Separate Directions

[Droopy]

Here's a thought I sometimes have:

As people grow older and mature, they seem to spend less time socializing with others. They go to college or university, get jobs, fall in love, buy a house and possibly get married or have children. I have noticed that as my social circle has moved into young adulthood, there have been problems with being able to organize social events and meet up. Jobs, education, girlfriends and money seem to get in the way.

I feel that as we all grow older, there will be less of a want/need to socialize due to the factors I have listed above. I think that when we all eventually get a house of our own and a permanent job that this will make all of our social lives worse. In theory, everyone will move in their own separate directions and on with their lives. This thought is why I am trying my best to be social as much as possible now - when everyone is still around and has (some) free time - I just regret not doing it earlier.

Back in the days when everyone was in school and the summers were long, there was plenty of time, chances and interest in being social (Although I mainly stayed indoors). Everyone was free as a bird. Now though, my friends are becoming increasingly busy as the years move on with plenty of other commitments that come before socializing. When I look at my parents and at older people in general, they seem to be less social and more involved/concerned with life's daily tasks (including maintaining a family).

I sometimes fear that if I don't make social contacts/progression now, then it will be much harder and less likely to happen when I'm older. I feel that I need to do as much socializing as possible while I'm still young and everyone is around. I do regret missing out a lot when I was younger as I chose to stay indoors for most of it. I'm not looking forward to growing older and having everyone go their separate ways and move on with their lives, leaving their social side behind.

Hopefully this will make sense to someone at least. Does anyone see the point I am trying to make? How do others feel about this?

 

[benjaminba78]

yes I see what you mean, when I was a kid I just play with my twin brother,as i went to high school it took me for every to do any thing to be social, i want to do every thin my parents did, As I went to college things change my friends got busy, I still hung by myself and didn;t socially all that much as got more into college things change I was able to start breaking away do more social things, now it easier for me to be social as get older people still have others thing to do that fine with me, as I get comfortable with me that all that matter now, I can control others any more don;t beat yourself up abny more or make yourself crazy about this. it happen it happen, I use to try to impress people or try to fit in them and not be myself now, I try to be me that great then trying to impress them

 

[KinksFan]

I've gone separate directions, many times with many people, in my life. I've grown apart from a lot of people. I have a couple of good friends, that I will never grow apart from. I've just recently grown apart from somebody, who's been doing me more harm, than good. I don't mind. It just gives me more time, to be with all of you.

 

[142857]

One of the problems for an aspie is that the basic social skills and self confidence often don't arrive until much later in life than normal - in my case not until my 30s. And by then you can't go around acting like a teenager to make up for lost time, you are expected to interact with other adults as a mature adult and you haven't had 20 odd years of socialising behind you to get the hang of it, if you see what I mean. So you make mistakes, you don't know how to go about building a relationship with a girl, you are pretty clueless generally.

If you are able to bite the bullet now and pick up those socialising skills while you are still young, then go for it.

 

[142857]

Just an afterthought - don't think that life ends at 20 or 25 or whatever. My best years have been from my mid 30s until now (45 y.o.). I can be charming and make friends now, I just have to remember to make the effort. When I was your age or even 10 years older than you are now I was clueless with making friends of either gender.

 

[superboyian]

I always thought that I would be with the same friends forever (even though I did make new ones) and I always thought that we would end up going different directions, turns out I was wrong.

They ended up going different directions and eventually got to the stage where they didn't want to be friends anymore which is a real shame really, either becuase they didn't or they got manipulated.

We all ended up going different colleges in the end.

 

[Firnafth]

This has definitely happened to me. The first problem is that, unlike in college, I'm not roommates with my friends, so I don't see them every day. Secondly, all of the people I know here who are more or less my friends are graduate students like me. We see each other at "work." I can go visit somebody's lab to say hi, but I can't stay for too long because I might tick off a research advisor who wants their students to work, not chat with friends. I dislike driving places and don't particularly like planning outings with groups of people so I don't visit others or go out that often. (Not to mention, I have this weedling little feeling whenever I am not working on research that I should be working on it. But that may just be my guilt combined with academic pressure.)

Result: minimal social life. It is also true that my unwillingness to engage in standard socialization practices, such as going to the bar, which are still available here, is not helpful. The types of social get-togethers I enjoyed with my past group of peers are not often available with my current group.

A number of my college acquaintances are drifting away because of the location problem - we moved away from each other. I have been having a lot of trouble replacing them (wow, that sounds cold!) because of the much smaller group of available peers here.

So, in sum, I do understand. But I am not so worried about it except that loneliness wears on my mental health. I call few people true friends and have so far been able to keep in touch with those few. The rest, I don't mourn their absence.

 

[MissConstrue]

Right now I feel like I'm making up lost time for my teenage years. The older I get the harder it gets, I feel like now I'm at the mental stage of 16. It's funny but as a teen I felt like I had to grow up fast. I couldn't identify with peers (still can't) and found it very frustrating to make friends. To this day it's been the same way except now the only age group that seems to gravitate toward me are both kids and teens. They're usually shocked to find out what an unimportant life I have. I never really went through these "important" things that most adults go through. I guess this is what they mean by developmentally delaid. It's especially hard to find places to meet people where I live. I use to just go to bars and find fair weathered friends there. Now I realize it isn't exactly the best place to find those kinds of friendships.

Yes I find the adult world very difficult to navigate. However I don't think it's ever too late no matter what age you are. I'm still the same person I was when I was 16. Not much has changed since then except my looks and some experiences. I found the teenage world to be just as frustrating as the adult world if not more so. At least when you get to be an adult people mellow out by then and aren't as judgemental.