[NyxBean]

The ASD evaluating psychiatrist I saw recently was already convinced I'm AS in the first half of the interview. I had provided the tests for her in preparation and so she just needed to go through and clarify what I meant, etc. She says that she thinks there's a 90%+ chance that her colleagues will agree so we're expecting a diagnoses.

While I'm happy that my suspicion seems to be correct, I became distraught today. I'd like to copy/paste and edit a FB status I made to some of the people I know. I don't know if anybody can help and to be honest I'm concerned I'll be mocked. It is hard to follow, I think, and you might have to skip further down if you get bored.

Summary: I'm upset because I don't understand what friends, best friends, and other labels are supposed to feel like. I don't know if I'll ever have them because I don't even have family bonding.

Either way, here goes (I prefer Asp to Aspie):

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It's stupid but I suppose there are a few things on my mind. I'm going with this one since it's been a long-standing upset of mine.

Since it's almost positive that I'm an asp (please, no snake joke, please) this probably makes sense. It at least should explain why categorisation is so important to me and why I find it hard to form attachments.

~ ~ ~

Romantic ones usually begin straight away with sex. This is not something I am going to do any more. Either way, it felt like it was the only way to form a proper bond and in my naivety I thought I saw meaning in it.

With [ex] I thought there was an actual spiritual connection. People tend to think my ideas in those realms are bizarre but he would sit and listen to me, then discuss and positively affirm a lot. That hadn't happened before. If there's anything I miss, anything that still hurts and will remain hurting, it's the lose of that. Everything else can be cut away - in fact it almost has been in my robotic manner - but that will always hurt.

I know spiritual bonds don't have to come from shared ideas. They're deeper than that, they transcend words. At least, that's what it felt like with [ex friend]. We didn't do the whole freaky deaky occultist dance, yet there was something that intertwined. We were never in a relationship though we had sex. He hurt me a lot.

~ ~ ~

As for friends... I think I only ever really had one "best friend" and that was a childhood one from nursery to primary five. It still aches when I think of [friend A], as I have been a lot lately.

[Friend B] and I had something I can't explain. We'd call each other best friends but I couldn't keep up with the parties, get out the house, or compete with all the others she knows. Apparently it's theorised that humans can keep up to 150 actual bonds with others. Considering the average FB user has 300+, it makes me wonder what chance I have?

~ ~ ~

[Flatmate and carer, also an ex] and I have a strange relationship. For ease, I call it best friends. Really I have no idea. Perhaps I'm too dependent on him for it to feel like that or maybe it is our differences. The latter won't mean we can't be friends, of course, it's simply something I don't understand.

~ ~ ~

What ARE best friends anyway? Past what they do, what does it feel like? If it is explained and I understand, does it mean I can't have them? I don't have family blood bonding after all. What if I can form higher attachments outside of romance and odd set ups like [carer]?

Really, I'm serious: what are best friends?

~ ~ ~

People seem to either have all these colourful labels and others see everybody as friends while not caring about it.

I want a best friend. I want to re-meet souls or form that kind of attachment. I want to... get outside. I want to be at least a little "normal". It's not only Asperger's that harms this, trauma plays its part too.

This year I became unsure of what even friends are. They don't work how I thought they did.

I'm not sure how I'd categorise the ones I consider close. A few I have romantic feelings about, in most cases inappropriately. The others are extremely caring and kind and it wounds me when life tries to crush them. A deep stabbing or stomach drop. I have similar empathy for the stories of strangers though, simply not always as strongly.

~ ~ ~

When I was younger I thought all I had to do was try hard enough and it would happen. I'd make a best friend, somebody who would link arms with me and I'd be on par with all the other most important people in their life. It... mostly hasn't felt that way.

Feelings never made sense and were hard to describe. I thought that was how it was or maybe it was other issues in my head which would possibly lift some day. Autism never goes away.

It's probably alexithymia. Maybe I have best friends and soul sisters/brothers/aliens and I don't know it.

~ ~ ~

I don't know how others categorise me. Descriptions are nice enough but they don't make sense in my head. They are a jumble of beautiful words which lack an anchor, robbing them of some of their impact.

At least something in my interpersonal relationships is doing well in terms of naming aspects because I've been allowed to do that, even structure out what it means, and it hasn't been taken as freakish or wrong.

That situation has me hopeful for change in areas and could assist with some of all of this madness. A slow and nonconforming scenario in extreme early stages but one I am optimistic about. It might go towards me separating out... certain feelings and thoughts. [My carer and I are not courting but we are both courting a mutual friend; everybody knows and we're like a happy little group at the moment, taking it very slow]

There's actually ways of teaching aspie kids how to understand emotions versus thoughts. I wish I'd had that.

~ ~ ~

If I do get the diagnosis I might take No.6's "Late Diagnosis" course thing. It's for people who got diagnosed in teens or adulthood. It runs for about ten weeks and teaches you about the syndrome. I've read and chatted a lot. I'm not sure how much it could take me beyond what I pick up from research and communication.

