Becoming MORE isolated as an adult?

Post Reply New Topic

My Aspie support group meets once a month, too. It sucks. But we have tried to start a lunch group on another day of the month, and it has met twice. Maybe your group can try this?

Yes. I had friends as a child, friends as a teenager and throughout my twenties i've only had 2 aquaintances. I've spent my twenties as a miserable shut in.

I must be the opposite of every one. I have actually gotten less isolated as I have gotten older. I was more of a loner during childhood. I also notice that the isolation/ wanting to be alone ebbs and flows through life. I am a person who gets out, sometimes it can be a bit much, so I back out, sometimes too much.

I have also found that building a social "routine" also helps with isolation. It also gives me something to look forward to. I look forward to Sunday service at church, but for the socialization that I get before and after the service. Same goes for the book club and political committee that meets monthly.

Yes, more isolated as an adult from the "outside", meaning outside of my husband and kids. My husband makes it easier for me in so many ways by going to the stores and picking up / dropping off my son at school. We just calculated that I haven't left the house/yard in about 9 days and that is not unusual.

I just don't understand how it's possible to stay inside for 9 days, even 2 days is a lot. It's lonely where I am so I go out every day without exception. Don't think I've spent 24 consecutive hours in my room since many months ago, maybe even 2 years ago.

That doesn't mean I have any more friends than anyone else though. Dozens of acquaintences but I never see them more than once a week. They get to know each other more on a daily basis but I am always as much of a stranger as I was the first time I met them. I guess I just don't know what to do.

How often to call people without harassing them?
What to talk about every day to them without being overbearing?
What have I to offter that would cause them to make an effort to like me?
How to have an impact on their lives enough for them to have time for me?

Lots of questions but no breakthrough as yet. There's something I'm missing but I just don't know how to find it. Every answer I find is really just another question.

It's a theory I've read that aspies have friends when they're younger because children, even in high school, have greater opportunity to develop friendships and less expectation for what is involved for a friendship. It seems to make some sense.

I consider myself disappointing as a friend. I don't contact people as much as I should. My best friend is someone who others have found disappointing. We seem very compatible and when we get together, it's like we haven't missed a beat. It's like we have been talking every day. There's a comfort there. I still don't know if I'm her best friend. There's people who have been in her life longer than me and I would guess they're more important to her than me but I don't know for sure. I can only speak for how important she is to me and I think she understands that. On the other hand, she might have the same confusion that I do.

I'm disappointed in people, too. They say mean things or demonstrate that they don't understand me. It's just harder to be friends with people now. I really need people. I'm a extrovert. I get my energy from being around people. I want to talk with people, share a bottle of wine, and have a good evening. But I'm so sick of people being people that I wonder if it's best to just alienate yourself from the world.

I know what you mean. I have basically given up on lots of people. Now I take whatever they say with a grain of salt. I have lost count of the times that I thought I had found a friend, only to find that she was laughing at me behind my back! Or I got thoroughly misunderstood, which was even more frustrating. One thing that I found I can tolerate fairly well, is a games based meet-up that my boyfriend and I attend. Some of the same people show up on a regular basis, and while I wouldn't expect to make any solid friends there, we have fun together, lots of laughs, and I come away feeling that I had a good time.

I know of a meet up group that meets here in Buffalo but I don't think I will be attending it. I have a feeling if I meet other people with Aspergers it will allow me to see how other people see me. This makes me a little nervous do to the fact it could cause me to have even more social anxiety when I am among the NTs knowing just what they sataring at. Also I would become depressed seeing Aspies who are doing better than or sad for the ones doing worse than I am if that is possible. I tend to over think things though.

yes my isolation slowly increased through high school and college, so that when i finally moved out on my own, i had no friends to help me. and now that i have been on my own for 3 years now, i can see where my life is headed if i dont try to make changes/sacrifices/or just get lucky and friends/girlfriends just starting popping up like daisies. i enjoy my time alone, etc so as my introverted ass needs to shutdown after a day of work/or a day of socializing. and with my need for a routine/expectation of my days, that sometimes the isolation does truly hit me hard. i have done two meet up groups who both essentially were made up of people who were 10 to 15 years older than me so i just gave up on them after awhile. making an effort with this issue is such a pain in the ass. so who the hell knows what to do about it. thats why im thinking it would be good for me to get out of my state and start fresh somewhere else. but i more than likely wont due to family obligations. so im stuck in this miserable state and living in a city that looked good from far away, but up close its just another miserable mid-western hell.

