Losing potiential friends over social miscues

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Being socially impaired can be very tough I must admit. It seems like for some reason, I keep losing potiential friends and it's not because of anything the person or myself did wrong. There's no fights or any negative exchanges. Sometimes, I lose potiential friends simply because of social miscommunications or misunderstandings. Lots of times, any time I've had a potiential friend, the person would start a conversation with me and anytime we'd see each other, we'd usually talk. However, after awhile the person simply stopped talking to me so I stop talking to him/her. I wonder sometimes why the person would stop talking to me after a while, I never did anything wrong. I wonder if I did anything offensive that I'm not aware of or if I'm simply not good enough. I mean, we'd greet each other but then after a while, the person would rarely talk to me and talk to others instead. Maybe I did not greet this person enough. I'll admit I don't greet someone, only greet them back and I know that's a problem.

One example I can use is a girl that was very friendly with me at first so I was friendly with her. We'd talked constantly. As time moved on, she greeted me less and less and we started to have less and less conversations. Maybe there were social cues I did not pick up. The funny thing is we have nothing against each other. She is still kind to me, just not social anymore I suppose. We rarely talk now. Since she's a girl I was attracted to and liked, it's a little hard to take. It's not just her though, it's been with other acquaintances throughout school. There were a few students I'd talk to all the time if we were in class together everyday for a while. However, once we stopped seeing each other or were in separate classes for a year or two, if we'd see each other again; sometimes we wouldn't speak to each other anymore. The person didn't bother to say a word to me so I sometimes thought, why should I be the one to speak? This person clearly is not interested in me anymore. Again, we wouldn't have any negative exchanges. I guess my biggest problem is it takes two people to be social. I have such a hard time greeting people and make things happen. I don't greet unless greeted too. I'm afraid to greet someone if they don't greet me because I'm afraid either they never liked me or they won't answer me (which at times happened).

All and all. This has happened to me with about 5 people. At this point, I think something has to be done. I'll admit, I'm not really looking for friends here or any online communities, I think I just need friends I can be with. I just posted this to see some opinions and feedback. I was just wondering if anything close to this has ever happened to any of you. You meet people you think you'd might be friends with but for unexplainable reasons, you'd stop talking to each other all of a sudden, out of the blue. No negative verbal exchanges.

You can never lose something that you've never had.

If they weren't your friends before, and they are not your friends now, the only thing that you've lost is time.

I've often wondered the same thing. They might have been interested in being friends with you, but unless you reciprocate, then they're not going to keep at it forever- some may be more patient than others though.

I know it's really hard to say hello first, but keep trying to; if they don't say hello back the first time, they will the next. They may not have heard you, that's all.

I seem to have this trouble as well. I used to never greet someone and I still have troubles doing so in places that I am not used to (basically anywhere but work) but I do make an effort. I used to be "well, if they wanted to talk to me, they would come and do so"... then I realized that I wanted to talk to them and was not going over to them, maybe they felt the same. So when I notice people, I will try to at least say hello. Its a start, and I actually have people still coming up to me to talk after 3 years now. I guess it is a little give and take.

Of course, there are times when people don't want to speak to me and I just realize, but that is a different story altogether.

I've dealt with this too. I agree with what Fnord had said, that you can never lose something that you've never had. The fact is is that many people judge you by the first few minutes that they spend with you. There was a good WrongPlanet article about it, although I'm unsure as to how to find the aspie self-help articles now. It gave lots of cool advice by aspies or others that knew a lot about Asperger's. It's sad, but it's interesting thinking about it. Now that I'm in college, and had to deal with high school and middle school, I've learned that some people can be jerks. Some people don't appreciate you for who you really are. It's important to find whatever interests you and perhaps find a group that share things in common with you. It's important to find a level of comfortability so that you can be comfortable with yourself, and know your limits, so that you aren't sacrificing yourself just so that you could be friends with someone else who hasn't expressed much interest in you. Sometimes I looked in the wrong places and tried building up friendships when there wasn't even much of a friendship. I would overlook some people who were actually interested in me, who were interested in who I really was. Somehow I would give the wrong signals, and start trying to build a friendship too fast before allowing the base to be built. Sometimes a base can't be built very well anyways, so it's good to learn when to recognize when a friendship can be built. Even if the person is a jerk, or they simply don't want to be friends with you, it's always good to be kind and patient with them. It's also good to find someone that will be kind and patient with you. A possible way to help them be patient with you, with your misunderstanding social cues and such, is to tell them about your Asperger's. Sometimes having someone that knows that you have trouble with social cues and problems with other social skills that, with most others, are implicit and hardly noticed when learned is very helpful. It's been very helpful for me, especially in the first year and a half in college, to know when and how I messed up in a social setting. Not saying that you don't have a person that knows that you have Asperger's, but that it would be good for you to have a peer that also knows of your condition. You may want to join a club or a team. That way you can have the makings of a social life aside from work or school, you could delve into your interests more, and you could possibly find someone to be friends with. It's important to not expect other people to be your friend just because you only spend time with them. But (as said) it's a friendship when both sides are reciprocating. Don't force yourself on anyone, as this can turn people away. Rather, allow a relationship to develop slowly. Be slow and patient. Then, after a simple base is built, may it be appropriate to tell them about your Asperger's (if you choose to do so). Sometimes it's important to try to think about what the girl was experiencing aside from your own feelings. Maybe she was trying to pull away from you and didn't want to hurt you. It may be good for you to talk with her to make this situation more comfortable, and maybe she could ask you where you messed up (if you did), or what you did wrong. It's important to accept constructive criticism so that you can be patient with yourself and to step up to bat and try again. A lot of this stuff takes practice, and even I still struggle with this stuff. Good luck, and I hope this advice will help you.

People don't usually do explicit, negative displays when something is wrong. On at least one occasion, someone had a major beef with something I was doing, and I was the last to find out about it. Such things are kept hidden, and it seems the whole social cues thing is a way to encode things that would otherwise be clearly communicated, so you have to dig deeper. This encoding exists as a product of a communication arms-race. Your ability to know more about what's going on with other people than they can find out about you depends on having a more sophisticated ability to encode/decode than they have. The difference is that we operate on the zeroth, or literal layer, either because we can't develop a sophisticated encoding/decoding scheme, or because we have better things to do.

It has happened to me a bit but once people get to know me better then everything slowly becomes better. It happens everyone now and then as well.

If the other person is always initiating the interactions, it could be that eventually they get tired of that one-way-ness. Or else they think you aren't interested. They want and expect reciprocity. If they don't get it, they put their energy into other friendships.

sgrannel, that's the most brilliant post I've read on WP. Funny thing is that when I say what you said here, people call me crazy and/or stupid. But it's a huge truth, and it's the biggest difference between Aspies and NTs.

Can I quote your post on the main discussion forum?