I get depressed seeing how great other people's social lives

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On nites out and on Facebook, I see certain groups of people hanging out, talking, having fun and having the real closeness that you have with real friends, knowing that they are your friends for life. That and also knowing and being able to talk to aquinatances in your local pub.

As for me, I barely have any friends due to my Asperger's and all my life I have had friends who have dropped me, drifted apart from, or they moved away.

All in all, they got tired of my quietness and weirdness. Now I have a friend who is slow and obsessed with boys so much she kind of stalks them and embaresses herself, which then is embaressing for me, a cousin friend with depression and literally goes in a dreamlike stance so much that sometimes she can forget the most simplest things like forgetting an item she bought in a shop, leaving it on the counter, another distant friend who tends to get annoyed over the smallest things and way too gossipy so you would be very wary around her, and two other Aspie people I could become mates with, except one is a male and wanted me to be his girlfriend even though we only talked for one day and became a bit dramatic and paranoid for my liking, and another who is nice but for 21 still have severe AS as she is very awkward in new situations and I can't imagine she would be the great one for the college social life because we are going to the same one, which i respect, but I would like experiance that myself before I get too old buy trying to know more people, but I can imagine that she can hold me back a bit. :/ I feel horrible even saying that.

I usually go out with my slow friend and we just bascially sit there and watch the world go by. She doesn't talk too much, except when she sees a guy she likes. :/ No one ever comes up and talks to us, and I don't do it because I go to her local pub and I dont know anyone (can't go to mine because nothing ever good happens at it, also I dont talk to much people there too) and she wouldn't dare since nearly every knows how much of a stalker s**t she is. :/

It just makes me sad seeing these girls having a great time and also these really good-looking guys (who are out of my league) hanging out and having fun. When it comes to guys the only ones that approach me are either ugly with perverted issues and other weird issues too.

I hate it more because I have a little sister who has all the positive opposites to my life, and has a great life.

I'm not sure whether I am asking for help or not, since I know the most common answer is "Be yourself" and that has got me nowhere. But I supposed I am just wondering is anyone is a similiar type of situation to mine? I suppose I just needed to get it off my chest about how I feel about this.

I don't think I have much advice to offer I'm afraid, but I know exactly how you feel because I'm the same. In fact, how you worded the title describes the way I feel pretty accurately, and as soon as I saw that I had to check the name of the poster who wrote it, because I thought it was something I might have wrote ages ago being bumped!

Anyway, I know strongly how you feel. I've wrote countless threads similar to this, and I think some people here are getting pretty sick of me posting about the same sort of thing, so I'm glad to see someone else has wrote something like this. I have 14 cousins, most are young adults around my age, and they are all neurotypicals and don't even have anything else different like dyslexia or anything. They all have average intelligence or higher, and all seem to be able to enjoy socialising and able to make and keep friends and go out and about in a crowd and enjoy life while they're young, and sometimes it makes me feel depressed. Even if I did go somewhere in a group of friends, I'll still be tagging along behind feeling shy and unsure of what to say and not feeling like part of the group. But my cousins have their own groups of friends and to them friendship is no concern (at the moment anyway).

I mustn't complain, I do have some friends, but I have the ''the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence'' attitude, so whatever I've got, I am always convinced that the next person has it better than me. I even compare my problems to other people's, and think that mine are worse than other's, even though that's not always the case. But I know NTs who bring on their problems themselves, where as things happen to me without me meaning for them to happen, which makes me feel just plain unlucky.

Also I'm an Aspie with a neurotypical attitude: ''it is important to have friends''. So whatever I may do, I want to have friends, even if it means doing something what I wouldn't normally do which in context could mean I will be popular (like having sex, getting drunk, et cetera), rather than focusing on real important things in life like building a career but having less friends because of it. I just can't help getting jealous of my cousins and seeing how good their social lives are. My mum is close to her siblings, who all have neurotypical kids, so she sees them a lot, so even if I don't see my cousins much, I've still got to hear about what they're doing. And I can't keep running away from my cousins all the time because it makes me look nasty, and I'm not the nasty type. But it just doesn't seem fair that I'm the only Aspie in an all-neurotypical family, I always thought that having so many relatives at least one other one would be on the spectrum, but nobody is. The fact is just too hideous to comprehend and I can't seem to find a way to accept it.

OK, I'm rabbling on now, so I'd better stop. Glad I can relate to you though. I think if I had another relative who even had something else wrong with them like Down's Syndrome or Mental Retardation or even ADHD, I might be a bit happier knowing that the family has a few diversities. But just ME having this social disorder of all disorders, and just MY parents being the only ones having to bring up a troubled child on the spectrum and suffering the heartache of their child not having any friends through school, really brings a dagger through my heart, especially them seeing their brother's and sister's children are all OK and did well in school and made friends and were generally happy, with only a few hiccups (since not every neurotypical's lives are perfect).

I can totally relate to this situation. For the longest time of my life, most of my friends had developmental disabilities, and one had an ASD. Most of these people weren't very aware of themselves or their behaviours, and as a result I often got annoyed by them and wished I had "normal" friends, whatever that is.

