I really need help

[Misery]

Okay after a straight bloody hour of crying my eyes out, it's probably time I just ask for... something. I dont know.

Yeah, I'm not doing so good right now. Head hurts, neck hurts, hands shaky, and so on. I'm physically and mentally wrecked.

I dont understand this.

I meet people easily enough, right? Mostly on the internet since it's where I'm comfortable, but yeah. The *meeting* is just spontaneous, right?

But the *keeping* is not. This just keeps happening over and over and over. I cant even count how many times. I meet someone, get along, become friends, they'll be IMPORTANT to me and I'll care as much as I can, and this can last for quite awhile, and then... poof! Just gone!

Everyone always abandons me. It'll be going fine, and then suddenly they dont want me around anymore, or they just go silent, or whatever. I'm tired of being unwanted.

And I'm not placing any blame on them. Not on any individual specifically, nor "them" as a group. This isnt their fault, it cant be. Logic states otherwise. The common element here is ME, not any other specific individual or aspect. So it has to be my fault.

And I cant understand it. I act towards people exactly how I act on here. I dont create some odd persona when I'm on this forum to mask how I am IRL or anything like that. This is how I always act. What you're seeing whenever I speak on this forum is the real me, no mask, nothing like that. I try to always be friendly, I dont get angry at *anybody* (though I can occasionally get frustrated, usually when trying to help someone with something, some of you have seen me do that) and I always try to help. Yeah, I can be sarcastic, but it's always good humored and everyone always says that it makes them smile or I'm so darned funny or whatever. I can tell when someone cant grasp sarcasm too, so it's not like I'm hitting someone with it who cant see it for what it is. I do seemingly everything I can to try to be a good friend.

But still this always freaking happens in the end and it's so painful. As if I dont have enough of THAT in my life. Everything hurts, it always hurts. With some types of pain I can figure out a way to deal with it. Exercises and Advil for instance. But of course, that doesnt work on this.

And I should have spotted this particular breakdown coming. I've realized a couple of behaviors that I've had recently. Like, I'm on Steam, right? It's known as a gaming vendor, but it is also very much used for chatting and such.

I'm always on there. Always. Yet at the same time... I'm not on there at all. At least, not as far as anyone else can see. I've been logging on each day and immediately setting my status to "invisible". This has been going on for months now. I... didnt even realize what I was doing. But now I do know what it is: I'm doing that because if anyone starts talking to me too much I risk them getting too close and then eventually having THIS happen again.

I'm tired of thinking I have a friend who genuinely cares, and then abruptly going back to abandoned and unwanted again.

And no, just to be clear, this isnt about "romance" or that sort of thing. I dont experience that. This is just about friendship.

I'm not 100% sure what I'm even expecting to get out of this post. I'm trying to make this not just sound like a "woe is me" post, but... ugh I cant even tell what my bloody tone is right now.

Every now and then I wonder what the bloody point is. Why even try to be a friend if this is always the end result? Yet, it is not in my "programming" to give up. I dont give up. I keep pushing. That wont change.

But this is one of those times where I think I have to just admit to myself that I cant handle this alone. I dont like asking for help. But trying to fight every battle on my own is a special level of stupid, and I know it.

Ugh, that's all I have to say about this right now.

I'm so, so tired.

 

[Kalinychta]

I’m sorry. For what it’s worth, you’re one of my favorite people on the forum. Seems like most people have so much trouble connecting these days. It’s not just you. It may actually be the fault of technology. Without in-person/physical/human connection, we’re all just words/names on a screen, aren’t we?

 

[Varzar]

You're certainly not alone in that.
At least for me, most friendships do not last. Most fizzle out it seems. As you say, people disappear.
Yes, the common element is you. But that doesn't make it a fault. You (and I) clearly just need very specific individuals to forge a long lasting friendship with. Call it discerning, or high standards.
Most people just seem to want a million facebook friends. Just cause you prefer quality over quantity doesn't mean you're at fault. It just means finding the few other like-minded folks out there is going to be a challenge.

I have always enjoyed reading your posts on here as well.

 

[Gerald Wilgus]

I am sorry to hear of your frustrations. So much of what I had seen as friendship was merely transactional and had nothing deeper to cement the friendship. Only in my 30s did I recognize that shared values were necessary even with shared interests. By focusing on values, meeting accepting people was easier, at least for me.

People who you think of as friends that merely vanish is disappointing. At least you do not report that those people were users. I found little as disappointing as significantly sharing with others only to be neglected by them for important things that I wanted to experience with them.

