[Mark88]

Do you ever find it hard to make friends?
I lost contact with my friends over the years, I haven't been out since 2010.
Everytime I talked to them, they would just stop texting back and I felt rejected. They never wanted to hang out any more.

I've been looking at support groups but some are far and im not sure if I can make friends with someone like me who has Asperger's Syndrome? Wouldn't it be just harder?

[healingme4me]

Hobby groups seem a better means, you'd have something in common. Five years is an awfully long time to go without socializing. Don't know any solutions.

[mixtape02]

I seek comfort online. Usually on a journaling site or just finding people who want to hear my reinforcing words. People with asperger's would tend to feel pretty comfortable socializing online. Other than that, getting out being around people is easier done at a concert or sitting in public, like a shopping center or coffee shop or bookstore or the park. It's simple but refreshing and doesn't require making friends.

But to really try to make a new friendship, I used to make friends on dating sites, looking for friends only. They didn't go away, I just stopped trying to hang out because I lost interest.

[coffeebuzzbuzz]

I have the same problem. I do live with my bf, but other than him and my parents and brother, that's it. I do talk to friends online who are into gaming. It does hurt a lot, but I really don't know how to interact with people in person.

I went to a family picnic last Saturday and it was so awkward for me. I didn't know what to say to all of my cousins(who are my age), so I just stayed to myself. No problems talking to most of my aunts, but they all have that motherly vibe. Whenever I did come across a cousin, I didn't know what to say. I have a terrible habit of rambling about random facts and history. People don't start conversations that way.

I guess it's different at home...I can be me without any thought. My bf calls me a know it all, and thinks my social awkwardness is cute(I guess it appears like a stereotypical dumb blonde persona to him). If only I could walk up to people and they knew why I am weird.

[Twosacrowd]

I don't know the answer...I am the same. Although I no longer wish to seek friendship as it's just to hard work to maintain, it leaves me overwhelmed and the process of 'making friends' is draining..after it I would just want to shut myself away to recover which really defeats the purpose. I am comfortable just having social contact with my neighbours which I can control and school drop-offs etc. I sometimes wish that I had friends but that would involve me to pretend to be someone I'm not and that is pointless. So sorry no advice but I do understand.

[snickie]

I can make friends online but then I start feeling guilty because I'm friends with someone whom I only know online and not in person and it's the in person kind of friendship I'm supposed to have. (I probably wouldn't spend so much time online if I had real life friends that didn't live an hour or more away.)

I spend a lot less time on forums and games during the school year (which starts for me next week, finallyyyyy) so things are a lot different there. I have a small handful of friends (name two plus a few in that weird gray area between "friend" and "friend because mutual friend/roommate/necessity") with whom I'm comfortable sitting next to and chatting and being friends. I'm somewhat comfortable in randomly interjecting my opinion casually to a group of people in the student lounge or in class. But put anyone outside of that weird circle in a one-on-one with me and maybe we'll have a nice conversation but I won't be particularly comfortable and I'll be hyperaware of what I'm doing.

One of them, we'll call her Abby, I sort of became friends with because she invited me to sit with her and her friends at lunch (I was by myself at the time) and I decided, why not, at least I can not look antisocial (I've done this a few other occasions where I sit with acquaintances so as not to look like a recluse). The other one, let's call her Carly, I met in the student lounge when there were only four of us there including myself and Abby (we were sort of friends by then). Carly later decided that I was her best friend (I'm not sure how we got to that point) but then I decided that I could really use a best friend. I guess I was lucky that Abby and Carly (and later another one we'll call Beca who falls into that gray area I talked about earlier) decided that I was worth initiating contact with and that I decided to maintain an amiable relationship that turned into something. (Platonic, of course.) I don't know who I would've been friends with had they not come up to me the way they did. (There have been times people had come up to me being all nice and stuff and either I'm completely focused on something else and miss their intention or I just don't end up clicking with them even though some of them I would really really like to be friends with.)

I had another friend my first semester. I had known her from summer music camps and so we hung out a lot too, sometimes with Abby, until she left at the end of the semester. We still chat and occasionally hang out but she's one of those lives-an-hour-away people so I see her maybe once every few months.

But of everyone I know, I don't know that there's anyone I know in real life to whom I can tell the deep dark stuff. There's the kind of either diluted-with-white-paint dark stuff or the stuff that was never deeper than 50% gray to begin with, but what about the indigo, midnights, and inky dark stuff?

This prefer Friends during this Psych Central Always