SomewhatFlabberghasted
Active Member
Hello everyone,
First of all, greetings! and all that. I hope you're all having a nice day.. those are quite nice, or so I've heard!
I'm an 19 years-old person without autism/asperger's/anything on the autistic spectrum. I do have depression, panic disorder and I would say social anxiety, though contrary to the other two, the last one hasn't been officially diagnosed (this will become relevant later). I'm posting here because I was hoping to learn, or make sense of, something pertaining to asperger's that's been slowly but surely rising beyond the realm of what I can understand. I hope that's what this is also for and that I'm not 'intruding' where I shouldn't do so; I tried searching for board guidelines etc but couldn't find any. If this post is unwelcome, sorry about that, and feel free to remove it or whatever the protocol is.
This will be a loooooong story of me going more than a little emo mode. If you (understandably) don't want to bother reading that, I'll make a tl;dr below it. I tried making as complete a picture as possible, though.
I met my best friend through an online computergame. She's got asperger's by the way, which is why I'm posting here. Anyway, we got along well pretty much immediately, we played some together but then she stopped playing the game - at this point we weren't that close yet. After about a year she came back, we played some more and became friends, and occasionally talked over MSN. This went on for a few months, but slowly but surely she started not using MSN anymore, and she didn't play the game anymore. We didn't speak for a while, but in the end I added her on Steam, and we started talking again.
We became quite a lot closer than we were before. We used Skype voice communication when playing games together (which is a very big deal for me; to this date she's the only friend I've ever trusted enough to do that), I got along well with her boyfriend, and all was nice and yay.
About a half year later her boyfriend broke up with her, and obviously she was very sad about that. I did my best to be a pro friend and be there for her, while not making it the kind of 'forceful' moral support people usually give - I let her know I was there if she needed me, but didn't dismiss how much it'd hurt etc. We played games to distract her from sad stuff, and eventually playing games just became fun again. We became best friends.
I'd say about 2 months later, we started doing video calls on Skype (even bigger deal for me than the voice stuff already was). We talked for hours on end, pretty much every day. I'm not sure if it's relevant or not, but for the sake of giving a full picture I'll say I developed feelings for her then and fell for her. She said she liked me too, but that she was still in love with her ex so she wouldn't act on it. At the time I thought that meant I had to wait months or years and I was willing to do that, but then I realized she had never actually liked me. I've seen the same happen to my sisters: they broke up with the boyfriend they'd been for a long time, and remarkably shortly afterwards their brains would convince them they liked someone else - an illusion that would fade again quickly. I asked her about it directly, and though she didn't directly confirm this, she said 'I would suggest to not keep hoping'. In hindsight I feel bad for not seeing it immediately, because it wasn't fair of me to bother her with that, though she never blamed me. I felt like a horrible friend and person, but in the end I forgave myself - doesn't mean it doesn't still hurt of course.
We remained friends and played games together and still talked daily (though now using IM again instead of video calls). Around november we started playing a game with a group of friends, one of them being pretty close to her. The first time we played there she talked to me for about an hour, then she said she felt like she should talk to the other guy, which seemed reasonable so okay. I thought it meant she would alternate between people to talk to while playing (they wanted to do a call with all three of us, but as I've said before I just can't.. she's the only person I've been able to do that with), but it ended up meaning they were always playing together and me just 'being on the server too'. It stung a little but hey, I could live with it, and aside from that I was the one causing problems by being too scared to join or whatever it is.
We started playing another game in december, and the exact same thing happened, except that while that was happening he also traveled to her country to visit her, something I'd wanted to do but she told me she wouldn't feel comfortable with. I realized the situation was different though considering our enforced distance, so that didn't bother me too much - what did bother me was that once again, the thing we were doing together was now the thing they were doing. It sounds petty and I guess it is; I'm not proud of feeling that way, but at the same time I think most people wouldn't like it too much, not because they're doing something of their own but because that thing of their own used to be our thing. Whenever I asked her to play, she said she felt too bad for any interaction with any human at all, and I shouldn't take it personal. And 30 minutes later I saw they were playing for 5 hours, pretty much every day.
Once again I told myself to stop being such an impossible jealous obsessive person and I hated myself for a while. We still talked but barely. Something happened that made her feel really bad, I instantly set all my self-hatred and hurt aside and did my best to give moral support while not denying that it wasn't something moral support could fix. We didn't talk for 2-3 months, and this time she truly didn't speak to anyone instead of just not to me. I never felt hurt for this or anything of the sort - I might be bad but I'm not that bad. I would give her all the time she needed.
About a month ago she started feeling much better. She talked to me again and we kinda started playing games again. I noticed though that she didn't seem to do it because she enjoyed it, and I realized she was doing it just because she didn't want me to feel bad. I felt guilty for that, because I didn't want to cause that. She played with me for about 30 minutes, then she'd stop and start playing with a select few others for the rest of the day. This lasted about a week. After that she stopped talking to me entirely again, whilst playing the entire day with those others. This has lasted up until now.
