How I got a social life

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For most of my childhood and early adulthood I was a very lonely boy. I had no friends, and I was bullied every day. I tried to get a social life by playing football/soccer and handball, but I wasn't any good at it, and I got bullied by my team"mates". In the 15-16 first years of my life I had nothing. I did well in school, but I had no people at my age that I could talk to.

Then, my uncle (who is a handball coach) came to me and asked if I wanted to be a referee. He knew that I loved football and handball and that I was sad for not getting to play it, so we used to go to matches together. I thought it would be great, being on the court and also making some money.

For the first 3-4 months I refereed together with my uncle in small kids games (in handball there is always two referees). I enjoyed it and my uncle told me I was really talented. At that time I didn't think too much about it though.

Then, I went to a big handball cup. I was really nervous since I never had really slept on my own away from home. I was going to be assigned to a referee-partner and we would share a hotel room for the weekend of the cup. I was really scared that everything would go wrong and that my partner would find me to be a weirdo.

It went surprisingly well. My partner was 2 years older than me, and a real nice guy. The first night, when we were sitting in our hotel room, I decided to tell him that I have Aspergers and about my life up to then. He was actually very touched by my story, and he kept asking me whether it was OK for me if he did this or that. I told him that I prefer to be treated like any other NT person.

This handball tournament was a big turning point for me. I talked to almost all the other referees there, and as my self-confidence grew, they got a better impression of me.

Me and A, as we can call him, decided to be regular referee partners, and we became best friends. He has actually never mentioned "Aspergers" since that night at the tournament, yet we've been friends for 4-5 years now and travelled across several countries to referee. We are now in a national development group for referee talents.

I got the social life I never had. I've got a sense of identity now, people who bullied me in my childhood are my friends today.

One of the moments that I remember the best was when we refereed a game with the team that I was bullied out of as a 10-11 year old. I gave a red card to the guy who was the worst bully of all, for a bad tackle. After the game, he came over to me and told me that the card was correct and how cool he thinks it is that I'm a talented referee now. I even started training with the team and played some games, (although I sucked :p) and I was just one of the guys in the team, nobody special.

Have you got a story about how you made friends and got a social life?

I got a social life when 1]I joined a local "square pegs aspie meetup group" and 2] when a very nice lady on WP met me and decided I was for her.

That's a cool story, and a good topic for sure.

In retrospect I feel like my own social development was really based on a series of coincidences, coupled with the fact that from a very young age my dad instilled in me the social value of humility and self-deprecation.

Growing up, I went to a K-8 school that was very small and was incidentally dense with "weird" kids (for lack of a better term) similar to myself. I feel like because of that I never developed an initial self-consciousness because I never saw myself, and was never really seen by others, as "abnormal".

By the time I was in high school I was heavily involved in sports, so although I went to a big urban public school I had people from the get go that I shared common ground with. The friends I made initially were ball busters, and anytime I did something "strange" I was mercilessly derided, but I laughed along with them and "learned my lesson", and (I assume) because I naturally approached it like that instead of being offended by it, it was never held against me long-term.

At a point, like early in my sophomore year of high school, I started to really make sense of (and became fascinated by) social conventions as they presented themselves to me, and from there on out that just happened to become a primary focus of my thought processes. By the time I went to college it was just natural to take every bizarre interaction in stride and learn from them on several different levels.

After all of that it should be unsurprising that my academic focuses have been in anthropology and behavior analysis

There's been nothing groundbreaking since college in terms of being social, in fact I care a lot less than I did then about my "social life" and as such it is not nearly as active, but the principles remain and have now taken somewhat more of a professional turn, I guess.

Hmmm, I wouldn't say I got a social life, but I know people who value and see me as a useful and dependable ally. And there are people who care about me, and while many of them are acquaintances and only one of them is someone I would confide in about deep problems I am going through etc., And I received all of that because I decided to take control over my anxiety and my fears and desires not to socially interact by volunteering with something that interests me. It required going out of my comfort zone, but yeah, that's how I managed to get what I feel quite satisfied with!

