Is it worth it to make/keep friends?

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Once more, Mona, you show how wise you are. I fully agree with all that you say here, and this approach has worked well for me.

One point that I would like to emphasise though is where you say "we need to find people who will find us interesting, not just vice versa" - while this is correct, I actually think the most important point for autistic people to understand is that if you find someone interesting then please try your utmost to find a way of expressing this - in any medium. Frankly, I am on the verge of giving up attempting to make friends with adult autistic people because of this repeated behaviour: they do not express an interest in or ask questions of me, they just absorb my knowledge, insights, attempts at caring and assistance with no reciprocity. I totally get this IRL and I can come across like that now that I have done a lot of hard navel gazing and asked for feedback from family on this, and it was hard to hear it but confirmed by my diagnosis report. It was incredibly hard to hear it TBH because I think I am actually a very caring and can be very empathetic in the right real life environment. But what really grates for me is that bizarrely for quite many ASDs this 'negative' behaviour also carries across into the online world. (I am a very different person IRL vs online when I can communicate quite eloquently and effectively but struggle IRL.)

I have a couple of close NT friends (both originated in shared interests and slowly grew from there) and that is healthy for me because they look out for me, raise my standards and motivate me, I learn from them, look out for them, they learn from me, we respect each other and enjoy humorous moments and memes from time to time. I don't have the energy for any more than two proper friends and can't see them IRL that often, but I do interact with them via messaging etc. several times a week. I get a lot out of these friendships. I have only ever in my life managed to get something close to that with one ASD person and I drifted away from him eventually because he never bothered to ask me anything about me. So I thought: why the hell should I be effectively subsidising this person. I get nothing back in return from them so I won't continue giving. It is about give and take, basically. Sorry for the rant but I really think more of us need to understand this because alleviating this issue could enable a friendship which may make a big difference to some lives. I hope it does because I truly believe it is in most of our best interests to have one friend that can look out for us and you can look out for them, a symbiotic relationship. I have done a huge amount of thinking on this topic and cried from realising some hard truths about things after checking with family and friends and reading my diagnosis report. I am sharing those insights here in the hope it helps some of you, even if just one of you reads and digests and applies this.

I'm sorry to hear of your frustration in this regard.

I suspect that a lot of us may be fearful of asking personal questions, lest we come across as too nosy. Also, a lot of us really dislike the perfunctory, insincere "How are you?" of standard Anglosphere small-talk. I suspect that many of us, therefore, might have difficulty figuring out how one would go about sincerely inquiring about someone else's well-being, avoiding both the extremes of coming across as nosy and coming across as insincere.

Here on Wrong Planet at least, it appears that some of us, at least, are at least passably good at consoling someone who has volunteered info about difficulties they are going through, even though many of these consolers may fail to ask questions.

I personally tend to ask more questions than most people here, mainly because I want to avoid giving bad advice or making an inappropriate attempt to console. I often ask for clarifications to make sure I really understand the situation.


Did you ever try sharing something from your own personal life with him, despite his lack of questions? If so, did he ever attempt to relate to it in any way, e.g. by sharing something similar from his own life, even if he didn't respond by asking questions?

Likewise, did you ever try sharing something from your own personal life with any other autistic person you ever tried to become friends with? If so, did they relate to it at all, or did they show that they cared at all, even if they didn't show it in your preferred way?

Or are you reluctant to share anything about your own personal life, even with close friends, except in response to a specific question? If so, perhaps that might help to explain why you feel so frustrated by a lack of questions?


I think it's important to consider more generally the question of how we show we care about another person. Autistic people may tend to do this differently from NT's, and some of us may fail to recognize genuine caring even from another autistic person.

Difficulty with NT-style "social-emotional reciprocity" is one of the defining traits of autism (according to the DSM 5). Obviously, "social-emotional reciprocity" of some kind is necessary in order to have a real friendship. But it doesn't necessarily have to take the same conversational form that it usually takes with NT's. So I think we need to consider what alternative forms of reciprocity we deem to be both feasible for ourselves and acceptable from others.

And we need to be able to communicate about this issue with each other, to help us avoid misunderstandings.

Nope. all my friends from school days who i considered best friends, either dropped off the bandwagon or tried to date me or vise versa and it caused a fissure between us.

I just have my parents and my Fiancé and my Therapist lol