Not letting me meet her niece

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I went to a birthday/Valentine's birthday celebration last night for a friend who also has autism like myself but unlike me she hasn't been working on skills to improve herself and can be quite immature. She has gotten really close to another friend of mine and seemed to favor him over all her other friends who were there last night. If he wanted to watch something she put it on. If I made a suggestion I got "It's my birthday! You don't run the show."

Later on that evening she and that friend sat together trying to facetime her niece who I had not yet met. She again snapped at me "You don't know her!" I asked if I could introduce myself and she said no because I did not know her. However, my other friend who she is close with met her before and he wanted to say hi.

I called her out about it last night because she had been just ugly and immature around me all evening as well.

She facetimed me this afternoon and told me that the reason why she did not feel comfortable having me talk to her niece was because she was scared that her brother who fathers her would be nasty to me. Evidently he's had a history of being really abusive to my friend along with looking at her like a lesser of a person. So they don't get along. She didn't want him to bully me as well. Yet she let our other friend talk to her because he had met my friend's brother and his family before. Yet he's autistic as well.

What are your thoughts?

You've become a social proxy of sorts - be careful, though I do think you might develop a better report with your friend if you're able to help a bit.

How am I a proxy?

Just means you got pulled in on account of your non-biased perspective.

As in not really looking at the big picture?

Yeah...I dunno...I usually go by people's first reaction.

Does your friend have kids of her own? It could be that she's overprotective of her and thinks she's being a good aunt by keeping too many people from meeting her. I have friends who make a big deal out of not cursing around my son or talking to him in the exaggerated baby voice. It's kind of the same "I'm On Patrol" attitude.

The thing with the brother sounds like a hasty excuse to me. Like maybe she didn't know herself why she was being mean about it so she found a reason?

I guess if I were you I would either let it go and not mention it again, or say, "I'd like to meet your niece and her family if there's ever a good time." Then you're kind of making it clear that you're just trying to get to know her family but it's all up to her.

1. She is not even close to being mom material at this point and let alone is she married. Rather she is an adult with moderate autistic traits along with being socially and emotionally at the level of a 10-12 year old even though she is in her early 30's. In fact she still lives with her mother while both of her siblings are married.
2. What bugged me is that she didn't bother to pull me to the side during the party and tell me about her concerns. Rather she made a comment about me not knowing her niece so I could not introduce myself. Yet my other friend, who she's close to got first dibs because they had met before. Like I said, she facetimed me the next day and said that because she doesn't get along with her big brother due to not understanding her situation along with being abusive to her , she didn't him saying nasty things to me.

Correction- She's not marriage material either at this time.

It just sounds weird to me. Like you don't have all the information and she's making excuses.

I think YOUR behavior in all has been polite and like a good friend. My opinion is that there's not a lot you can do because you're not doing anything wrong.

Well if she describes her brother as abusive...I'd imagine she's afraid if shes introducing his daughter to 'strangers' against his wishes it will piss him off and make him do something abusive. Perhaps she has the impression your other friend is ok because she is closer to them and I think you said this friend as met her brother.

Not sure what is to be done about it though right now, sounds like there are some issues in this persons family...and they make her weary about just how much she lets outsiders into her life/personal business.

To be honest I thought she acted very strange around me the entire evening and I am not going to go into them because it's past. I was pretty shocked though

It sounds like you already understand the problem quite well. You're not going to change her and it seems she's just fine with treating you like crap. You have to decide where to go from here considering she may not change how she treats you. Her behavior may seem weird, but it's clear that she's treating you badly.

Parents have every right to dictate who gets to meet their children and who doesn't---and, conversely, whom their children get to meet and whom they don't.

I forgot to mention that part ^. Her introducing her niece to him anyway is weird as hell. While I shared pics of my little ones with friends, I could never introduce them to them unless they were like over my house regularly. So her behavior on that part was VERY odd.


Also, she might have been acting strangely because she likes the guy and was trying to impress him.

She started treating me differently at Christmastime where she called me in the middle of the night and put me on a guilt trip because of the way I did things. She also has been making me feel bad about myself because we are from two neighboring states and our football teams are rivals. During the party she made a habit of turning on a song that made fun of our football team.

"She's going to hate this song."