Are they really a friend?

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Me neither. A friend is a friend regardless of money. Unless they are "giving" something back to you in another way, i.e. interesting conversation, social reassurance, hugs, water your plants (etc), they are not friends. I ditched lots of "friends" who didnt give me anything back, that kind of "friendship" is just a load on you.



Yeah, but they are rare like hell and once you find em, hang on to them. Go for quality instead of quantity.

There are seducers (not sexually) and there are users. But we must understand that what we need and look for is love and affection, with a real deep knowledge of what we are and of what our existence is made of. This is difficult to grasp. There is always misunderstanding and equivocation. Moreover we, in our turn, are not "pleasers" (I am talking of AS people here). So the real friends we may have are cats and dogs.

Another thing that's troubling to me is big lapses in time between encounters.

Like you meet someone and get very involved with talking with them regularly - sometimes every day or at least a few times each week - and then if there is a lull where you don't talk at all for a long time..... how do you know what is going on?

I realize there are times when people just get out of touch - like relatives or if you meet someone at summer camp and only see them again the next year when you go back. I'm not talking about that kind of thing. I mean when you actually make friends with someone, you both talk or meet each other regularly and it seems this person is now a part of your life and then they are "too busy" or say they'll get back to you or they just don't return emails....

I wait and make friendly contact again in a week or two even tho I'm fearing that they've blown me off I try to sound upbeat and casual and ask how they're doing. If no reply, I may try again in a month or so and if no reply, I feel like that's that. I've been ignored or blown off and they just don't care and can't be bothered. That's really depressing, and it puts me back into a sort of mourning period and I rethink it all but there's nothing I can do - I know better than to bother them further or beg for their contact or something,

What is disturbing is when that same person will resurface after a year, or two or more and sound very friendly and happy to contact me and want to "catch up"

Does this happen to anyone else? Do you just smile and go along with the "catching up" as if nothing had happened? I can't do it. I feel like I can't trust this person at all anymore, and I'm very suspicious of their motives - why contact me now? What is it that they want to get from me? It's not friendship because they totally ignored me before.

Is a person who is in and out of your life, undependable and only contacts you when THEY are bored or THEY want something, a friend? Most NTs that I've known seem to think this is okay.

I have terrible problems with maintaining contact with people...
I'll go for months without talking to a friend, and the longer it's been, the more hesitant I am to contact them for fear that they'll be angry with me.
I've noticed that NTs do this too sometimes, so it's not an uncommon problem.

And also, I noticed in your original post you concluded with saying that you guess NTs just smile and then turn around and stab their friends in the back; this is not a trait of NTs, this is a trait of someone who is rude, NT or not. All of my friends are "NT" (I wouldn't call them typical, but they don't have ASD), and they don't do this. A few of them talk behind the backs of people they don't like, but they don't act nice to those people's faces, they simply cease contact with them. They only do the "behind the back" talking because it's more polite to complain about someone when they're not present than to talk badly about them to their face. And if they don't like someone enough to talk badly about them, they just end the friendship. I prefer that, it's honest.

Definitely. My (apparently now former) best friend is NT and we've spoken via MSN and Facebook message pretty much every day for the last year and a half. Now he has a live-in girlfriend he decided he didn't want to use MSN as much anymore. Which is fair enough, he has someone around that he wants to spend a lot of time with. But he's stopped being online at all except to check his Facebook once a day but hasn't replied to any of the messages or texts I have sent him for a week. I even saw him night before last and he told me that "online communication sucks" - given that's what our friendship is built on I guess that the relationship that we had is now either going to change radically or shatter into little pieces. I don't think I need to explain to this audience how I feel about that unwanted change and the sudden loss of someone dear to me.

I think this issue, while admittedly ongoing, has taught me that ultimately people, or at the very least NTs, ultimately don't care about their friends - friends are just people you happen to enjoy being around for that specific circumstance until someone better comes along. I say "at the very least NTs", because I came to this forum today after an absence of two years (I've started a new account) to be around people who think the same I do about loyalty and friendship, and I have duly found this thread and the numerous people who have had similar things happen to them.

But ok, so I have lost my friend, or am in the process of losing him, and our friendship will now become "superficial", as someone wrote earlier. I can accept that, and live with it, even if I don't want it to happen. But what then? I don't want superficial friendships, I want friends who are honest, loyal, and don't just give up on you because you fall out or something changes in your life. But how on earth do I do that? Is it possible? My friendships just seem to last a year or two and fall apart as soon as someone considers it temporally convenient to lie to me. I am mostly high functioning but I really don't understand
why NT people do this to each other.

More along the line that EVERYONE initially forms a bond in the search to get something they want...even if it's just companionship.

Some are "users" who feel no emotional need to give...only take, and while it looks like AS, it's not.

Someone with AS does not reciprocate because they don't understand it is needed, but if someone with AS comes to understand the need for it, they WILL do it.

Someone who is more pathological (sociopath) uses because they care nothing about the needs of others, but they do know that reciprocation is expected.

People with AS care about others but are inclined to never consider the needs of others. Sociopaths know others have needs but think no other need but their own matters.

People with AS might hurt someone else, but not intentionally. A sociopath doesn't care if they hurt others, so long as they are satisfied with the outcome.

kit920, I'm sorry your friend has turned away from you. I know exactly how that feels. It's confusing and it seems totally rude because it seems he's saying "I'm purposely NOT going to the only place where I can talk with YOU" which seems insulting and rude but he may not even understand that or realize it.

His girlfriend may have influenced this decision - maybe he was friends online with old girlfriends and she was jealous or something. The problem is that he's letting his world get influenced and changed by this girl for now, and how long will that last? Most guys do it for awhile but then rebel and there's a falling out or break up and at that time he'll be looking for his old friends again, most likely you.

I got mixed up, with a person like that. People like that aren't worth it.

I think that the main reasons for friendships ending or fading out, is that the people involved do not meet each other's expectations. With many people, and perhaps aspies and NTs, too, it is a case of not really matching each other and each others' needs. An NT will expect a friend to behave in a certain way (very often: being able to be a good listener without fading out, listening for hours about details concerning the friend's partner, job, etc., telling them white lies when need be, support you no matter what etc.), and if the person does not meet these expectations, the NT will ofte not find it natural to continue the friendship, or let an acquaintance develop into a friendship. And likewise, an aspie will expect a friend to behave in a certain way, too.
Since I am not an aspie, I cannot say anything about what aspies expect from a friend. It is perhaps exactly the same as an NT expect. The problem is that NTs and aspies generally has different ways of expressing and interpreting what true friendship entails. It's like a Russian should speak Russian with a Norwegian who does not understand the language and vice versa. That's why I guess that NTs often find true friends among NTs and aspies find true friends among aspies. Intra-group understanding comes easier than inter-group understanding.

That said, acquaintances are not so bad to have either. Personally, I have few close friends, a few more not so close friends, and heaps of acquaintances.