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Your experiences with AS/AS friendships

PanPaniscus

PanPaniscus

Former Moderator
V.I.P Member
I have thought of a topic to write the first article about, ASD/ASD friendships and whether they work as well or better than ASD/"NT" friendships. I also want to test the validity of the phrases "opposites attract" and "birds of a feather flock together"

So, if any of you have been or are friends with any auties or aspies could you tell me your experiences with them? How you met, how much you have in common, the positives about your relationship, the challenges there may be etc
I need some stuff I can compare to make general thingys, and things I can use as anecdotes and stuff. (of course I won't be using stupid words like thingys in the article itself, I will be more formal than that.)

Thanks in advance :D
 
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I've had a couple of NT friends for many years, I feel no love or joy being around aspies, or women, not "sexistically" meant, but NT boys and men is the company I prefer.
 
My experience with AS/AS friendships are actually very good, I tend to be the real talkative one out of the group most of the times.
We do end up having some conflicts but always made up for it in the end... Good experiences and very interesting conversation I have with them. :)
 
I've had a few friends over the years who, in hindsight, were almost certainly aspies. I enjoyed their company and found them interesting but once we stopped working together or moved away it was like "okay, bye" and no attempt was made by either party to stay in touch.

Is that typical?

Do you want specific blow-by-blow details of the friendships or just an overview or impression of what those friendships are like? I can do either.
 
142857 said:
I've had a few friends over the years who, in hindsight, were almost certainly aspies. I enjoyed their company and found them interesting but once we stopped working together or moved away it was like "okay, bye" and no attempt was made by either party to stay in touch.

Is that typical?

Do you want specific blow-by-blow details of the friendships or just an overview or impression of what those friendships are like? I can do either.
Click to expand...

Somewhere inbetween. Like maybe an overall view, with some details thrown in to explain.
 
My best friend in England was aspie and when I went to America she said she missed me and was coming over for 3 months. When her visa was about to expire she said we had to get married so I drove to Las Vegas and we got married. Funny thing is that I used to ask her for dates before and she wouldn't let me date her.
 
^^ are you still together now?

BTW, I am leaving this article for the second. I will post it though.
I will be writing a different first one. But I still want the replies coming in, if any of you have something to write.
 
Both good and bad. I think communicating can be hard, I guess I'll just have to wait and see what the future holds.
 
PanPaniscus said:
So, if any of you have been or are friends with any auties or aspies could you tell me your experiences with them? How you met, how much you have in common, the positives about your relationship, the challenges there may be etc
Click to expand...

My first friend with an ASD was back during my early elementary school days, we got along so well. We were hard to split a part. Then he moved away and it made me really sad. To this day, I always think about him and wonder how he is doing.

My friendship with the rest of my Asperger's friends are all right. :D I mean I out grew a friendship with this one gal, but we just out grew each other and life moved on. :S

Well I'll write more when I can clear my mind.
 
PanPaniscus said:
^^ are you still together now?

BTW, I am leaving this article for the second. I will post it though.
I will be writing a different first one. But I still want the replies coming in, if any of you have something to write.
Click to expand...

Yes. We have been married for nearly 14 years now. She used the visa status to get a job with my company and we were joined at the hip for over ten years.
 
landlubber said:
Yes. We have been married for nearly 14 years now. She used the visa status to get a job with my company and we were joined at the hip for over ten years.
Click to expand...

That's a nice happily ever after ending. :cute:

I find AS/AS relationships pretty cute.
 
the people i have been freinds with were mostly around the autism specturm, schizo-effective/schizoid, bipolar, and I had a few nt freinds. I always had interesting conversations with people who were not neurotypical and I was able to make some sort of freindship becasue of it. I had a few nt freinds but it was like talking to a wall, and most of them were fakes in the end. Most of the freinds i made were guys, i could relate to very few girls and the ones who were my freinds we had close to a unbreakable freindship.
 
I don't actually know if I have been involved with another person who has this. I am kinda new to knowing about it. I work at a card shop if from what I read on line in my work it is likely I would run into someone with this but I don't actually know. My girlfriend has Social Phobia though and besides blow ups we seem to do alright together.
 
I tend to shy away from anyone who "stands out", which would probably include a lot of ASD folks. I have a very hard time feeling comfortable around people who, let's just say, don't fit in socially.