With the people you are having troubles with, particularly the boy-obsessed girl, they are likely not aware of how their behaviors make others feel. By bringing their troubling behaviors up in a way that respects who they are as a person (something like "I've noticed that you do X...when you do this, I feel Y"), they might be able to change them, or at least become mindful of when they are annoying you or others.

I have a a few (not piles, but a few) neurotypical friends. They are not the super social types...most of them are geeky and introverted. If you want to aim towards NT friends, don't pick the ones who are super social. They will be more likely to judge you in the long run.

The way I learned to truly connect with them is to observe them and then try and get on their level in terms of social skills. You don't have to be perfect at it, but if you really want to connect with them, you do have to sacrifice your self and your world a little. Focusing conversations onto them and asking them questions about themselves is a good way to connect.

I'm not saying NTs are better or that you really have to aspire to be like them, because the downfall is to sacrifice a lot of yourself. With the friends you have, I'm sure they at least have some things to offer to you, so you will need to pick your battles with them. This means not taking any of their behaviors personally but just seeing them as things they either can't help or might need to work on.

I can relate to part of Joe's story.

I've been "hiding" at/from family birthday parties because I don't want to have the "so how is your life" conversation with my "in my head" much more successful nieces/nephews (well cousins I suppose).

On the other hand, I feel myself slowly becoming more accepting of myself and the way I am and don't compare myself as much anymore.


It's like, 1. do you want relationships based upon something you don't really identify yourself with but forced yourself to be like because you wanted "something"
Or 2. do you keep yourself from getting this "something" completely because you feel your identity is too different from how "it should be" and don't even attempt.
Or 3. you can just be yourself, knowing that anyone or anything that happens positively towards you is because there's interest in -YOU-, and if nothing positive happens, at least the your situation is still better off than in 1 and 2, where the focus was on "everyone else" instead of -you and your needs/desires-.


I'm feeling much less negative towards my own situation once I started realizing my situation shouldn't be compared to "theirs" in the first place.

Come to Alabama. I'll take you out for a "night out" and we will have a blast. You'll meet great folks and have fun. Warning, sometimes my "nights out" are several days long.

I used to be just like you. Watching from the sidelines. Then I started noticing what kind of people actually jumped into the fray. They weren't always the 1. most sober or 2. most sane. So I thought to myself "What do I have to lose?" and jumped in myself. Granted, the people I was hanging with at the time were folks whose worst embarrassment wasn't that they were so drunk they pee'd the bed the night before but their line of credit at the liqour store was cut off by their parents.

But though, look at it this way. People always think we are wierd. ALWAYS. Play that s**t up to the nth degreen. Everybody has a "thing about them". Make that yours. In fact, embrace certain parts of it and go over the top with it. Think Warhol Factory back in the day. Develop quirks and expect people to be ok with them. Quiks, not wierd demands. And not that many either. Watch the reactions of others and see how far you canpush it.

Fake being outgoing. Fake being happy. Fake being "up for almost anything" "almost" being the operative word there, so you don't have to do things that will get you put in jail or expose you to STD's.

Put yourself at the center of the action and the attention. Talk about crazy stuff. Make puns and jokes. Expect them to understand and when they don't, laugh and explain them. That really, really does work. You'll get things like "OMG, how are you so smart?" or "OMG do you read books?". For real. I get that a lot from some friends. From others, it's expected to be smart and read books and there are a lot of in jokes. But those really aren't the fun friends. Well, one of mine is now, since she had the breakdown after the brain injury. The ex-psych who I grew up with and is two years younger than me but I met her when she was double promoted for the second time.

Anyway, loosen up, do what you always wished you could do, because know what? You can. I've done almost everything I've ever wanted to do. You can too.

_________________
I'm giving it another shot. We will see.
My forum is still there and everyone is welcome to come join as well. There is a private women only subforum there if anyone is interested. Also, there is no CAPTCHA.

The link to the forum is http://www.rightplanet.proboards.com

I can relate, I alway see people with their friends having a good time and texting each other. I began to question myself and wonder why I don't have that kind of relationship with people like others do.

Being depressed at other people's active social lives me is the main reason I closed my facebook account....

I get angry at people for having it so easy. Then I get angry at myself for getting angry at them.

As far as faking goes, stuff that.. If I can't be myself what's the point?

I did go out and join my cousins and their friends at the pub a few times to try and fit in and see what all the fuss is about, but I found it didn't really work out. My cousins dated eachother's friends, there were so many silly shenanigans happening among the group, and it all seemed like I was behind a glass wall. I understood what was going on and tried to join in by laughing and making appropriate eye contact and having a drink with them and having small talk, but I still got the impression that they thought I was too shy to understand what was going on, which I found rather patronising in a way, if you know what I mean. They all got involved with eachother on Facebook and added eachother as friends and posted plenty of pictures up of eachother, and I sort of felt I had to do all the work if I wanted one of them to add me on Facebook or take pictures of me, which I didn't do because I was worried I might just humiliate myself, being so there are so many complex rules with this sort of thing.

I find mixing with older people better anyway. It's a lot simpler, and I've actually made 2 friends with middle-aged people in one week, and that's more than what I make with my peers in a year!