I am well aware this seems more like a post suited for the SAS-forums or something similar, but the only responses I'd get there would be either 'yep she hates you you'll never have friends bla bla', or 'you need to stop making excuses, she doesn't want to be your friend anymore and you're just inventing reasons to keep her as a friend in your mind'.
I guess the reason I'm posting here, specifically, is that maybe you can tell me if this is the kind of thing people with asperger's run into: accidentally making people think they're done with them. Because especially when I'm going through an episode of feeling bad, when I try to evaluate this, I see someone who wants me to be happy and feels obliged to try and do that, but who doesn't actually want anything to do with me, because I'm no fun. That I'm lame and annoying to spend time with, but she forces herself to do so anyway sometimes, because she thinks she has to because I offered moral support in the past. While what she would really want is the truly fun friends she has to make her feel better and forget about sad stuff.
Sometimes I think that. Other times I think it's entirely different for her because she has asperger's. And then I think (or read) that I should stop inventing excuses and that this has nothing to do with that, she just doesn't get anything from being my friend anymore now that she has better ones.
I'm hoping you'll be able to help me understand this, because the amount of conflicting thoughts and emotions has gotten too high for me to make sense of anymore. I realize you can't speak for another person, but I'd like to know if it's a thing commonly associated with asperger's rather than an individual. Is this a case of me not understanding and reading too much into her behavior, which from what I've gathered is a fairly common frustration for people with asperger's? Or is it a case of me inventing reason after reason to try and find a way for her to actually enjoy being my best friend, while time and time again she's shown to prefer others, and most random persons would say to stop letting her walk over me again and again?
TL;DR: Best friend has asperger's. We used to do all sorts of stuff together and talk for hours on end every day, that stopped, several times she said she felt too bad for any interaction with anyone and I shouldn't take it personally, and then a few minutes later she'd start talking to/doing stuff with other friends (seems like someone) for the rest of the day, which would repeat every day. We haven't truly talked/done stuff for approximately a half year, and it's making my already low self-esteem go towards non-existence.
I want to be a good friend, and I'm trying, but I just don't understand everything. I'm sorry if I came across as rude or ignorant in my post; it is not my intention. If you think I am, please, explain why if you don't mind.. I'd like to learn in that case.
First of all, greetings! and all that. I hope you're all having a nice day.. those are quite nice, or so I've heard!
I'm an 19 years-old person without autism/asperger's/anything on the autistic spectrum. I do have depression, panic disorder and I would say social anxiety, though contrary to the other two, the last one hasn't been officially diagnosed (this will become relevant later). I'm posting here because I was hoping to learn, or make sense of, something pertaining to asperger's that's been slowly but surely rising beyond the realm of what I can understand. I hope that's what this is also for and that I'm not 'intruding' where I shouldn't do so; I tried searching for board guidelines etc but couldn't find any. If this post is unwelcome, sorry about that, and feel free to remove it or whatever the protocol is.
This will be a loooooong story of me going more than a little emo mode. If you (understandably) don't want to bother reading that, I'll make a tl;dr below it. I tried making as complete a picture as possible, though.
I met my best friend through an online computergame. She's got asperger's by the way, which is why I'm posting here. Anyway, we got along well pretty much immediately, we played some together but then she stopped playing the game - at this point we weren't that close yet. After about a year she came back, we played some more and became friends, and occasionally talked over MSN. This went on for a few months, but slowly but surely she started not using MSN anymore, and she didn't play the game anymore. We didn't speak for a while, but in the end I added her on Steam, and we started talking again.
We became quite a lot closer than we were before. We used Skype voice communication when playing games together (which is a very big deal for me; to this date she's the only friend I've ever trusted enough to do that), I got along well with her boyfriend, and all was nice and yay.
About a half year later her boyfriend broke up with her, and obviously she was very sad about that. I did my best to be a pro friend and be there for her, while not making it the kind of 'forceful' moral support people usually give - I let her know I was there if she needed me, but didn't dismiss how much it'd hurt etc. We played games to distract her from sad stuff, and eventually playing games just became fun again. We became best friends.
I'd say about 2 months later, we started doing video calls on Skype (even bigger deal for me than the voice stuff already was). We talked for hours on end, pretty much every day. I'm not sure if it's relevant or not, but for the sake of giving a full picture I'll say I developed feelings for her then and fell for her. She said she liked me too, but that she was still in love with her ex so she wouldn't act on it. At the time I thought that meant I had to wait months or years and I was willing to do that, but then I realized she had never actually liked me. I've seen the same happen to my sisters: they broke up with the boyfriend they'd been for a long time, and remarkably shortly afterwards their brains would convince them they liked someone else - an illusion that would fade again quickly. I asked her about it directly, and though she didn't directly confirm this, she said 'I would suggest to not keep hoping'. In hindsight I feel bad for not seeing it immediately, because it wasn't fair of me to bother her with that, though she never blamed me. I felt like a horrible friend and person, but in the end I forgave myself - doesn't mean it doesn't still hurt of course.