To use an analogy, back when there was a lot more discrimination against African-Americans, it was not uncommon for someone with very light skin to leave the African-American community and "pass for white." This meant, of course, that that person had to be very, very careful about who he or she associated with, because there were eagle-eyed whites who were very quick at spotting "racial" traits and mannerisms. (Think "gaydar"). I am in the position of "passing for normal." I have learned through sad and bitter experience that being around someone who has social difficulties only calls attention to my quirks and oddities, and it ends up being the two of us against the world. And since 9 times of 10, I am the one that has the better social skills, I am the one that suffers. First of all, for losing "normal" friendship (because that is what happens, when the NT's see the two of us together, they breathe a sigh of relief and run) and second of all, I am stuck in a "friendship" that can only drag me further down the scale. So apart from forums and conferences, I don't seek AS friendships. It took me a long time to even say Aspergers and Autism because of the stigma and social isolation attached to it. I am not proud of my attitude; I see it more of a survival thing.
 
Spinning Compass said:
I tend to shy away from anyone who "stands out", which would probably include a lot of ASD folks. I have a very hard time feeling comfortable around people who, let's just say, don't fit in socially.

To use an analogy, back when there was a lot more discrimination against African-Americans, it was not uncommon for someone with very light skin to leave the African-American community and "pass for white." This meant, of course, that that person had to be very, very careful about who he or she associated with, because there were eagle-eyed whites who were very quick at spotting "racial" traits and mannerisms. (Think "gaydar"). I am in the position of "passing for normal." I have learned through sad and bitter experience that being around someone who has social difficulties only calls attention to my quirks and oddities, and it ends up being the two of us against the world. And since 9 times of 10, I am the one that has the better social skills, I am the one that suffers. First of all, for losing "normal" friendship (because that is what happens, when the NT's see the two of us together, they breathe a sigh of relief and run) and second of all, I am stuck in a "friendship" that can only drag me further down the scale. So apart from forums and conferences, I don't seek AS friendships. It took me a long time to even say Aspergers and Autism because of the stigma and social isolation attached to it. I am not proud of my attitude; I see it more of a survival thing.
Click to expand...

Blimey you must live in a narow-minded part of the world. I certainly past being bothered about people judging me for whom I hang out with. If anything it filters out people of a flawed disposition.

Anyhow, I went to an autistic secondary school therefore had many AS-AS friendship opportunities. At the time I mostly made friends with the teachers. I do have one friend from that school still now and is an unusual relationship, I have to listen to his lists and obsessions whereas I simply want to talk about the weather and general 'hows things' type stuff. He's a good guy tho. I would like to have more friends on the spectrum because no person with AS is remotely the same. The bulk of my friends are of the NT variety. From the environment I've grown used to but still underperform in
 
Actually, believe it or not, while the community I grew up in was narrow-minded, it was actually quite open-minded compared with other parts of the country. In other words, it could have been even worse.

Even now, there are communities that are not all that accepting of anything they consider "deviant". Last summer I was in a production of "Hair", a play that celebrates the free love and drugs of the mid-Sixties. The theater which put it on is in a small, conservative town. Some of the younger cast members were really getting into their roles and "acting out" sexually, both hetero- and homo-. Which was fine as long as they kept it "backstage" but there was an incident where they "forgot" and started acting like that in a local restaurant oblivious to the stares of the four young men who were watching. I did not like the looks I saw on their faces and I became very concerned. Especially the next night when a van started circling the parking lot and blowing its horn at us while we were waiting for the doors to be unlocked. Nobody recognized the van or its passengers. Fortunately they drove off without further incident, but--people have been attacked and even killed over things like that.

So, yes, you do have to be careful about what you say or do in some areas.
 
But I also want to clarify that I am much more concerned about doors closing than I am about becoming a victim of violence (although that can happen). People are still pretty much prejudiced against anyone who is different mentally, and that can lead to lost opportunities. If you are stigmatized as being a "retard" (or any of its associated labels), your social circle can become very narrow indeed. If the only people you associate with are others who are in the same boat or worse off, then you are pretty much stuck with little chance to advance. These days the buzzword is networking, networking, networking. Or in other words, it's not just what you know but who you know. Now that I have achieved some measure of success, I do want to help others with ASD's. But I could not get to where I am today if I had not made some hard decisions early on about who I wanted to associate with.
 
I have never really socialised much with AS people. I'm only doing so now because I'm helping some of them.

I prefer NTs anytime man.....
 
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