@Misery , I truly hope you will find at least one long-lasting friendship

 

[Callistemon]

Yeah, @Kalinychta, but sometimes people living in the same house face to face can not see each other at all, as human beings, and instead only see their own projections, and that is incredibly miserable. So while I understand your point about online interactions, I think face-to-face isn't always great either just because that's what it is.

I kind of see forums as being like multiple penpals on steroids, often in or near real-time - like a technologically aided conference of human beings from all over the world. If we remember each other is a human being, despite the technological interface, it much improves the interactions.

@Misery, I'm sorry you're down. I think when we have high ideals and expectations of friendships and people in general, we can get really disappointed. Don't take it personally when friendships don't work out, people are complex critters. There was a study done here in Australia recently - they asked people to list their friends and then asked their friends - all anonymously - and then they compared their answers. On average, in this study, about half the people that a given person listed as a friend, those people didn't include them in their lists! So that was a pretty sizeable study of people from across the population, and gave rise to some really interesting discussions.

When I was younger, I used to hang on to friendships with much effort, and consider it a defeat if a friendship fizzled out or ended up with the two people no longer seeing eye to eye or enjoying each other's company. Now I'm in midlife, I have a more relaxed attitude about all of that. I don't make nearly the same effort to salvage friendships, I just keep the door open - but not always even that; sometimes I actually close the door too! ...(because you cannot and should not put up with everything, and friendships should be mutually beneficial...) I understand that mostly friendship will come and go through life, in part because most people end up moving to different places at some point and then you don't see each other anymore, and some people aren't good at keeping contact by writing, or don't have the time or just aren't that way inclined.

I found it doesn't matter so much. Some rare friends you will have for the rest of each other's lives, but many will be passing through, and that's OK from where I sit now. Some friends you will reconnect with when they come by your part of the world again, or you to theirs, and then it's as if ten years didn't go by! Some you won't but it doesn't mean it wasn't good in some way, and worth having.

But I think the hardest position to be in about all of this, is to be young and to feel like you may not have a true friend in your life. Maybe because you grew up in a family that deliberately socially isolated their children - I know people this happened to, read autobiographies etc. Maybe because you're shy, or different. Maybe you grew up in an unfriendly area with school bullying, gangs etc - these things really take a hit at our social confidence, and can leave us without networks. Maybe you have to move over and over again for work or other reasons.

It's so much easier for people who already have good support networks when they are young, than for people who for various reasons do not. Then your teens and 20s especially can be hell. But it can get better, trust me - I was deliberately socially isolated by my family of origin, moved halfway across the world away from my existing supports at the age of 11, socially isolated and sabotaged by them (my mother invented all sorts of falsehoods about me and spread them through the community, my father didn't believe in allowing me to socialise) in our new country of residence, went to middle school in a redneck area as an academic student and was at the receiving end of racial/ethnic abuse. Things got better in my senior school, away from the Redneckville of that middle school, and I left home at 16. It took me until my mid-to-late 20s to learn to be my own friend, and not until then did I start to understand how to have a good friendship.

Which doesn't mean they all last forever, for various reasons! But that's not really the end of the world I used to think it was when I was young. One door closes, another opens. I'm interested in people in general, and by midlife have accumulated a handful of friends who I'm pretty sure are always going to be around, and I can strike up good conversations with strangers pretty much every time I go out (with a reliable radar for who's a good candidate), that leave both sides smiling. And it's still fun to make new friends - and do that kind of unconditionally, without worrying about what's going to happen down the track, and just let things flow, and be a bit of an observer.

So hey, things can feel terrible and like the end of the world but then you can still find that life is beautiful anyway and it all generally gets better as you get older.

If you like reflections, I can recommend Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet, which is a story about a fictitious wise man who gives advice to the people of a village he's passing through on all sorts of topics that concern them - including love, friendship, work, suffering, happiness, children, justice, etc etc. I found that really useful, and know many other people who did too. It's also gorgeous poetry!

 

[Atrapa Almas]

Hello @Misery

You did very well on asking for help. I will try to help you.

One of your main asumtions is wrong, let me quote, then explain:

This isnt their fault, it cant be. Logic states otherwise. The common element here is ME, not any other specific individual or aspect. So it has to be my fault.

