First thing: NO! YOU ARE WRONG, WRONG, WRONG right off the bat by saying this: "It's stupid." It is NOT "stupid", NyxBean! Nothing you've written is stupid! YOU & your thoughts are NOT stupid in ANY way, shape or form. You've have definitely got that part totally wrong.

If I could go back in life with what I know now, especially about AS & the fact that I've had it since birth, I would not have allowed others' ideas about friendship to rule my own perceptions & I certainly would not have allowed the so-called friends that took up way too much of my time & energy to even have been in my life at all. That includes certain family members, by the way. I don't think we need to define friendship so decisively, anyway. To be honest, I no longer think even the "normal" people out there really understand all that well what true friendship is. We could all go crazy trying to figure it out, not to mention romantic relationships.

For myself, there was one aspect that somewhere along the way I became aware of, that my "friends" & even mere acquaintances seemed more than willing to share the deepest & darkest of their secrets with me. I've never understood this & still don't to this day. I don't know if it's some AS trait that makes them feel so free to discuss such intimacies with me or some other something, but one day a few years ago I sat down & listed out about 15 people over the years (all women) who told me all kinds of things they wouldn't think of sharing with others. Do I feel somehow "special" that they felt they could "trust" me with this baloney? No. I feel violated, actually.

I mean, there were 2 of them (both married) who used to think it was great fun to seduce their husbands' friends and some of their own friends' husbands on a regular basis, & for some reason they enjoyed relating every detail of said seductions to me. I never once breached a confidence, either. I harbored these confessions to myself always. Another friend had "merely one" long-term affair, & also shared the details with me every time my husband & I got together with her & her husband. Why? I do not know. I would just listen silently & keep it to myself, wondering how somebody could do something like that. My own mother (a sick relationship) used to tell me things as an adult that baffled me, but that would take a book to describe. A minister's wife at a church we attended for a number of years used to vent the venom she felt about every single person we knew. (To me, of course.) This is a woman who appeared to be a saint to all others, but for some reason her true feelings came out when she was talking to me. And on it went for decades with many others.

Nowadays I wouldn't put up with that bull, but I still wonder what it was about me that made them feel so free to confess their sins/true feelings like that? Obviously they weren't afraid that I'd blab to anyone, but it seems like it was more than just that. There was something about me that made them feel "safe" or something, I guess. Was it that I was so weird & strange that even if I did tell on them, nobody would believe me anyway? Or was it something else of the AS that brought that out in them? I just do not know. But I do know that they were not my friends. I did not feel the same freedom to share my feelings of estrangement & confusion about life with them, that's fer sure. But I suppose I was their friend, or at least their confessor, huh? I served some kind of purpose for them. Not a one of those people is in my life now. Two of them I deliberately stopped communicating with about 8 years ago. One of them tried for 2 years, crying & writing to me that I was her "best friend" repeatedly, and asking how I could do such a thing to her. There was no way to explain it to her. I just had finally realized she had never been my friend at all, & was basically using me for all those years, & I simply didn't have the energy to deal with her any longer. She wouldn't have understood nor cared about the AS I was learning about & dealing with, & why should I try to explain to someone who clearly didn't care? It had always been all about her, & she just had to deal with the loss on her own. I know that sounds harsh, but at some point we really do have to think about self-preservation.

So, OK, enough running on about me & my weird friend-thing. I will say I consider it a good thing if you're not doing the sex-right-off-the-bat thing any more. That's just not healthy for anybody, AS or not. Maybe you'll think I'm old-fashioned, but that's how I see it. Sex needs to wait for a LONG time after you truly know somebody deeply, & have a bond of love. I know that's not how sex is portrayed in the modern age, but when you think about it, (& especially when you think that it's still & always will be the woman who usually gets hurt the worst), how in the world can something so inherently intimate not cause pain & confusion when it's used carelessly? It only makes sense. Why throw in something to muddle the issue if you don't have to? It's not like it's all not confusing enough already.

As for your question, "what ARE best friends anyway?" I don't know. I do have 2 friends I've known for years, & I don't feel badly that I don't have 100 or 150. Those 2 I do consider real friends, but I don't need to hang out with them all the time or even see or talk to them all that much. I mean, yes, I do know other people & all, but I don't feel really close to them, even if they are "friends". Maybe they're more than just acquaintances, but we just aren't really close, that's all. I mean, we'd help each other out in a pinch or visit if we got sick, things like that. But I think it's silly to think you need to have a whole bunch of really "close friends". How does anybody have time to get that close to that many people? Friendship takes time, after all. It doesn't just happen overnight.

Well, I guess I've run on long enough, & feel like I've been lecturing, too, but I want to add that what you wrote at the end sounds very hopeful. The course. Is that something available where you live or is it online? It is also good that you are optimistic. Be glad that you were diagnosed relatively early in life. You have much to be hopeful for! You are articulate and intelligent and AS is not an illness, after all. We are unique!