I tried the geographical cure to break my isolation. At first, I thought I was doing well, but soon ended up just as isolated as before, perhaps even worse because I knew people back in PA. Here in Florida, most people network through religion which leaves me out in the cold, since I don't care for religion. I can't see myself joining a church and all that it entails, in hopes that I will make a few friends. I actually tried joining a religion for that reason a few years ago, and when the novelty wore off, I was just as alone as before. I couldn't become a hypocrite just because I would likely have a lot of company doing so.

yeah for a good year and a half i had converted to as close as a believer as ever and felt like i had this brand new community to make friends in, however, after all my questions and the answers given still didnt throw away my fundamental doubt of it all, i converted back to being agnostic. i just couldnt keep up the charade of going through the motions of fake believing and just being more miserable being someone who i wasnt and being around others at times where i just wanted to say "this is f*****g BS!". its funny even when i joined an atheist/agnostic meetup group, i still didnt get a good vibe with most of them, so i abandoned them as well. sure there were some good intellectual conversations filled with great insight/knowledge/and passion but overtime it seemed that a lot of the people in the group were just looking to hang out and drink and not really have any need or want to have those philosophical/spiritual/moral conversations. andbeside that, most of them were not very interesting when they were sober. so who am i and how am i going to get along with others and have that elusive "understanding" between us, i have no idea. and im not sure if i'll ever get it right.

Agreed! My boyfriend is an atheist, and I am more comfortable discussing things like this with him than most so called religious people!

Same here. I was very disappointed to find, that after a few stimulating conversations, people were basically not seeking the answers that I was. And there was a lot of husband chasing that really annoyed me, since these women assumed that I had joined the religion for the same reasons that they did.

Yes this would be me. Funny as I was just thinking about this.

As a young child it was difficult for me to make friends but i normally had one or two other kids I could talk to, who would play with me at recess. In high school again I could keep about 2-3 friends, I got some enjoyment out of talking with them and spending time with them. But as I got into adulthood I found it increasingly stressful to socialize with people and eventually it reached a tipping point where I decided it was not worth it. And when I do try to socialize, have fun, be one of the crowd, I am always slapped with a rude reminder of how bad my social skills are and/ or how off-putting I am to people for some reason.

Once I ventured out to join a conversation 3 neighbors were having. I tried interjecting the same comment 3 or 4 times over-- I thought it was a fairly funny, apropos comment-- but they acted like I was invisible. This happens to me so much in social settings it is ridiculous. It's like my voice is muted to other people.

When I got online I thought that a major obstacle-- my difficulty conversing-- could now be circumvented. I do find it a lot easier to type out my thoughts. But even online I found myself just making an idiot of myself. I think I'm finally coming to the realization that I am not meant to be a social person. I do have a handful of people whom I talk to and briefly socialize with outside of my family but it is extremely limited and I often wonder if even that is worth it. Thankfully I don't feel that lonely. I do get the desire to talk once in a while but I guess that's what message boards are for.

Wow I too tried joining a religion. I was not fully conscious of it at the time but in retrospect I realize it was to try to have an "instant community." Finally I would belong, "be someone," be defined socially, have a group I could "reach out to." I started to have doubts a few years in, and due to some bad social experiences, ended up abandoning it. I still struggle with what I believe or don't believe but I will never try to join a religion for social purposes again.

. how anyone goes into joining a religion as a way to find a romantic partner is beyond me. those types of people should just go to social dances which happen to occur at least around here at churches. f**k. how ironic. i could never go to a dance at a church and not feel totally weird-ed out that i might potentially blaspheme a "god" and i doubt these social dances would serve beer so what would be the point of it? its so much better to go to a club with low lights anyways!

I am maximally isolated all time.