@Owl, that’s lovely that someone was kind enough to take time to explain things. It makes my day when that happens to me.

Friendships and relationships are complex things. I flip-flop in life between times when I feel the need and the motivation to build friendships, and then other times when I could quite happily relocate to a crofter’s cottage in the Outer Hebrides and never see anyone again. I often wonder sometimes if I’m sociable because I feel societal/conforming pressure to be that way - not necessarily because it makes me happy, but rather that striving to do the things that appear to make me “normal” makes me happy (happier). I bet this doesn’t make much sense.

After a series of therapy sessions, before Covid, my therapist was convinced I fitted very strongly into the Asperger’s Syndrome category. I think therapists shy away from recognising this now, and prefer to put people somewhere on the autistic spectrum, rather than separating out Asperger’s, but I’m not sure. Anyways, I had an informal diagnosis later that classed me as this too, and the conclusion was that I’d got through life by learning adaptive behaviour - I’d become an excellent mimic - to hide my underlying feelings. So people never see the “real” me.

Maybe this is why I find friendships and socialising complex.

I hope this doesn’t make me come across as being unsympathetic, or dismissive of friendships and relationships. I think, when I’m at my worst, I just can’t cope with socialising - is just too hard and stressful (for me), but I think I understand the needs that others feel to have strong friendships.

Oh dear, I have babbled, and none of this is really helping @Discombobulated.

Jeff.

P.S. It’s not just the States, the whole world is going to the dogs.