just got massively left out

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or so it feels like I've just been "massively" left out. I was incredibly bored. So I rung/text around my mates to find a load just not bothering to reply. I eventually find out that all my mates, and a friend I felt like I was getting considerably closer to had just not bothered to even ask me to go the park to play football.
Now I'm finally back in contact with them I get the impression they are arranging to go the pub maybe because they feel bad that they left me out. But I can't help but sense it is to pity me a bit.

No wonder they don't wanna hang around with me though. I'm a full on social ret*d. Every conversation I have is tense and awkward and leads nowhere. They can all easily joke/have banter/ share stories and have fun. Whenever I enter the conversation I take that aspect away from them all.

Now even though they've invited me to the pub (which I've kinda forced them to) it's my chance to make them realise why they would want to have me around. And as always I'll fail to deliver in being that social/fun guy everyone else is and I'll just make my case for hanging around with them even worse.

I'm starting to realise that I only really have one or two friends. And even then they probably don't even value me that much.

I feel like utter s**t. Sometimes I wonder why I'm still alive. I'm starting to feel like just giving up. What is the point of all this? Why do I have to suffer so much? Why can't I just be happy like everybody else?

(Maybe I'm being melodramatic but I don't care. Life absolutely sucks for me.)

Ha, surprisingly I'm in the exact same situation, the only difference is, they didn't came back yet here.

Sometimes I feel like I should spend time away from people and live on my own for the rest of my life to avoid future dissappointments.

All these efforts I make at being social don't seem to give any reward at all, they're only a waste of time, energy and emotion these days.

It's completely and utter rubbish isn't it?

Feels like there's nothing I can do about it either.
I don't want to die. But I kinda wish I'd never been born.

I had the unfortunate realisation a few years ago that my so-called friends never invited me to do stuff, it was always me initiating. Real friends want to do stuff with you. And also unfortunately I am not one of those people who can be truly happy being alone and with no social interaction 100% of the time.

A similar thing happened to me two years back where I was friends with a group of people. But never "clicked" with them as much as they did each other. Eventually they stopped inviting me out entirely. It was the best thing ever. I realised they were inconsiderate of my feelings and recently I spoke to someone from their group who was experiencing a similar thing. At least your friends feel bad about it. I know it hurts. I was better off. Wait to see what happens.

I'm sorry. I can see why you feel down. I've never been able to interact well in larger groups--although I tend to be fine if it's just one on one. I just never know when I'm supposed to talk, so many times I end up staying silent which does take away from the bantering/social vibe thing.

But it seems like most of those types of social skills are pretty superficial--they don't reflect someone's deep intentions--so do you think you can learn some of the nuances to keeping a conversation going or bantering? If your conversations are tense and awkward, that doesn't reflect on your value as a friend or as a person, just your ability to express that.

I've got a job going door to door so I have to talk to a lot of people regularly, and I've been trying to work on my own body language and conversational ability--but it's hard to practice things that seem unnatural because conversations happen so quickly. However, I think that with enough practice, one can adopt unnatural feeling behavior.

My husband and my son are both on the spectrum. Your story reminds me of my son. Sometimes he is asked to go along with the group, other times he is somehow left out. I wonder what the dynamic would be if you (and my son) attempt to break the social heirarchy and organize a group outing to the park, or to a movie, or whatever it is that your friends find amusing? Might be an interesting experiment. Of course there will always be that group dynamic of "Who else is going?" If I had college to repeat, I would have spent more time on sociology and less time on politcal theory.

That's a good question, my story is this: I wasn't one of the popular "beautiful people" kids in middle school or high school, consequently, I didn't have a large group of friends. I had 3 girls who were my close friends. I basically spent the marority of my time with the same 3-4 girls throughout 7th-12th grade. Among the boys, I tended to befriend the class braniacs, and often frequented the group of kids who hung out at the library at lunch checking each other's homework. Although I was raised to be inclusive socially, I was not popular. The "popular" boys teased me relentlessly because I was tall compared to the other girls in my class. (5'7" at age 11, and 5' 11" by age 17.) So it wasn't a picnic for me in that time period socially. I was definately a nerd, but I was never impressed with the popular folks, my fellow nerds were much more vibrant and interesting. I had friends from different groups- the "gifted" kids, the "funny kids" and the drama kids, and the kids in band. We nerds never really ventured out to do any big social outings, so maybe my experience isn't normal either.

