Are Friendships Just Business Transactions?

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Nt perspective. . . . . I have struggled for 4yrs to maintain a friendship with a male aspie (I am female)
It has often felt from my perspective that he views it as just a business relationship. If he needs or wants something he contacts me to see if I’m available, and then long periods where I hear nothing.
For me friendship is about valuing a particular person for their morals, their humour, their knowledge and their personality. It makes me care for them. So I am willing to go out of my way to help a good friend. I will try to think of things they might like to do and invite them along. I would include them in my social events if they wanted. NT friends often tell each other what they like and respect about each other. They notice if the other is struggling and go out of their way to help them either emotionally or physically.
Obviously these differences in needs or wants from a friendship can make it difficult within a cross spectrum friendship I would often feel “used” and my friend would often find me emotionally “needy” I often felt really hurt by what I perceived as his insensitivity.
After a longish break from each other my friend reached out to me, our friendship seems to be good again. I have learnt to just enjoy his company and the times he organises for us to do things and have no expectations from him. In return he is a lot more generous with his time and thoughtfulness around me. . . . .. . It has been a steep learning curve for me, but I do believe he appreciates me and our friendship just shows it in different ways. . . .. . . .. my NT friends don’t like him and feel he takes advantage of my good nature. . . .. but he often does v sweet and kind things for me. I wonder if he does see it as a business relationship. It’s an interesting thought.

No, I don't think his behavior had anything to be with a spectrumite

But its rare that you actually reduce to that crass a level. Usually its just an emotional bond you get with person.

Autistic people can have difficulty with reciprocal relationships and can hyperfocus on what seems "logical" or "honest" to them/their constricted interests.

There is a psychoanalytic theory that states all our interactions are transactions - It's called Transactional Analysis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transactional_analysis

No, I don't think his behavior had anything to be with a spectrumite and it really was not an excuse to treat you like that. I think his behavior sounds more "Human" because things can be one-sided.

But I did in the end give up, and it was actually him that made the effort to repair the friendship.

Recently, I (an 18-year-old about to enter my second year of college) have been attempting to improve my social skills. My main issue, though, is struggling to understand how neurotypical people can approach these relationships so casually. To me, friendships just seem like an exchange of services: Person A and Person B decide to be friends. Due to this, Person A will occasionally provide Person B with companionship and will do favors for them, and Person B reciprocates each individual act. This goes on until one person dies or if a person leaves the friendship after no longer finding it satisfactory. I'm probably being way too business-minded about this, but I honestly can't see how friendships are anything more than business transactions. Can someone please help me see this in a more relaxed, informal way?

Besides doing favors for each other, friendship usually involves at least most, if not all, of the following:

1) Having fun together.
2) Sympathy.
3) Comradeship, i.e. an emotional bond formed by facing common challenges together. (War buddies are the most extreme example of this.)
4) Caring about each other's well-being. This can grow gradually out of some combination of at least two of the above three.

Friendships usually start by having fun together. This often means either (a) participating together in a activity that you both enjoy or (b) talking with each other about topics you both are interested in. It also helps if at least one person is good at cracking jokes that the other one enjoys, though this is not an absolute requirement.

Additionally, NT's usually grease the wheels of all of the above via some sort of magic involving nonverbal communication that I don't understand.

I compensate for the above lack by