how can I cope with maintaining friends?

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I dont have any friends, I get lonely sometimes but I find it very hard to maintain friendships or do whats needed to.

I find if I get a friend it makes me too stressed and I cant maintain it. How do I find the resourses with in myself to have the energy to maintain friendships.

how do I repair friendships when they go wrong or I annoy or upset the person.

I wish I knew the answers. I really do.

I have the same questions.

Same here.

yup. I don'know.

I'm working on this.

I do have one friend now, and she is very understanding, in general. But I had my first mini-meltdown with her a week ago after knowing her for a year. My therapist gave me some advice on what to say (explain why it happened, and tell her what I'm going to do in the future, and tell her that I really value her friendship.) In the past, I'd be too embarrassed and I'd never want to see her again.

The other thing is that I am being very, very careful not to:
A) Spend unusually high amounts of time with her; this way I am less likely to get overwhelmed and melt down.
B) Not call her or text her all the time. Perhaps only 1 or 2x/week.
C) Make sure that I am asking her questions about her and not only talking about myself.
D) Make sure not to get overly upset if she has to reschedule plans that we had. She's only human, and it happens. I can't take it personally that someone has an emergency to attend to.
E) Make sure that she is inviting me to go places also, so that it is not just one-sided. I try to match my invitations with activities that I know she would enjoy doing.
F) I offer to drive or buy food sometimes, so that she is not the one that is always driving. (Because of my housing situation, I can't really have her over.)
G) If she says something and I get offended, I am trying not to take it personally and ask her what she means.
H) If she says something I disagree with, I am trying to say things like, "that's interesting," or "I never thought of that before," instead of telling her what I really think.

It is *hard* though. It takes a lot of effort. But she is a really nice person.

Your list is really good and I applaud your effort.

I've done most of those things and when it comes to these:

G) If she says something and I get offended, I am trying not to take it personally and ask her what she means.
H) If she says something I disagree with, I am trying to say things like, "that's interesting," or "I never thought of that before," instead of telling her what I really think.


As far as G) goes, if I'm offended I usually say that I am right out. It's hard to not take things personally or be all cool and laid back about it. If I could do that I'd be someone else.

and H) I've done exactly that with people but you end up being someone else once again - not you. You end up having no opinion, or being boring, or flat, or you bottle up so much that finally you explode in a meltdown all over the person and then it's REALLY over.



these are the things I don't have answers to.

Here's a question - do you have any Aspie friends? If it's possible to hang out with other Aspie people in real life then you could be more open about your feelings and reactions and hopefully find they are more willing to overlook yours?

I don't, but I've been wondering if that's a better way to go. Altho aspies being in a group is like herding cats.... maybe it can be done?

I have an invite to an Asperger support group that meets tomorrow night and I've been stressing about it all day - go or not go. go or not go. go or not go.

Still can't make up my mind. It will mess up my routine for Thursday night and I'm not happy about that and I don't know anyone there and it's an hour drive (one way) from here. I have no idea.

I don't have any close friends, but I do find it difficult to stay in good standing with colleagues and acquaintances long-term. It'll seem like things are going well, but then I'll catch an unexpected frown or detect insincerity in the way they greet me, and realise I've failed to meet standards somehow. Most often it's probably them picking up on my reluctance to socialise, and interpreting it as a sign of apathy rather than shyness.

The best I manage to do is just keep relationships at a distance, which sort of happens automatically with me anyway. The closer you get to a friend, the more expectations mount up, so remaining no more than a friendly acquaintance is a little more manageable.

I applaud the list as well.

I have a similar problem as earthmom with H). I had a friend a couple of years ago, and I bent over backwards trying to make sure I didn't offend her by blurting out my opinions when they disagreed with hers. But the amount of stress it generated was overwhelming. So was the stress of trying to figure out if I was bothering her, or if, conversely, I was being too distant. She lived nearby but we usually talked by IM because talking on the phone was too stressful for me. Sometimes we got together in person and once when I asked her if she was having a good time or if she wanted to go home, because I couldn't tell, she got kind of insulted, like I was accusing her of not being candid.

I don't get easily offended, so that wasn't much of an issue, but I have no tolerance for it when someone is intentionally mean or snide, and when a mutual friend/acquaintance was awful to me, my (I thought) good friend was indifferent to my suffering and was completely fine with the actions of the mean person. I tried talking to her by email (I couldn't talk in person because I couldn't stop crying) and she was just really annoyed with me and wasn't interested in what our mutual acquaintance had done. The more I tried to talk to her, the more annoyed she became, and the more I was hurt by her indifference. I had to break off the friendship because it was so painful I couldn't stand it. I was heartbroken and still am.

I know this sounds like the description of something that happened between pre-teens, but I am in my 40s. She even said to me, "We're all adults here," as in I should get over it and stop whining. But all I knew was that I was overwhelmed with pain. She had no idea, even though I told her. I think she thought I was trying to create drama or turn her against the friend/acquaintance, and she just didn't believe my suffering could be genuine.

The idea is not to *not* be ourselves, but not to be rude to other people. You don't have to tell them that you LOVE what they just said or the things that they are interested in. You just shouldn't tell them that it's stupid, or that you hate it, or otherwise insult them.

For example, I was watching TV the other day, and on the show, one of the characters asked someone he just met if he liked surfing. Now my natural response might be, "No way! People in wetsuits look so stupid!! !!" If I say that, then while I am telling him that I don't like surfing, I'm also insulting him and something he likes. He'll probably end the conversation very quickly and never talk with me again. He might even tell other people there that I'm rude.

Instead the character on the TV show just said, "Oh, I just surf the Internet." So he told a joke, AND let the other person know that he doesn't like surfing. No one was offended, and his opinion got across. If he wanted to continue the conversation with the surfer, he might say, "what are your favorite beaches?" And now the other person will keep talking. Then to segue onto something you might want to talk about, you could say, "Although I don't surf, I love reading books on the beach. I'm reading this book by XXX right now and it's really good." Now you are talking about books, AND you're letting the person know that you would go to the beach with them, you just wouldn't surf.

The general idea is to be less impulsive when asked something. People are just trying to be friendly, but if I'm not careful, I just blurt out the first thing that I am thinking, which 95% of the time would be the wrong thing to say. Of course, this is really easy to type on the Internet, but a lot tougher to do in person.

(edited to add something)

Great advice, athenacapella! I love the "surf the internet" quote...will have to remember that one.

I used to really have a problem with just blurting out what was on my mind and making the other person feel insulted. Sometimes I would realise that I had been insensitive and wish I could take it back. I like if someone told me that they liked and album, if I hated it I would say that I hated it. I wouldn't do that now. I would be more careful to consider how the other person feels. These days I listen more than talk to avoid saying the wrong thing. I also obsess over how to respond to text messages and emails to make sure that I say the right thing because it can be so easy to misunderstand a text message.

You have just explained what happens in my head. I do the exact same thing!

I'm pretty good about not blurting stuff out, unless I'm feeling really stressed, but I find that it's much more subtle than that, and how to be subtle is very difficult. If I'm not going to say what I think, then I have to come up with something else to say, and that's very hard. I try to say something bland but it just comes out sounding like a lie, and the other person feels insulted or patronized. It's just hard to fill the gaps in the conversation with jokes or platitudes, they don't just come into my head. It all becomes very stressful, and then you just fall apart...