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Do you have distant acquaintances you still like to keep in touch with occasionally?

Rob

Rob

Well-Known Member
V.I.P Member
I just returned to the forum after a difficult past three weeks or so.

I still have friends/acquaintances I like to keep in touch with every month or two to see how they are doing. From therapy in Kamloops, during a very dark time when I was awaiting my diagnosis, I made some good friends there, but distance and time has made it difficult for me to keep in touch with them, as they have moved on to other things that have made them quite busy and hard to reach by email or by phone.

I did manage to contact my therapist, who just finished her day at her new business, Art and Possibility (she is warm, outgoing and very highly qualified). At her last moment I manged to chat with her for a couple of minutes to tell her how things were going on my end. I realized her new venture is keeping her very busy but I had to find an opportunity to ask her about a previous member of our therapy group, and she told me he is in and out of town a lot and he is hard to get a hold of. He offered six months or so to invite me over for coffee in Kamloops but it seems he is just too busy. Dozens of phone messages went on unanswered.

However I still receive some email from another previous group member but she told me she is having a difficult time in her life.

Does anyone have good friends or acquaintances that live far away but understand your autism spectrum disorder, and do you have good memories from being associated with them in the past?
 
Yes I have two friends that live far away but we were close at one time. I still keep in touch with them, and hope to be seeing both of them in a couple of months.
 
I have friend who I have known for over forty years. He and I used to work at the same business and I got to know him there. Back in the day, we used to ride dirt bikes and snowmobiles together. Later, age kept us from those activities so we both took up golf. We would go golfing at least once a week for a lot of years. He's a couple of years younger than me, but has had worse luck with his health. For the last three years or so, he hasn't been able to golf. We live in different towns, but still manage a BS session over lunch every few months. I haven't had many good friends in my life and feel very lucky to have had a friend like him.
 
My former business partner and friend lives more than 400 miles away. I moved years ago for financial reasons and that I no longer had any close family in California. We usually keep in touch by email, but not very frequently. He has a wife and child now...and keeps a whole lot busier than I do. He knows I'm on the spectrum, although admits to not understanding it all. But then I also know that he has no issues with it at all. A very cool dude. :)
 
Yes, I have one best friend who lives in England, where I come from, but I live in France. We chat EVERY DAY on facebook; even if it is just to say hi.

Actually, you have reminded me that I should contact someone who stayed with us and found her really lovely. She even contacted me after a week, back at her home and here I am, bemoaning I can't make friends and remiss on texting her!!!!
 
Hi, Rob. Welcome back, and good to hear you're coming out the other side of your rough patch. They do end. Eventually.

All but one of my friends live hundreds of miles away at least. I like it that way, actually. I don't do well with the pressures and obligations of local socialization.

Thing is, I met them all when they were already at a geographic distance. I usually don't hang onto relationships with people I meet in a particular context once I leave it. I may like them very much, but I close chapters pretty firmly. So the friends that survive are the ones who have always been portable.

I do have one friend, one of my best, who I sometimes don't hear from for months. In most cases that would mean I'd move on for good, but she's become a weird pillar of my social pantheon; I'm always happy to pick up right where we left off. It's even stranger because the vast majority of my durable friends are male, and she (obviously) isn't. Our interests and politics are on opposite ends of the array. Our connection has always been a mystery. Still, we always come back around to each other.

I've long been puzzled by people who have dozens of friends, like on facebook, who they haven't physically seen in ages. But I suppose it's nice that you can reach back in time to people who meant something to you in a particular era. I'm glad you managed to catch your old therapist when you called. When nobody answers, it's always a little depressing.
 
I'm not very good at keeping in touch with people, and I want the contact to be genuine and not forced by birthday greetings or some other superficial social obligatory greeting. I had a clearing out on Facebook recently of so-called friends who never contact me except for these superficial birthday greetings which they only remember because FB reminds them that it's my birthday. I did keep in touch for a while with people from Uni or work colleagues, but now I've lost touch with them too.
 
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