Some great stories here! I find that the ideal way to make and keep friends - especially for people on the spectrum - is through something you are both interested in.

I didn't have much of a social life until my late teens, mostly isolating myself to work on projects of interest. When I was 16-17 I simply decided that I needed to get out more and joined a youth group for people with intellectual disabilities, who I felt more comfortable with than NTs and who I felt were on my social level. Around this time, I decided to read every book I could get my hands on about Aspergers and deciced to "correct" all of the traits that applied to me, because at the time, I felt like I didn't have a choice if I wanted friends and wanted to get ahead in the world. It was then I decided to practice taking interest in others by not focusing on myself at all, and paying full attention to the other person...and people loved it. At around 17-18, I became more confident around others and began to hang out with the people at my school who accepted me most.

The main thing I would suggest for anyone who would like to work on their social skills is natural practice and exposure. The more you are surrounded by other people and practicing skills you have learned, the more likely you will use them in a more natural way.

I did not really have too much of a social life before I got out of college. My greatest social achievement in High School was having a girlfriend for about a month, and sort of being friends with some of the more "popular," kids. It was only the summer of my first year of college that I took an internship to get out of the house. Eager of turning my back on the years of being a shut in, I decided to hang out with my fellow interns. At around the same time, I realized that the internet could be turned into a social tool, and made a lot of friends from various online forums. Some of them I have stuck with (mostly the interns), and others have left my life (a lot of the internet friends), but through the connections that I made through them I started to cultivate a social life.

Right now, my big social goal is to get involved at the school that I am transferring to. I have fear that I will lose a fair amount of people in my circle of friends, but I am also probably taking up another internship that a lot of people at the university I am going to are involved in.

I guess what happened was a mix of me gradually wanting to break into the social world, but realizing that I still want a good core group of friends that would be reliable. I am still trying to find a good balance between being a complete social butterfly and a recluse, but I believe I am getting better.

For me, the big turning point was deciding to study abroad for a year in highschool.

I was very anxious initially. I hardly had any friends at home -- one close friend in my entire school of ~1000, three other close friends I knew via the internet, all of whom lived at least three hours away, and I was afraid that the situation abroad would turn out as bad as my situation in my school at home.
But I had my family's support, and when I arrived, I was on my best behaviour while also being myself (and discovering that I was actually capable of enjoying a number of things I never would've tried at home) -- and people liked me all the same! Social errors or weird patterns of speech were put down to my foreign-ness, some implicit social rules were explained to me very explicitly when they realised I didn't get hedging comments, and having the language excuse basically made a perfect front for saying "I don't understand that comment, what do you mean?" when ambiguity arose.

Having friends was amazing. I still felt like an alien, but like a well-liked one, and I felt I suddenly knew how to act. All of that built confidence, and I think that was what eventually saved me -- when I came back to school, people didn't pick on me anymore (much), and when they did, it annoyed me more than it bothered me. I still didn't fit in, and I knew I probably never would -- that ship had sailed years ago -- but hey, I was okay, it was possible for people I met outside of interest-related contexts to like me!

And then I went to university and into a field that's pretty much geek'n'nerd central anyway, met a lot of likeminded individuals, and suddenly realised that having a social life was actually really hard work and could be horribly exhausting (all things I'd put down to culture shock while abroad), but I've found a balance for the most part now.

Could you please elaborate I'm not very verse on any aspie social group. I am glad you found happiness. Just where are such chapters. How does one go about finding a local chapter.

hiya turlough in early 2010 I went searching for aspie meetup groups on meetup.com and put in a request for an aspie meetup group, and told them to notify me when such a group formed, and about a year later, one local group [Olympia, WA] did indeed form, and I joined. we met at the local mall, and it was my first exposure to another bonafide aspie guy. we dug each other, and gradually other members coalesced into our present little group. so just go to meetup.com and look for aspie/aspergers/autism spectrum meetup groups and see what you find in your area or within commuting distance. I have to drive an hour to attend mine.
good luck
bruce