We remained friends and played games together and still talked daily (though now using IM again instead of video calls). Around november we started playing a game with a group of friends, one of them being pretty close to her. The first time we played there she talked to me for about an hour, then she said she felt like she should talk to the other guy, which seemed reasonable so okay. I thought it meant she would alternate between people to talk to while playing (they wanted to do a call with all three of us, but as I've said before I just can't.. she's the only person I've been able to do that with), but it ended up meaning they were always playing together and me just 'being on the server too'. It stung a little but hey, I could live with it, and aside from that I was the one causing problems by being too scared to join or whatever it is.
We started playing another game in december, and the exact same thing happened, except that while that was happening he also traveled to her country to visit her, something I'd wanted to do but she told me she wouldn't feel comfortable with. I realized the situation was different though considering our enforced distance, so that didn't bother me too much - what did bother me was that once again, the thing we were doing together was now the thing they were doing. It sounds petty and I guess it is; I'm not proud of feeling that way, but at the same time I think most people wouldn't like it too much, not because they're doing something of their own but because that thing of their own used to be our thing. Whenever I asked her to play, she said she felt too bad for any interaction with any human at all, and I shouldn't take it personal. And 30 minutes later I saw they were playing for 5 hours, pretty much every day.
Once again I told myself to stop being such an impossible jealous obsessive person and I hated myself for a while. We still talked but barely. Something happened that made her feel really bad, I instantly set all my self-hatred and hurt aside and did my best to give moral support while not denying that it wasn't something moral support could fix. We didn't talk for 2-3 months, and this time she truly didn't speak to anyone instead of just not to me. I never felt hurt for this or anything of the sort - I might be bad but I'm not that bad. I would give her all the time she needed.
About a month ago she started feeling much better. She talked to me again and we kinda started playing games again. I noticed though that she didn't seem to do it because she enjoyed it, and I realized she was doing it just because she didn't want me to feel bad. I felt guilty for that, because I didn't want to cause that. She played with me for about 30 minutes, then she'd stop and start playing with a select few others for the rest of the day. This lasted about a week. After that she stopped talking to me entirely again, whilst playing the entire day with those others. This has lasted up until now.
I am well aware this seems more like a post suited for the SAS-forums or something similar, but the only responses I'd get there would be either 'yep she hates you you'll never have friends bla bla', or 'you need to stop making excuses, she doesn't want to be your friend anymore and you're just inventing reasons to keep her as a friend in your mind'.
I guess the reason I'm posting here, specifically, is that maybe you can tell me if this is the kind of thing people with asperger's run into: accidentally making people think they're done with them. Because especially when I'm going through an episode of feeling bad, when I try to evaluate this, I see someone who wants me to be happy and feels obliged to try and do that, but who doesn't actually want anything to do with me, because I'm no fun. That I'm lame and annoying to spend time with, but she forces herself to do so anyway sometimes, because she thinks she has to because I offered moral support in the past. While what she would really want is the truly fun friends she has to make her feel better and forget about sad stuff.
Sometimes I think that. Other times I think it's entirely different for her because she has asperger's. And then I think (or read) that I should stop inventing excuses and that this has nothing to do with that, she just doesn't get anything from being my friend anymore now that she has better ones.
I'm hoping you'll be able to help me understand this, because the amount of conflicting thoughts and emotions has gotten too high for me to make sense of anymore. I realize you can't speak for another person, but I'd like to know if it's a thing commonly associated with asperger's rather than an individual. Is this a case of me not understanding and reading too much into her behavior, which from what I've gathered is a fairly common frustration for people with asperger's? Or is it a case of me inventing reason after reason to try and find a way for her to actually enjoy being my best friend, while time and time again she's shown to prefer others, and most random persons would say to stop letting her walk over me again and again?
TL;DR: Best friend has asperger's. We used to do all sorts of stuff together and talk for hours on end every day, that stopped, several times she said she felt too bad for any interaction with anyone and I shouldn't take it personally, and then a few minutes later she'd start talking to/doing stuff with other friends (seems like someone) for the rest of the day, which would repeat every day. We haven't truly talked/done stuff for approximately a half year, and it's making my already low self-esteem go towards non-existence.
I want to be a good friend, and I'm trying, but I just don't understand everything. I'm sorry if I came across as rude or ignorant in my post; it is not my intention. If you think I am, please, explain why if you don't mind.. I'd like to learn in that case.
