock-up. Until I disappoint again.

My relationship with my wife has been a source of real pleasure, the sort that is worth staying alive for. When it's been good it's been extraordinarily good, liquid molten gold.
but it's also been a source of pain, and constant work, effort, to try to not upset and disappoint her, to give her fragments of communication and togetherness, as best I can. And never enough. And all the hurts I cause her add up over time, to scar not just her but me also (I am scarred by seeing her being scarred).

As Bono sang "Did I disappoint you? or leave a bad taste in your mouth?.....And I can't keep holding on / To what you got / When all you've got is hurt "

Christmas has been hard... the normal process steps of becoming exhausted and as a result increasingly disappointing and thus hurting others when my systems fail and I can't keep the NT-act going.

So what is the outlook? is it worth carrying on? maybe I'll try the single life. She could find another... who'd probably love her better. We made some promises - for better or worse, until death us do part - but maybe a mutual contract can be broken if both parties agree it is for the best. Then I could be free, and alone (I'd have to think about how to play my relationships with my children). But, as above - would I actually just feel alone? And God was in that contract also, my promise was also to Him.

Before I've always worked, believed I could overcome the issues. Tried, and looked for new ideas, methods, ways to try. Now I'm not so sure. Fading energy, weaker, tired, still the pain, less optimism that anything will change.

I can totally relate.
When I realized that 99.9% of my problems were a direct result of my bad judgement in picking the wrong "friends," who were just taking advantage of me for their own amusement or benefit, I decided I would be much better off living alone - with my critters.
I am much too trusting and that's not always a good thing.

My best friend has always been a cat, all the way throughout childhood and in to my adult life.

What's driving my research right now is the social "cause" of autism. Obviously people are born with systematic/autistic thinking or with more typical types of thinking and that results in the different social behaviors that we see. What seems to happen is that people with ASD (whether Aspergers, HFA, nonverbal, limited verbal abilities, or PDD-NOS) have different behaviors when they're infants and toddlers, so their parents and doctors notice this and start treating them differently than other children. They also openly say that they're different or "special."

Then the kids go to school or are around other kids. Either when kids with ASD are toddlers or in childhood they figure out that they're different from their peers and this impacts the formation of their identity. They see themselves as "a person who is different." Many of us see ourselves as "a person who is different." I saw myself that way growing up because I had red hair. Somewhere in childhood, pubescence, or adolescence, kids with ASD try to make friends because they become lonely, but they experience some kind of rejection because of their social skills. I think this is the emergence of the realization that one is autistic. At some point the individual either figures out or is told that he or she is autistic. When one accepts this, the individual's identity is adjusted to "I am a person with autism/Aspergers." What that means depends on how one views ASD/AS and how one views the rest of society. And then all throughout this process are attempts to learn NT behaviors, which is essentially "passing" just like one would "pass" as White if you were a light skinned Black person.

This is essentially what I'm working on for my MS and PhD. Bits of this here and there have been already shown in research, but I'll have to do my own research to show most of it academically. I'm using grounded theory, which means I'm not assuming that I'm right and will adjust if it turns out I'm wrong about anything.

I guess it's probably true that when I was younger I attempted to mimic NT behaviour, but I think at some point I decided to just accept that I was different, so then just stopped caring about not having friends and the like.

about being content living alone, from my experience it seems that the human mind is powerful enough to block all emotional pain, so the normal social pain that would result from isolation is transformed into numbness. In this state one can learn to be content, but if something happens to disrupt the rather delicate balance, the depression is paralyzing.

^^^
QFT!

^^

I agree with bones too

meet people with aspergers. I'm sure you will find friends.go to meetup.com. it's a good site for making friends.

I'm on the mild end of the spectrum so probably not representative of the autistic community....I do hope you not entertaining some type of linear relationship between various levels of DSM designated "levels of severity" and self concept of identity? In any case I hope you will publish a summary of your results on this forum. I really find it irritating when grad students come to WP wanting to pick our brains and then quietly submit their data to their peers without any critical feedback from the collective wisdom of the auties here!



What is "bad"?



There's a folk song called Pixiphony by KYU with the lyrics

"You spell out my desire but not necessity
I'm alone, I'm alone, but it doesn't mean I'm lonely"

Loneliness is a broad brush, I suggest you do a thorough literature review of the complexity of loneliness in the NT context before tackling what it means to us.



I find your question projects an assumption autistic people without friends are all looking for companions that reflect some form of templated fictional character? surely we aren't all that one dimensional



Suggest you read up on a little social psychology. It might help you reflect on your question firstly from a NT standpoint before investigating what non-significant relationships mean to us auties. I myself am quite OK with short term non-significant relationships with people when there is an invigorating exchange of stimulating ideas. To me, friendship is a very NT thing.

Very interesting hypothesis!

The only people who can answer this question are people with autism. I myself grew up believing that I was NT and never developed a self-concept that I was autistic. However my parents were concerned over my peculiar behavior and lack of friends. Despite my social shortcomings I was remarkably adept at getting people to like me? but I was never able to sustain long term relationhsips with people until I met my wife.

When my daughter was diagnosed with ASD the penny finally dropped for me. Yes I figured out I was mildly autistic. Has this changed how I view society? why yes it has...
On the positive side I tend to be less judgemental over people disliking me and more realistic over society as a whole. On the negative side I have a tendency to use my autism as a crutch to justify some of my less socially desirable personal habits.

I am nearly 23 year old and I have never had a girlfriend or being laid etc so I use Mylar Balloons. I have no job at all I am getting a pension since people see me as being strong autisic I do have a very few friends from those friends lives in the United States and I am in Europe. I often visit my parents so I am not fully alone but "normals" do not understand me when I tell them I am not looking for a girlfriend or boyfriend and don't spend my life the "mainstream way" also trolls on the internet bullying me alot for being different and I am being called "gay" just for what I look like and for that I like Magical Girl Anime but I am not gay at all I have no sexual interest in people so I prefer Mylar Balloons. I am more social on the internet than in real life the young "normals" likes to pick on me so most of my internet friends has autism as well.