Do you have different kind of friends and how many friends?

[Irkoutsk]

My question is do you have friends outside of aspie friends? Trust me I don't judge you like I do on the beard thread haha.

 

[Cali Cat]

I don't have many friends right now ... no time. Right now I have a best friend and a boyfriend. Both are ADHD. Best friend is more Aspie-like. Boyfriend is more NT.

I used to have a wider group of friends when I was at university. I liked to have friends of all different kinds. It was difficult getting them all together though, because many of them didn't get along well.

 

[AsheSkyler]

My best lady friend is very sweet, bubbly, touchy, extremely girly (flip flops and all), and a very devout but not tyrannical Christian. She should be an autistic nightmare for me, but she doesn't bug me in the least and I love her to death. Maybe because we grew up together since we were babies.

My best guy friend I've known for many years. We used to draw together, but his calling was music. Went to college on a music scholarship and if all goes well he will be the music director at his old high school. He was in something called "show choir" and I watched a few of his school performances. I'm quite fond of musicians, so no surprise I still quite like him.

Other than that, I don't really have friends. I've gotten on pretty good with my husband's work buddies and his two cousins he likes to hang around the most to play Xbox or PC games with, but they're not really MY friends. We don't interact outside of my husband.

 

[Wab]

I have many friends, but don't really see them that much as they're busy with school and work and I stay at home with my dogs and bird a lot. Hope I can catch up with one of them when they're not busy

 

[Etzelaire]

I have lots of... I'll screw it with this word... Acquitances? But friends I suppose I have 4 or 5 and none of them have aspergers. I tend to stick to intelligent literate people but they are hiding somewhere.

 

[Harrison]

I have a lot of acquaintances, and a handful of friends (if I don't count my thumb).

 

[photoaddict]

The friends I have are NT. The only other adult Aspie I've met is my brother.

I don't have many friends. Several acquaintances and a small group of friends who I see about once a week. Our get togethers are low key, so they're easy to enjoy without being totally overwhelmed.

 

[indigogrl1979]

I have a few Xbox Live "fri ends"... besides that I have my mom, sister and nephew whom are closes to me. Thats all i really need....

 

[Melissa Kay]

I have a few Xbox Live "fri ends"... besides that I have my mom, sister and nephew whom are closes to me. Thats all i really need....

Wish I could be as comfortable with the amount of friends that you have!

My question is do you have friends outside of aspie friends? Trust me I don't judge you like I do on the beard thread haha.

I like beards! Ha. But anyway, I am best friends with my mother (no mental illnesses) and I have some people I would consider friends but they never call me. I think I must turn them off in some way. My mom says that I "try too hard." I have acquaintances in the 12 step program that I am in, but no close friends. I am going to see a counselor soon to address this distressing part of this illness that we have. I would like more friends. I have a boyfriend also. I would like to be closer to my sister. Good question. My boyfriend and my sister - neither have AS.

 

[clg114]

My best friend is my wife. I have a few friends that I golf or shoot with a few times a year. Most of my interaction with people is family, not to many friends.

 

[paloftoon]

The friends I have are really more like close acquaintances. I can depend on this one for that, that one for that, and well no one is really that dependable or undoubtedly authentically too busy with other stuff. . .:/

 

[Sydney]

Same with the acquaintances thing. I have a lot of friends, but very few I actually do stuff with outside of school. They're all pretty flaky, too, and don't seem all that excited to associate outside of school (I always invite people to do stuff, not the other way around). This is all with one exception. I had a best friend who was possibly Asperger's (I told her I thought she was once and she accepted it. Then later she allegedly thought I was calling her dumb and we didn't hang out much for awhile after... until I was determined to make her have fun and she finally told me this) and we did quite a bit together and would reciprocate invitations. Unfortunately, she recently moved to Hawaii

 

[wyverary]

I don't think any of my friends are Aspies, and still there are a couple of them whom I would trust with my life.

 

[Sydney]

I don't think any of my friends are Aspies, and still there are a couple of them whom I would trust with my life.

I think, really, that other people with Asperger's can be worse. Some of them, I just absolutely do not enjoy. Probably because neither of us knows how to have social interaction

 

[OddGirl]

I don't really have many IRL friends. I work nights, and that is a death knell to a social life. Also, it gets tougher to make friends once you're out of school and working, especially if you have not decided to follow the socially expected path of marriage and kids. For me, I'm the only single, never married, non-parent out of the entire group of people I was friends with back in school. Out of almost 30 people. And the ones who remained friends all married and had kids at close to the same time, so their social lives became as much about their kids being friends as it was about being friends themselves. If you're single and don't have kids, you just kind of fall off the radar of your old friends who are now parents.

The only high school friend I'm still in regular contact with is a gay man who I pretended to be dating back in the bad old days of the early 90's in order to help him avoid the abuse, religious-based hatred, and bullying he fell victim to when other students and even some teachers suspected he was gay. As long as he was 'dating' a girl, he didn't get beaten up.

Nowadays, I have a lot of acquaintances, but no one I'd really call really close friends IRL. I've got a few long-term friends online that I've been talking to for over 20 years.