Here you assuming two wrong things. The first one is that you are assuming that this doesnt happen each other. So you assume those people friendships are stable and longlasting and they just lost interest on you. The truth is this happens all the time between each other INCLUDED you. The freccuency it happens to you its probable higher because you are autistic and by definition of the autistic sindrome we lack the skill to properly understand NT social interaction mechanics, and that include friendship mechanics. Its like a gamer tried to use their logic to pass a game instead of understanding the game´s logic. So to sumarice my first point: All internet friendships and all kind of NT friendships are unstable and will change in time.

And this leads to the second thing you are wrong on this quote: The concept of fault. Trying to find a responsible, a mistake, a fault of why thing dont go like you would like to go. This is very much like accient clerics finding human faults to be the cause of Eclipses, vulcano eruptions, or tsunamis. There is no mistakes, no responsibles, no faults. There are MECHANICS. In this case NT human mechanics. Specifically friendship human mechanics. So to sumarice my second point: Its not your fault, its not their fault, the fault word doesnt even apply. Its how human friendship works.

And how does human friendship works?

Well, human friendships are actually a form of "alliances". So lets say we are both lost in the woods and we meet each other. As we have a need of finding a way home we will probbably need eachother, thus we will become friends. After we find our way home I will return to Mexico and you will return to your home. Slowly that old need will vanish, I will need more my wife, my daugther, my martial arts comrades, my work buddies... and my friendhip net will naturally move toward those people and naturally disminish with you, to finally vanish. This is an example.

¿What does happen with autistic people? Well, autistic people are more like kids or teens on many social matters, included friendship. We have a more white and black thinking, more white and black emotions. So we tend to think things like "People either are my friends or not, there are no middle ground" So we are not that aware of the disminishing friendships, not aware of their temporal nature, like kids. Friends are friends "forever". Love is love "forever". Enemys are enemys "forever". Thigs are good or bad "forever". Then reallity comes and hit us on the face, and we simply dont understand what is happening.

This happens to me. I moved from my Spanish town to Mexico City about 12 years ago and did not foresee that my Spanish friendships were going to fade away. I still refuse to accept it, I am in a whatsupp group of friends. But I am being ignored more and more as my old friendships are just being erased day by day. Why?

• Because those friendships are more important to me (because they are my link to the pass and to my country and to my roots) that for them, who are there and dont have that need.
• Because my concept of friendship is "forever", and even if the ignore me, even if some of them laugth at me, even if the dont care about my life... EVEN IF I KNOW HOW FRIENDSHIP MECHANICS WORK I cant cut those emotions, cant accept that my precious relations are that weak...

And to some extent this is also happening to you. Those internet friendships are very important and needed for you, but probably not for them since they have different situations, diferent lifes, diferent needs. Those people may find love, or start going to the gym, or start gaming with a new clan, or started a new work thus their needs change and so do their friendships. And they will do this kind of thing all their lives.

On top of that internet friendships are not like real life "friendships". We tend to preffer them because there is no body language included so we do less mistakes. But for the same reason, NT people do preffer face to face friendship and relations. Because they can connect at a deeper level and read the other NT person.

So its not your fault, its not my fault, is not anybody fault. Its how it works. For you, for me, for them.

Your best chance to make more "stable" online friendships is here, because here you will find:

• People who need "stable friends".
• People who think friendships are "forever" or at least more durable.
• People who may preffer "not body language" interactions and just text.

As a fish, it may be very frustrating trying to fly as an eagle.
As an eagle, it may be very frustrating trying to swim as a fish.

Its by understanding our traits and their traits that we can accept our circumstances and how reallity works. That is a good starting point to settle expectations that work for us, instead of working against us.

As an ex-gaming addict and as a inmigrant whose friendships are fading away, I can relate to your current sittuation. I send you a big virtual Hug.

 

[Kalinychta]

Yeah, @Kalinychta, but sometimes people living in the same house face to face can not see each other at all, as human beings, and instead only see their own projections, and that is incredibly miserable. So while I understand your point about online interactions, I think face-to-face isn't always great either just because that's what it is.

I kind of see forums as being like multiple penpals on steroids, often in or near real-time - like a technologically aided conference of human beings from all over the world. If we remember each other is a human being, despite the technological interface, it much improves the interactions.

That’s very true. Even face to face these days people feel alienated. Most seem to have a low tolerance for emotion and closeness. Everything is “quick” and superficial. I do think what I said about technology is true, however. The people I know who use very little technology are far more able to connect with others.