[kaliope]

it sounds like you are a deep thinker with a need to understand. i am not asp but often picked apart the meaning of relationships myself. i have schizoid traits so it is hard for me to connect. now i just dont bother and stay alone. lol

[daynrand]

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!

[KQiao]

I'm actually not diagnosed or anything, but I do identify with this. I'm always startled when someone else refers to me as a friend when I would not have ranked them higher than a co-worker or acquaintance. How do you become someone's friend without even noticing it, and how can we be friends if I haven't accepted this label. How can people who have only been on a few dates or hung out a couple of times be 'in a relationship'? I've fallen into relationships completely by accident before because I never realized that was the dynamic the other person had attributed to our time spent together. Likewise, at what point am I allowed to label someone else as a friend or significant other? Where is that line? I have had friends that I have known for years, and I am confident in calling them best and dearest friends, but new people? At what point do they stop being just people that you know and earn the title of friend? Likewise, at what point are you considered a friend? And how can you know when it seems to be a shifting line that is different for everyone? If you ask them directly if you are friends then they look at you like you are an alien, and then you have to wonder if they only agreed because they considered it a socially polite thing to do, or they get insulted because how can you not know that you've been friends for ages?

People are hard.

[snickie]

MY LIFE.

Sort of. Not the sex part. Actually the details of my situation are probably very different. (Great. Now I've used the word "situation" which makes it sound like I'm in trouble or something. Am I? No, at least not immediately I guess.)

Categorizing people I know is important to me. If I knew why I'd be able to stop myself from doing it. I've been doing it since I was little. The first time I ever wrote down a list was in fourth grade when I was being bullied. I had four categories, denoted by color, for how I perceived these people were perceiving me. Green was, essentially, someone I felt comfortable talking to like a friend and that I felt was comfortable in talking to me like a real human being. Blue was an on-again off-again friend. I don't remember what orange and fuschia were but there were further down the spectrum. Fuschia was probably something like "hates me". There were a lot of orange and fuschia names on that list, and all but one green on the list were teachers and other adults.

Nowadays I basically throw everyone I know on Facebook into the category Facebook friend, and for a lot of them that describes my relationship with them in real life too. I know a few random facts and will occasionally make small talk with them but I wouldn't really consider them friends as much as "colleagues" or something like that. A number of those are people I met from a week at some music camp and, while obviously our relationships have varied in quality, there's a small chance I'll ever get to see them again and get to be more than "Oh hi, how are you? It's been so long! We should catch up sometime"-at-a-dinner-party-and-then-never-really-end-up-doing-that status. There are a few that I know from a small handful of online games I've played that I don't know in real life and that's fine too. Chances are I will never meet them. The rest are people I used to know and will probably never see again except at high school class reunions if I ever bother to go.

For real life people, we have the "colleagues" I mentioned above. The "colleague" label is a spectrum though, from true acquaintances (people I've only met) to the ones I might track down to have a conversation with in the hallway (usually neighboring classmates or studio mates).
Then there are some that I enjoy getting together with every so often and it's fun and like we're old friends, but it's rare and when it's over we go back to ignoring each other until the next time one of us is in town.
There's a small handful of people that I am completely indifferent to in a different way from the "colleague" status people. I might even be slightly curt or even unfriendly toward them, not that I want to be. It's probably a symptom of underlying jealousy or feeling of competition against them with the prize being the attention/affection/whatever of those I actively call friends.
We have the "green marker" friends. These are the people I actively seek out for company on a regular basis. I have lunch every Thursday after Music History with these people lol. I like making jokes with these people. We can talk and gossip about life like normal people. There are two and two-halves of these (more below on the halves).
I don't have very many people I genuinely don't like. My old roommate from September last year is on that short list. My ex-best friend from 5th grade through middle school is also on that list. We might wave at each other in the hall and hold a 30-second small talk session, and then I walk away.

In-betweens (halves) bother me. For example, are my roommates high-ranking colleagues or green marker friends? I'm sure roommate #1 would want me to consider her a green marker friend; that's certainly how she ranks me. ("You're my bestest friend, [Snickie]! Am I your best friend?" But she's not my best friend.) Roommate #2 is a high-ranking colleague I think for now. Then I have another friend who's a good friend of one of my green markers, and she falls in that gray area between green marker and high-ranking colleague. I'm happy to have lunch with her (not a colleague trait) but we don't have that same connection as other green markers. She also tends to get in nasty month-long fights with said green marker and I kind of stop hanging around her when that happens. I guess that puts her in the high-ranking mutual friend category?

I guess friendship is as much a spectrum as other spectrum-y things, and when things don't fit in a certain direction we add more dimensions and plant them there. Kind of like the gender/romantic/sexuality/amory spectrums I guess.

Anyway I didn't mean to make this post all about myself. (Actually I did. Seeing other people's problems here helps me visualize and organize my thoughts about my problems. But anyway.)

I was completely surprised when my best friend announced that I was her best friend, and I felt like I barely knew her. But she just said it one day and so I went with it. I needed a best friend so why not?