 

[Melissa Kay]

I don't really have many IRL friends. I work nights, and that is a death knell to a social life. Also, it gets tougher to make friends once you're out of school and working, especially if you have not decided to follow the socially expected path of marriage and kids. For me, I'm the only single, never married, non-parent out of the entire group of people I was friends with back in school. Out of almost 30 people. And the ones who remained friends all married and had kids at close to the same time, so their social lives became as much about their kids being friends as it was about being friends themselves. If you're single and don't have kids, you just kind of fall off the radar of your old friends who are now parents.

The only high school friend I'm still in regular contact with is a gay man who I pretended to be dating back in the bad old days of the early 90's in order to help him avoid the abuse, religious-based hatred, and bullying he fell victim to when other students and even some teachers suspected he was gay. As long as he was 'dating' a girl, he didn't get beaten up.

Nowadays, I have a lot of acquaintances, but no one I'd really call really close friends IRL. I've got a few long-term friends online that I've been talking to for over 20 years.

I relate to being out of the status quo. Im 34 and no kids. So it kind of takes me out of the loop there. I just wanted to say what an awesome person you are for having dated your gay friend to protect him. You are a gem and anyone would be lucky to have you as a friend!

 

[Melissa Kay]

I don't really have many IRL friends. I work nights, and that is a death knell to a social life. Also, it gets tougher to make friends once you're out of school and working, especially if you have not decided to follow the socially expected path of marriage and kids. For me, I'm the only single, never married, non-parent out of the entire group of people I was friends with back in school. Out of almost 30 people. And the ones who remained friends all married and had kids at close to the same time, so their social lives became as much about their kids being friends as it was about being friends themselves. If you're single and don't have kids, you just kind of fall off the radar of your old friends who are now parents.

The only high school friend I'm still in regular contact with is a gay man who I pretended to be dating back in the bad old days of the early 90's in order to help him avoid the abuse, religious-based hatred, and bullying he fell victim to when other students and even some teachers suspected he was gay. As long as he was 'dating' a girl, he didn't get beaten up.

Nowadays, I have a lot of acquaintances, but no one I'd really call really close friends IRL. I've got a few long-term friends online that I've been talking to for over 20 years.

Ps - Whats IRL?

 

[OddGirl]

Sorry about that! I've been online for so long that the online slang has changed a few times and I just haven't kept up! IRL is an old online chat acronym for 'In Real Life', ie: not online. The real world, not the Internet world. It was a lot more common in the days of text-only online chat rooms, back in the late 90's and a few years after 2000. I've not really seen it used much in the last 5 to 7 years... But I always liked it as a way to distinguish the physical world from this uniquely mind-based internet one, which is why I still use it despite not using most of the other chat acronyms. I've always had a love for words and phrases that become archaic and fall out of general use.

 

[OddGirl]

I relate to being out of the status quo. Im 34 and no kids. So it kind of takes me out of the loop there. I just wanted to say what an awesome person you are for having dated your gay friend to protect him. You are a gem and anyone would be lucky to have you as a friend!

Thanks. But really, we protected each other, just in different ways. He was always much more socially skilled than I was and he ran interference when my lack of social ability bumped up against someone else's attitude. He smoothed things over between myself and many of the other girls in our social group and I'm damned sure this prevented a lot of heartache for me. Teenagers are volatile, and I suspect that I would likely have been excluded from that group of friends and acquaintances without Mike's constantly fixing my social errors.
Plus, we were both into a genre of music that has never been very popular with high school kids and neither of us cared at all for the Grunge music that was the most popular back when we were in school. We both loved show tunes, musicals. Our mutual obsession kind of threw us together. He was almost as obsessed as I was! It takes a hell of a lot for a non-autistic to match an autistic's obsession for an intense special interest. While my other friends got bored of me talking about musicals I'd seen and wanted to see, he was right in there with me, obsessing along at the same breakneck pace as I. We often took the train to Toronto together to go see musicals, even before we were both even 15.

I've always been fiercely protective of the people I care about. All through my life, I'd tolerate abuse aimed at myself with very little reaction, but if a friend was being bullied, I'd jump in to defend him or her, even if it meant getting into a physical fight where I was outnumbered or up against someone larger or stronger. Most of the worst injuries I got were over this sort of thing. I didn't give a happy damn if someone aimed abuse at me, but anyone trying to hurt my friends was going to know pain. I've also always hated the stupid, arbitrary, outdated reasons people use to try to justify being a horrible person.. crap like religious 'reasons' to hate/fear gay people. The fact that this was the majority of the type of abuse the horrible people aimed at Mike just made me want to fight for him even more. I'm still that way now.. But I've learned other ways than physical altercation to defend someone I care about.
The underdog is no longer an underdog if he's got a few good friends to stand with him.

 

[StephF]

Yes, I do. I have people I trust and people I am assessing.
My social network is a bit like the way an onion has concentric shells. You have to get through the outer layers before you get to the centre.
Mike Myers said it best "Ogres are like onions. They both have layers" Donkey replies that maybe Ogres make people cry but that's Donkey being Donkey so ignore him.