A question.

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I've been making progress in the friend-making department, having gained about 9 friends this year. Three are people from the anime club I attend after school, 4 are friends I made through attending class with one of them and I now play Yugioh with them nearly every Saturday, 1 I met at the place where I now play Yugioh, and one is an aspie in 9th grade who my ESE teacher introduced to me because he has virtually no friends. I am much less introverted this year and tend to entertain my friends with my random/critical sense of humor that stems from my great knowledge of things. However, I get a bit usnsure if I'm too pushy with one friend in particular, my classmate Daniel.

Daniel was the first friend I made this school year. He too has few friends and can be quite introverted. I knew that he used to play Yugioh with two kids about a year older than him, Taylor and Jeremiah who I'd taken note were his only school friends. I had met Jeremiah and Taylor in the 9th grade in the anime club and they were acquaintances of mine, but not what I would consider friends. When I was in the tenth grade, I used to notice that they would play yugioh during lunch, and as much as I wanted to join them and as much as my friend Judy would encourage me, I could never get myself to approach them. Stress made me spend my school year at home and through computer forums, I kind of developed my social skills. So by the time I was in 12th grade(this year), I wasn't too shy anymore and I knew how to blend in.

On the first day of this year, I was delighted to find that not only was I to attend first period with my friend Howard(My neighbour who has either severe AS or HFA, I was told he was diagnosed AS, but I sometimes think he's probably HFA), but with Daniel. I knew his only friends were off to college, so I tried to befriend him by asking if he played Yugioh still. At first he just nodded when I asked him questions, he was silent but made gestures(my friend later told me that she has never seen him talk with people other than his two friends). One, day when I asked him what type of deck did he use, he finally started talking to me and requested if I wanted to speak with him at lunch to which I accepted. He ate lunch in his learning strategies teacher's room by himself. We soon went beyond talking about Yugioh and found we both like a lot more.

since mid-september, I've been eating lunch with him and since late september, I've been going with him, his brother, and his friends to a comic store 20 miles away where yugioh tournaments are held every saturday. I finally became friends with Taylor(who has epilepsy) and Jeremiah(who has ADHD and Split personality disorder in large groups). I also befriended Daniel's 13 yo brother Brandon who's just as nerdy as his brother. I do a great job socializing when I engage in conversation with multiple people because I don't have to be very active, I can jump in and out. But when I speak one on one with someone, I'm quite bad, especially since I don't always have something interesting to say, and I get afraid I talk to much, but then Daniel isn't the most vocal person because he's shy around people he's not totally used too like me. I know he know's I have AS because I've mentioned it once or twice in passing to him and his friends, but he's never said anything about why he's quiet, which leads me to believe either he has AS but doesn't talk about it(least likely), he was never diagnosed but has it(possible), or has something else that is responsible for his introverted personality(most likely).

Now, the reason I wrote this wall of text. Sometimes, I feel like I forced my friendship upon him. Usually, I become friends with someone by accident. Last time I forced my friendship upon someone, the person later on told me he hated me and that he never was my friend and that I forced him to become my friend and he only wanted to be nice and follow along. That event made me really insecure in regards to the proactive approach of making friends, and now I sometimes think that I'm in the same situation with Daniel for some odd reason. I don't know why I sometimes think that why, but I sometimes do. What do you guys think?

This doesn't sound like you "forced" anything. You asked if he was interested in Yu-Gi-Oh, he said yes, and you hit it off through a common interest.

In the past, how exactly have you "forced" a friendship on someone? IMO, that isn't really possible--the other person has the right to reject you. If they don't, then the friendship they later claim they didn't want is at least partially their own doing.

I usually don't think it's forced either. He's really just a quiet person, but when he has something to say, he does, but he talks more around his other friends because I assume he's more used to them.

In regards to my other friend, Sammy, one day, I approached his house, already being sort of acquainted with him since he was my classmate in 5th grade and the first person I talked to when I first enrolled at his elementary school a week after school had started. My major AS symptoms had really begun to manifest around that time in the form of stress attacks and such and I was suddenly faced with the fact that everyone found me strange and left me alone. Sammy was nerdy and rode my bus, so my mom got me to go to his house and knock on the door, something I really think is a stupid way to become friends with someone in retrospect. We seemed to have fun with each other, at least as far as my memories tell me. But by 7th grade, we kind of stopped talking and the next year, he even started to tell me that he hated me and that I used to stalk him and that he was only trying to be nice. I didn't stalk him, unless that's the word he chose for whenever I'd head on over to his house or the method in which we became friends. I don't hold a grudge on him anymore, but at the time it really, really hurt and it made me really insecure about making friends. I get irrationally afraid that it'll happen again.

I see what you mean--in essence, your mother encouraged you to "force" it. The current situation is completely different. I don't think you have to worry.