I [24 M] can't seem to hang onto friends. Am I sabotaging the relationships with clinically-poor social skills or is it anxiety-fueled paranoia?
I have observed a trend in my friendships:
1. Meet someone who I get along well with
2. Share ourselves, get to know each other
3. Settle in, establish familiar patterns of socialising
4. Communication drops off & I am only one initiating conversation
5. Frozen out, I get sick of it and silently drop off to never see them again.
This has happened every single time without fail. I've made two to three dozen friends over the last 3-4 years of adult life and they've all followed this rough route at varying speeds. It's even more apparent when I form/join a group because I will often find myself unable to catch their eye(s) like someone behind the crowd at a bar, while the other members happily carry on amongst themselves.
The only explanation I've been able to make fit (apart from somehow making a poor choice of friends this many times in a row) is that it's me, and I'm driving them away. I have The AutismTM, that hollywood-famous social disorder but with none of the mathemagical casino skills and all of the ignorance of what people are thinking, and I'm pretty sure it's what's at fault here. I imagine I'm presenting myself in some way that skeeves them out/devalues myself in some way, and I just can't see it because of The AutismTM. This pattern has been happening so regularly that I've just stopped trying to make new friends altogether - I currently have two friends (neither of which respond much to my attempts to stir the coals) and one significant other [24, F] who still somehow inexplicably loves me very much after nearly four years.
However, this also seems like some sort of lie cooked up by my paranoid anxiety that's leading into self-sabotaging behaviours, and I can't tell the fucking difference. What is the truth?
Q: Why not just ask the other party what's happening when you reach step 4?
I do, and the answer is usually "oh I'm sorry I was busy" and then there's a brief return to 3 before inevitably back to 4 and then finally 5. It now feels like they are/were lying to me.
Q: Why does your partner like you? Perhaps that is your biggest social strength.
They seem to like me because we're both social shut-ins with no judgement of the other and very comfortable with our confessed idiosyncrasies. I really, really don't know how I managed to attract them. It's a long, complicated and shameful story where I happen to be holding first place when the dust clears.
tl;dr: im autist who doesnt know why friendships dont work. plz help.
Submitted December 27, 2018 at 01:20AM by NimbleJack3 http://bit.ly/2Rfczdy
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