I Find Socializing Easy (Question For Fellow Aspies)

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For my entire life, It's been easy for me to make friends, strike up intelligent conversations about our interests, and talk about life. I don't see why most of us find that so hard to do. I have a jackload of friends and, "A Life" as some people like to call it. The other night, I went to a Dank Sinatra concert at a bar and one of the staff members and I talked for an hour and a half before the show about metal bands such as King Diamond/Mercyful Fate, Meshuggah, Underoath, Fear Factory, Morbid Angel, and jackloads of other bands like that. I find making friends and socializing easy, comfortable, and compelling. Only problems I have is interpreting sarcasm correctly on occasion, and not understand a person's true implication of something.

Let me ask the fellow aspies here. What is it you find hard about socializing? I can't relate.

Thank you(:

I usually don't know what to say to people, and even when I think I do, I get brushed off.

Sometimes when I want to say something I'm not sure of what to say, but I find socializing somewhat easy.

Easy? Heck no
Comfortable? Yes

I like socializing with others, but it's hard for me to socialize right. Which brings another problem in itself - having a desire to socialize with people I know I can't socialize with, and finding friends to socialize with who is OK with me.

It's okay for me, it's just my delayed maturity and control and whatnot, but that's not just socializing, it affects control over life in general.

I've become a lot better at judging distance and other's emotions. I'm not perfect at it, yet, but I'm not really that childish anymore, and I can judge appropriateness better.

Also, it's the same with me, deathsign.

My issue is that I can't talk to people I don't find interesting, I only talk about things and start conversations when I want an answer that actually matters to me. I am fine with people when I am in an activity situation where there is something useful to discuss, but sitting around waiting small talk is a nightmare for me if I am not interested I have nothing to say, however small talk is often a prerequisite for meaningful conversation.

My other problem is that I can make friends with people in situations such as school or work and feel as though they like me, however I never see them outside of the situation I often encounter them in due to a difference of interests between myself and some people my age, the difference is that they enjoy things such as going to pubs and clubbing all night I see these not as activities but something not dissimilar to sitting in a waiting room this is worsened because of the fact I do not want to drink ever as I am fearful of what I would be without self restraint, I would much rather engage in a sporting activity or watching movies and television. This problem means that I have even less in common with females.

It seems as though I appear drastically different dependent on conversation topic or activity, I range from, presumably, appearing shy and boring, to passionate confident and interesting.

I wouldn't say easy however overall i am fairly comfortable to have a conversation with most people.

I thought the same as you at 15.

Mind you I wasn't diagnosed. After I got diagnosed, I just ignored my diagnosis for about two years, as psychologists misdiagnosed me, and even my diagnosis of NVLD came with a sorta misdiagnosis of schizoid/schizotypal. I'm always quite outgoing really, and I don't really have social anxiety per se, it's just once I hang around people long enough, they realize how weird I am and all my quirks and stuff, and then they shy away. I used to just think that it was the other people at fault, or not realize why my AIM friends decided to drop off the face of the Earth on me one day. So I go through periods of social confidence where I'm like "Yay everyone likes me" and then later after I find out people don't like me, I get "shy" or whatever, then the process repeats. So, I don't have any real anxiety about like, I don't know, walking up to people and talking to them, it's just once they find out how weird I am they no longer wanna be my friend.

Even in your situation, you're probably misreading social cues. Most people don't like being in 1.5 hour long conversations. I used to think if a person kept talking to me, they liked me, but now I know they're much of the time just doing it to be polite. At one point in my life, I had a big social group and a bunch of "friends" but then once they found out I listen to girly Japanese pop all day, after I rambled on to them about how car engines work for an hour, I found out they didn't really like me. I also found out some was like, sympathy friendship, not because they actually liked me.

So the ideas that Aspergers could be solved if you just "Get out more!" or be less shy is delusional. As a kid I was like the least shy person in my family. I'd walk up to like anyone and talk to them. But I didn't realize I was extremely weird. So yes, I can talk to people, that's no issue. The problem is, do people actually want to talk to me? That's my struggle. The biggest problem in Aspergers/etc is self image. How you see yourself isn't necessarily how the world sees you. After getting involved with a big social group, I thought I was a super extrovert outgoing cool person. But I wasn't.

So, be happy, and I don't know. Maybe you are good socially. I don't know. But at 15, I thought there was nothing wrong with how I socialized, too, now I know I was extremely wrong.

I can understand the perspective that you are coming from, however, you are inaccurate.

My issues stem from lack of spontaneous interaction and high levels of anxiety somewhere mixed in. Its really hard to explain but its pretty much innate for umm 99% of the population. When I walk into a social situation where there are some acquintances and strangers, can be absolutely anywhere I often dont know who to talk to, the timing of social initiation, how to say hi, who to say hi too, how to comment sporadically into a conversation. NTs socialize often in groups with bits and pieces of information often. I just don;t naturally have that ability? Even when you take the anxiety out of the equation which I have tried through alcohol or this anxiety med I was on once. I just don't naturally socialize, the only difference is I'm fairly calm, enjoying the enviorenment, and acting as a contented observer whereas normally I am very anxious and look stressed.

I get too anxious when I talk to people, even when I have something to say. Plus I am really not that interesting of a person so I can be a bit boring in conversations and they end up dying after a few sentences back and forth.

Most of the time I socialize fine with people I know, one-on-one. With people I don't know I get anxious and can't think of anything to say. When in groups I get confused and can't figure out what to do or think clearly. In groups of people I don't know, well...I can survive for 3 hours now. I used to break down after 20 minutes, so that's progress. But I don't seem to be getting much better at the actual social skills.

I've been told that real friends were the ones to initiate contact out of their own, without you having to initiate contact all the time. So if you count only those that initiate contact towards you then you will realise how little that is. I too sometimes wonder if NTs have the same amount of friends as I have and they are just not as hung up about, or perhaps, tired of making constant social contact.

Or is that we think the contact is pointless when we don't achieve the end goal and that is to make real friends instead of acquaintances.