 

[Callistemon]

I guess it depends on the person and the generation, @Kalinychta. I can see that social media has that effect on many people's potential to have closer, non-superficial relationships - both by conditioning them to be superficial, and because time and energy goes there that could be going to something more substantial. So some people deliberately use social media mainly to set up the next face-to-face with people, or they avoid it altogether.

In our household, neither do social media, but we're both on a couple of forums, and despite of my generational misgivings about internet, have found that with the right combination of people you can get some pretty amazing quasi-social-groups around longer-form writing and sharing of various media, which are better quality than what was possible with the old snailmail penpalships (which were also good and tended to result in real-life meetings), and which in several groups I've belonged to, resulted in many good real-life meet-ups for people on the same continents, or when people were travelling etc.

What all the people of an online journalling group I belonged to for seven years had in common was living in rural areas in various places around the globe where there was a deficit of people with which to socialise in healthy and non-superficial ways. We were fed up with going to barbecues with conspiracy theorists in our local areas that we'd moved into, some after years of doing so, and couldn't travel to places where we could have good face-to-face social interactions with people with whom we had more in common often enough not to want something else friendly, social and meaningful in our lives.

I think in many ways it's what you make it and I'd rather be meeting cool people online than going to the local craft circle and being told that the shooting at Port Arthur never happened, or that masks don't work and COVID isn't real and that the square root of 4 is 3, etc etc (and you get that online too, but you can also avoid it more easily). And of course, still go the longer distances to meet up face-to-face with people I want to spend time with, as often as practical!

 

[harrietjansson]

It may actually be the fault of technology.

???

 

[SusanLR]

We have a more white and black thinking, more white and black emotions. So we tend to think things like "People either are my friends or not, there are no middle ground" So we are not that aware of the disminishing friendships, not aware of their temporal nature, like kids. Friends are friends "forever". Love is love "forever". Enemys are enemys "forever". Things are good or bad "forever". Then reallity comes and hit us on the face, and we simply dont understand what is happening.

The black and white thinking has been my way all my life and it does make things more difficult.
I always believed in the everything is "forever" also, because I felt for me it would be.
That's how I am. Why can't others be the same?

But, I learned early in life others aren't like that. And it doesn't bother them like it does me.
Looking back over life, I know that's why it didn't bother me that much that I didn't really have
friends. I never believed love was forever if I was involved in a relationship.
Same with the good and bad or enemy thoughts.

Sometimes I was hurt, but, had to realize it wasn't the reality of life and eventually it
became less important. It took a life time to accept things just didn't stay the same forever.
Not in this life anyway.
All I can say is flow with it and the ups and downs won't feel so bad as you grow older.
I've never grown past the black and white thinking. At my age, I wouldn't feel like myself
if it suddenly changed.

You know you're one of my favourite posters here. We've chatted, I've joked around with you,
and I've tried to help by sharing experiences.
For autistics, that may be as good as it gets. Hope you find some solidity in what you want
from life.
I understand about the physical hurt also. I live in physical pain everyday too.
Take care and know I/We care about you!

 

[BrokenBoy]

We're here for you!

 

[harrietjansson]

And I cant understand it. I act towards people exactly how I act on here.

This is a forum with people who accept and understand how people are different. Many people here are trained to deal with this. We learn to be more understanding of people when we ourselves are different

 

[Wolfnox]

I know what that feels like. I had a big family. Lot moved away. Some stayed. Others changed. I don't relate to any of them now. I feel that loss. People leave.
There with you for awhile. Then they go. My advice. Enjoy the time you have.

Still struggling with the idea romantic relationships can end. Or aren't forever. Yet, it's the world's way.

 

[Storm Hess]

I've only had two close friends...both are dead now. When I was growing up, I enjoyed being on my own and letting my imagination loose without the interference of others. For me, life is too short for the injection of the drama of others. I have enough of that with my children and wife.

I enjoy the interactions on this forum, because I can choose what to share and when to share it. I know that I will most likely never meet any of you, so my sense of safety and calm is preserved. Thus, allowing me to share my thoughts that I would otherwise not do.

We only get what we focus the most on.

 

[Wolfnox]

I've only had two close friends...both are dead now. When I was growing up, I enjoyed being on my own and letting my imagination loose without the interference of others. For me, life is too short for the injection of the drama of others. I have enough of that with my children and wife.

I enjoy the interactions on this forum, because I can choose what to share and when to share it. I know that I will most likely never meet any of you, so my sense of safety and calm is preserved. Thus, allowing me to share my thoughts that I would otherwise not do.
We only get what we focus the most on.

