How can I retain a friendship with an older friend?

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Hi,

What is the best way that I can retain a friendship with someone who is, say 25+ years older than me?

She is a friend at my local college and I would like to have a meaningful (Non-sexual obviously) relationship with her, the problem is I don't know how to tell her how I feel without coming across inappropriate. I am asexual and have very few friends, so I am worried that when I leave my college I will lose contact with her and be completely alone/isolated. I feel like all I ever do is come across as inmature to her. She knows I have autism (Aspergers) but that doesn't help in scenarios where I fall apart emotional around her.

She has sent emails to her coworkers not knowing how to handle me in a professional way, should I risk telling her that I would like to be friends in the long run? Or should I just leave her alone and risk being alone myself?

i have a friend on the spectrum who is 29 years younger than me. we hang out at least once every 2 weeks and i would be broken hearted if our friendship were to fade. we also met in a school setting and he ended up living in my house for 5 months while in transition from family to college. is your friend actually a friend or is she a professional who works with you as part of her job?

I am not quite sure how to respond to your immediate situaion. I would use trepedation in this situation, I see early factors that maybe this person sees your advances of friendship as unwanted. At best it sounds like I would keep the situation as purely professional, or at most, I would have a conversation with her that you wold like to have a mentoring relationship with her.

To answer the question at hand about having friendships with people 25+ years earlier than you, I have a lot of experience with this subject. I have many friends from my church, and from my civic work that are as much as 50+ years older than me. Again, I see it as a mentoring friendship, someone to talk to to about lifes circumstances, and the direction that life takes. These friendship have been very rewarding in this regard, as in some ways I have interests of a person much older than my age. As you get older, age means less and less in a friendship.

Yeah trying to figure this out has been my problem, we have eaten lunch together and we have brought small gifts back and forth. She seems nice and caring but her emails to other people on campus are sometimes different, she seems to complain to her co-workers and supervisor about my problems. It is disturbing to me how she talks about me behind my back but then becomes nice to my face.

I am not sure how to take this and I am receiving mixed signals, BTW I know about the emails cause of my school's therapist, ADA services and so on.

I guess what I am asking is how do I approach this situation? is there a safe way to describe how I feel without having anxiety and without the feeling of being stupid afterwards?

EDIT: However, she could want to be friends and simply complain to other people when she sees where I may have offended others as part of her job - I just don't know

>BTW I know about the emails cause of my school's therapist, ADA services and so on.

Wow, I can't imagine how that's appropriate that they told you about those emails. Were they trying to warn you, I wonder.

Apart from that it's like any other friend, I suppose -- a crapshoot. Don't worry about the age thing. You're an adult. You can tell her you'd like to keep in touch. YOu can ask her out for coffee or some college event of interst. She, of course, can say no, and that's your answer. As someone who has always had friends older or younger, I say don't worry about the age part at all.

Are you an adult?
If not, in the USA, the culture is saturated with the idea
that friendships between adults and non-adults are
inappropriate and assumed to be sexually abusive.

And then there is the excessively complex concept of
sexual harassment in jobs which is supposed to protect
female employees from abuse of power from their boss
but has uttery ridiculous unintended consequences for
aspies who have no such power to abuse but instead
get abused because of it.