Young autistic people and the aquaintance/friend divide

Post Reply New Topic

Am I the only one who thinks this way or are young autistic adults quicker to see people they get on with as friends rather than aquantainces as opposed to neurotypicals? I've only learnt about the divide recently and was shocked to hear a NT say that even the people in my year at school were only aquaintances rather than friends when I was in contact with them a year or two ago on a social networking site. My opinion on that is that the people in your year at school who you were friends with when you were all still at school are your friends long after school.

An acquaintance is someone you know on a casual basis who you are friendly with.

A friend is someone you know on a more personal, platonic level who you are also friendly with.

You would generally have more interaction with a friend, know them better, and share details of your life with them that you would generally not with an acquaintance.

I'm 37 and I still confuse the two.

i get abit confused knowing if someone is my 'friend' or not. i dont really get where the line is between friend and aquaintence. like on my birthday this year i was suprised when a certain person gave me a card with 'special friend' on, rather than just an ordinary card(or none at all)

You us the phrase "the people in your year" indicating your entire graduating class.

Then later you specify "in your year who you were friends with"

These are two different sets of people (unless you are the most socially gregarious person I've ever heard of).

That said, just because you were close with someone in high school does not necessarily mean you will be close friends forever. In fact, I'd say its quite rare for that to happen. People have different lives, that go in different directions and they drift apart. A tiny handful of the people you're close to when you're young might still be considered 'friends' many years later, most will still be 'friendly', but hardly ever see each other and spend no time together.

And what are called 'friends' on social networking sites like FaceBook are almost exclusively 'acquaintances' not friends. That's why its called 'networking' - you're not expected to be close to all those people, they're just people you know that you might give a shout out to if you were looking for a job, or trying to find a reliable mechanic to fix your car.

IME most of the time, they're people you went to school with who barely knew your name back then and never gave you the time of day - and that's just what they do on FB - send you a 'friend' request and then ignore you, just like they always did.

That is SO true!! I finally went through my Facebook and deleted all the people I never really got on with from high school. I was really surprised when some of them wrote to me and requested I add them back, like they were hurt that I deleted them. I had no idea they actually liked me.

Also, I have a friend request that's just been sitting there unanswered by me, because it completely confounds me why the one girl in my class who was the absolute meanest to me would possibly want to "friend" me after TWENTY years out of high school. I keep thinking that she's either so stupid that she forgot she was such a jerk, or that she musn't have anything else to do with her sorry life except to keep picking on me. Because if she wanted to do something unheard of, like apologize, she could have just messaged me. We're all almost forty for heaven's sake. Leave me alone already. LOL

My confusion has always been with people who I lump into the acquaintance category -- coworkers, schoolmates, etc. -- doing things that belong in the "friend" category, like giving a birthday present or telling me more about their personal lives than I really need to know. And then, I have people who I have moved into the friend category -- usually because of things like the above -- who I later find out only considered me an acquaintance or even a rival with whom they had to get along. It's not that there are categories that confuses me, it's that people seem to want to dance back and forth over the lines between them. When I was leaving my last job, one coworker -- with whom I'd been on friendly terms until she stabbed me in the back, professionally -- told me to make sure and send her an invitation to my daughter's wedding!

This is why I hate the entire concept of networking; it seems to me to be inherently dishonest. Why on earth would I want to pretend to like and care about someone I don't, just because they might prove useful to me in the future? It hurts me greatly when people do that to me and I don't ever want to hurt someone else that way.

Agreed... I don't think I'll ever get why people do this... and it seems to me that women are inherently more like this than men, but that's just my take.

Little relevance, but I liked this illustration:

If you are sitting in a cell in jail some day, a good friend is the one who will come bail you out. But your best friend is the one who will be sitting next to you saying… “Wow that was fun!”

I do think real friends are rare.