I like to think we will all meet up. In another place and time. See you all there. I'll be the white wolf.

 

[Slim Jim]

This happens all the time. The phrase "Aeon Flux." springs to mind. No, Not the cartoon. As cool as it was. Remember ..MTV... anyway. She was pretty hot for a...and the symbolism...anyway, weird cartoon, but I digress..

Where Was I. Oh yeah, Change.

You have to take into consideration the impermanence of things. (Aeon, as in 'eternity, time, Flux as in "change, movement," Eternally changing. I think it's Latin,...something like that anyway. )
That's how it supposed to be. You can't fight it. Realizing, this. That takes the sting out of things. But being, as we're all..imperfect beings, we tend to take things personally, don't we. Hence...Misery.

 

[Misery]

Wow there is a lot of wisdom here and interesting points made. A lot to process even beyond strictly just what I'd spoken of. Hm.

First I will at least say I've calmed down a bit. Venting helped, I think. Though it also occurred to me that certain bits are things that built up over like the last couple of years... and I should have tried to seek assistance in understanding those sooner rather than my usual "well it'll be fine if I dont poke it too much" approach.

Second though... I see a good bit of mention of "NT" VS "spectrum" friendships, and... uhhh.... well, see, that's part of what is making this so hard.

They werent NTs to begin with. I've known for a LONG time that I dont mesh with many NTs very well. Highschool drilled that one in. But also based on the sorts of groups/places I often find myself in and also just by sheer absurd luck, most people I *do* meet at all are often on the autistic spectrum, or have some other aspect that means they qualify as someone who isnt NT. This goes for both online and offline.

So that's part of what makes it so hard. Often it's someone who seems like they should understand and in many cases they've already experienced this very sort of thing (and have said so), and there's usually all these similarities that should aid in understanding and connecting (which have often also been explained) but... nope. That doesnt seem to matter. This nonsense ends up happening anyway. Bah.

And yeah, this has included a couple from this forum. Though, I wont give names of course (and they seem rarely here or not at all in recent times anyway).

But... yeah, that's a part of it.

There was a study done here in Australia recently - they asked people to list their friends and then asked their friends - all anonymously - and then they compared their answers. On average, in this study, about half the people that a given person listed as a friend, those people didn't include them in their lists! So that was a pretty sizeable study of people from across the population, and gave rise to some really interesting discussions.

See this just makes me appreciate dogs more. They often smell like a cow exploded but they'll always stick with you and you'll both be completely sure of it the whole time.

Hello @Misery

You did very well on asking for help. I will try to help you.

One of your main asumtions is wrong, let me quote, then explain:

Here you assuming two wrong things. The first one is that you are assuming that this doesnt happen each other. So you assume those people friendships are stable and longlasting and they just lost interest on you. The truth is this happens all the time between each other INCLUDED you..

Argh, you managed to find a hole in my logic there pretty much immediately. Ack. That's a lesson by itself: just because I think I covered all the major elements doesnt mean I actually did so.

Hmmm.

There's a lot of good wisdom in what you said though. That bit about black & white thinking in particular... yeah. I should really try to keep that in mind more.

That’s very true. Even face to face these days people feel alienated. Most seem to have a low tolerance for emotion and closeness. Everything is “quick” and superficial. I do think what I said about technology is true, however. The people I know who use very little technology are far more able to connect with others.

It's interesting to see how wildly this can vary from one person to the next.

In my case for instance I've been entirely surrounded by increasingly absurd technology since I was a toddler, yet I've never been one for superficial connections; if I latch on to someone it's a bloody solid grip, even if I met them online (regardless of whether or not I later met them in person as well, which happens in some cases but not others).

Yet at the same time, I see so many examples out there of what you speak of. All the social media sorts... Facebook and Twitter that seem to proclaim themselves as this great nexus of connections yet in reality it's all flimsy and covered in ad-flavored goo. Like @Varzar says, everyone wants a bazillion Facebook friends...

It's even stranger to watch the people in my family when it comes to this stuff. I am *the* tech user in the family... not just immediate family, but extended as well. I'm also the ONLY one that doesnt use bloody Facebook and such, and watching everyone constantly check that blasted site is... baffling. I cant understand why they do that.

It's an odd divide. It's most present in, oddly, my parents & step-parents. Supposed to be the other way around, haha.


Anyway, thanks to everyone who responded. There's a lot to ponder here.