Maybe they didn't invite you to football because you aren't at their skill level or you never pass the ball or you argue about rules. Typically, not getting invited to sports is more about how you play the game than how you act as a person, so don't take it too personally. If you are an awesome football player who works well on the team and can teach them a thing or two, then you should question your other behavior.

In order to get invited to things you need to make sure everyone else knows you had fun and like to be invited. If you have trouble expressing "having fun," you don't have to fake it, but you can say to whoever invited you, "Thanks for inviting me, we should do it again sometime" or something along those lines.

I don't know what I'm talking about half the time, so take everything I say with a pinch of salt!...

I found out about a local Aspie/Austism group in my area that go on trips to towns/cities every month or two, and went along not knowing really what to expect. I found it really useful - I didn't feel any pressure on meeting them for the first time, and enjoyed the experience. Simple things like walking to a destination without needing/being expected to constantly chat to people around you was an unfamiliar, new and very welcome experience for me. Some of the people I met appeared quieter than a typical NT would, while others (one in particular) seemed a lot more NT than me. It put a different perspective on things for me.

I also try to be as forgiving of myself as I can be - recognizing that despite appearances I am a bit different from those around me and can't really help not getting things correct. I'm not the same as everyone else hence I'm not going to force myself to live up to their standards/ways (which ultimately I'm unlikely to ever full reach anyway) - I'm simply built differently whether I like it or not.

I also watched a movie recently called "Mozart and the Whale" where one of the love interests played on her traits rather than trying to suppress them. I'm still undecided on that but am wondering if I should be a bit more like who I am at home (around family) when I'm at work, instead of putting on a more false persona in work. I think there's probably a balance to be had somewhere.

I too have issues - I've more or less found myself excluded from a group of co-workers. The really, really annoying and hard thing to admit it that in large part is probably down to me (though I tend to blame others for being mean/not seeing things etc). Or at least, where I NT I would probably have got on better with them.

I've managed to move myself closer to a different team, and have started again building new relationships with them which has gone well, trying to avoid any mishaps this time.

P.S. Other than cousins and siblings I don't have any friends to even call, so you seem to be doing better than me in that regard!

I guess I would have to first say that one was a "best friend" in 7th and 8th grade. Then in HS, I didn't have classes with my former bestie and by sophmore year she was fully immersed in ner new relationship with her (now) husband. So we grew apart, and a new girl moved to my neighborhood. The new girl had a best friend. I was their 3rd wheel. They both ended up with boyfriends at one time or another, and I was able to bounce back and forth hanging out with one or both of them. But I never had the best girl friend thing again until after college, after a big break up with my former boyfriend. I don't think that anyone was left out, the girls I had lunch with in Jr. High were from big families and life outside school centered around church and family for them. I was from a divorced family, so my parents were social pariahs in the 1970's and 80's. No one wanted to go out of the way to have their daughter hang out at the single parent's house, except if they were from divorced situations as well. Which was the case with the two girls in HS.

thanks for your support guys. Even on wrongplanet I still feel like I'm the odd one out at times. But then I realise how nice and good a community this actually is. I probably fit in here better than anywhere else I've ever been.
This whole experience has made me realise I need to meet more people like me. Most NTs just don't understand. I have one NT friend who understands because to some degree he thinks he might have AS. But I know he doesn't. He has a few traits. But because he can relate to me we get on a lot better. There's less pressure to perform socially with him and we can have "comfortable silences" at ease. I guess I'm really lucky to have him.

Zinia - I think what you're trying to say is to learn to act NT? I feel I can do this to a decent degree. I guess that's why I've maintained having a large group of NT friends for most of my life. But the problem is that it is just an act. When they finally get to know me and they see through the façade they realise how boring I am and don't want to spend any time with me. It sucks.

again_with_this - I agree greatly with your theory. I was bullied by everyone for most of my schooling years. However strangely enough I did have a lot of different groups of friends in secondary school. But in each and everyone of those groups I was the clown you speak of. I was emotionally bullied by each of these groups of friends. They'd only ever treat me with respect when they needed a shoulder to cry on...

I know how you feel mate.

I once went to a party a few towns over, then I was left there because my "friends" didn't feel like giving me a ride home. I have much better friends now. With our condition, it can be very hard to socialize or relate with people, even close friends.

One trick I came up as far as socializing with friends is to try to listen to them more closely and make comments related to what they're talking about. If they talk about something you absolutely can't relate to, maybe start looking for other friends with similar interests. I also have luck communicating with NT people if I keep my questions/ responses shorter than I usually do. It keeps people from misinterpreting what i'm saying. Oh, and one more thing: Relax!