 

[Darkkin]

It is possible to give too much; it can easily overwhelm those with an introverted personality type. If an extorvert and/or ambivert expects and requires the same level of interaction and attention, it can burn an introvert out really fast. Then what happens the introvert either sets a boundary or ghosts? Feelings get hurt.

Relationships are not about giving as much as one can give, (everyone needs to save a little for some selfcare.) It is about finding balance, compromising when needed, and respecting boundaries.

From the point of an autistic and an extreme introvert, I can attest to the fact that knowing someone's primary archetype e.g. extrovert, ambivert, introvert can really help. Extroverts draw energy from those around them, they are the social butterflies that flourish in group settings. They thrive on interactions. Ambiverts like being social, but they also like alone time. Kind of the best of both worlds. Introverts love down time, they recharge when they do not have to interact socially. They are happy in their own company.

Internet mediums can and do blur the lines with the archetypial presentations. Wherein the introverts who don't have much to say IRL are much more articulate with a keyboard. Suddenly the quiet one is verbose and looks like an extrovert. The distortion comes into play with the efficiency of the electronic medium. It is way easier to type than it is to say all of this out loud, and there is also far less energy being focused on another physical body within close proximity. (As weird as it seems just physically being in the same room with someone can drain an introvert.)

My best friend is an ambivert, so we've balanced pretty well from the beginning, but there are times when I want and need to be by myself and I don't want to hear the minute details of people I know nothing about. A majority of the time, I do actively listen and contribute to the conversation because she likes to talk. Those other times, if I don't want to or in some cases cannot people, I put the leash on the dog and disappear, usually for several hours. If I'm in my bookcave with only the one lamp on, please just leave me be because like a crabby cat, I will immediately get up, leave, and go upstairs. And it is not that I am angry, offended, or upset. It is because I don't have any spoons to lend just then.

The same goes for online interactions. While they can be very fulfilling, they can get overwhelming, in some cases very quickly. You just need to step away for a little bit and breathe. There are times when you know you should reply to that waiting conversation, but you don't have the spoons for that specific topic, even though it is a subject you love. You've been too deep in it for too long, so you need to surface for a bit. At times like this it can be a few days, sometimes a few weeks of radio silence. Again, the silence is not because of anger or upset, it is because of scarcity of resources.

This is something my friends and family understand about me. If I'm upset about something, I'll rage clean the entire house to work off the wrath and then go no contact for a day or so, so I can communicate responsibly and effectively. I hate yelling, and I will not subject those I care about to a raging temper. It isn't fair to me or them, and most of the time, it is a waste of powerful emotion because the source is often oblivious, even when the transgression is pointed out.

I guess my whole point is that it seems a lot of people jump to the conclusion that they have offended someone in some way if they don't get an immediate reply back. Especially on internet mediums. It is a pretty safe assumption to say that this is not the case.

If someone takes a step back respect it, but also, give some of that respect to yourself. Do not assume blame where no wrong was committed. You aren't being abandoned because you're a terrible individual. This is also where the black and white thinking can really become tough to deal with and we can become our own worst critics. Be conscious of things like this and all that effort you put into others, take some time and invest some of it into you, in the form of self compassion. Know that you are a decent person worthy of respect and affection. You determine your own worth; it is not dependent on the actions of others.

I will also admit that practicing as one preaches when it comes to self compassion is one of the biggest challenges I face personally and it is because of internalised self gaslighting.

This is the one point where my logically, pragmatic brain decides to be completely stupid.

Essentially a lot of folks know exactly where you're coming from.

 

[Judge]

Good points mentioned. We are living in a society that does largely promote socialization on both a transactional and transitional basis. Neither of which amount to relationships with any deep meaning. Exacerbated by technology that appears to bring people together, while doing a better job of pulling us apart.

Indeed, @Misery, good reason to rant about it. Bad for most people just trying to be more social. Worse for those of us with a lifetime struggle at socialization. Yes- it hurts.

 

[Aspychata]

I think we on the spectrum jump into friendships with everything we have, so it's quite a shock to find out that the other person wasn't fully invested. I think we are just more authentic vs so many trolling around as **fake**. If you look at it this way, then it's not on you. LA is called the land of fake people. They act like they are your friends, but they truly aren't.

You may not know me but l felt worried by the title of your post, and l see 1000's of others that reached out to you. Seems like you have a house of support here. Translation? Not many fake people here. This isn't Lala land. Lol