What was it like having friends growing up with AS?

[Adora]

I grew up not knowing I was on the spectrum until I was 31 but at school I didn't have a lot of friends,sometimes the "friends" I had would turn against me and bully me,I spent a lot of my school years wondering the schoolyard alone and would go into the library as well,even now I don't have any real friends and I have gotten use to it,my aunt is more upset with fact I don't have friends and once told me that she prays sometimes that I would have a friend.

 

[ryan1205]

All of you guy's posts makes me sad that many of you had less friends than I ever did. I always felt I had little to none on some days. Especially in middle school where I was constantly bullied by many of my classmates. High school was so much better for me than it was in middle school. I had many close friends and the people that had bullied my back in middle school apologized and wanted to be friends.

This makes me feel that I am blessed to have a twin brother, who without him, I would be lonely and have no friends. My twin brother was my #1 best friend in life and still is. Even though there were many fights growing up, he is the closest thing to a friend. Besides him, I had like seven other good friends in my entire high school life. I only talk to 2 of them now and those 2 we still hang out often and are planning to hang out soon.

This is me with my two closest friends now. My twin brother was driving the car. (He is giving me the bunny ears) This was taken a week before our high school graduation. Also the car behind us was another friend of mine who was kind of a bad influence, he was more of my twin brother's friend.

This is me and a now ex-friend. She was the closest friend I had my Junior and Senior year. We were in every class together and spoke every day and texted too. We were also in the inclusion program at school meaning she had a learning/social disorder which she does not, she just had a really s***y life. Senior year was rough in my friendship with her. I had a crush on her and she knew. We both agreed to just be friends. A few days after graduation, we had fought one last time, and she said she didn't want to be friends anymore. We haven't spoken since then. I still think about her sometimes and some days I can't get over her. But losing a friendship with her was the hardest thing to face in any friendship i ever had.

 

[tdrfreebird]

In first grade I had a good friend for a while but he realized that everyone else thought I was weird so then he just avoided me.
Then in from about 6-8th grade I had a really good friend; we hung out everyday, I went to his house a lot, I knew his family, etc. Then he played a prank on me with some other kids on the last day of the school year and I never heard from him again.
In college I had a handful of friends that came and went; college kids are pretty flaky overall. I have one friend from college that I still talk to, but he lives in Washington state (I'm the midwest) so we Skype every once in a while.
Every friend I've had has either moved away, outgrown me, or just stopped talking to me.

 

[Bellatrix]

I didn't have many friends growing up. Often they would be users - the kind that play with you when they have no one else then cast you aside and bully you when their actual friends come back to them.

This is how it was for me, through both primary and secondary school. Other students would only ever talk to me if they had no one else to turn to, and the moment they found someone else I was conveniently forgotten. I can't say I have any friends now, although I do have many acquaintances, people I see almost every day when I drive 11 kms to access the internet.

 

[Destinyz12]

I generally had a few good friends at a time during my childhood and teen years, and then a moderate amount of aquaintances along the way (some of those friendships faded and were replaced by others over the course of those years, usually when someone moved away) although it was a little rough when I moved away myself after my freshman year of high school.

I had a hard time forming friendships at my new school and the ones I did form weren't really close ones, except for one. We mostly drifted after high school, and of course the close friend moved away and we also drifted. I made a group of friends in college that I became somewhat close with during my 4 years, but again found my friendship with most of them fading after graduating. 2 of them I remained close with for quite a few years after college but I also worked with one of them for awhile, and once I left that job things once again faded, and then the other friend moved away but we keep in touch and try to see each other when she comes back for annual visits.

As an adult (I'm 32 now) over the past several years I've made what I would consider some moderately good friends (we hang out and see each other semi-frequently, even occasionally go away together, but aren't super close like best friends). And once again, the friend amongst the group that I was closest to moved away last year. We still see each other when he visits a few times a year but its not quite the same.

I just seem to have a hard time forming super close bonds with people where one another wants to make the effort to remain close no matter what gets in the way.

 

[pineman93]

Most of my friends were in my elementary and middle school years,Some in high school ,I had a good friend in kindergarten a best friend I suppose,in first grade we were put in different classes, we talked some,I also asked her if she was my girlfriend at lunch of corse i had no idea what that meant at the time I was a kid .In 3rd grade my parents divorced and I finished 4th and 5th grade in another school,I had also made some friends there.One of the friends I made there would come down to my grandparents house and play often.
There was another kid that lived down the street from my grandparents
house we would go to his house and he would come to mine and play, but we grew apart and he moved.I made a few more in friends in middle school but i mostly just hung out with them in school. Well I went to high school, didn't know anybody there execpt my sibilings,but alot of the people there were very nice. I met a few eople i would talk to sometimes but I mostly keep to my self. In 10th and for the rest of my high school career I would go to this room after lunch it was for kids who had disabilities some other kids where and I would talk to them I went down there everyday as much as i could after I ate my lunch and I would stay there until time for my next class also the room had a popcorn machine the teachers let me use and I would eat popcorn it was cool.After i garduatted i really haven't done much else in the form of socalizing but I hope to change that

 

[Stitch]

Friends? ...eh, never really there. My next older sister has always been the family socialite, and since I was always a grade or two ahead that was the age group that was around me; her friends were also 'my' friends. While I'm still in occasional contact with one person from that era, the rest of them have all vanished from my social sphere.

I always tended toward 'old' people, though. During church potlucks I would find a way to not sit at the tables with those of my age group. Instead, I would go sit with the 50-60 year-olds who were talking about things like different types of diabetes, which I frankly found much more interesting. Since I was quiet and well-behaved, they never seemed to mind.

Highschool years I spent largely without friends. There were a few that I'd hang out with, and we got along very well and still do when we see each other. However, as life has continued moving along, we don't see each other very often anymore. When we do it's always around many other people, and that eliminates the possibility of a good interaction while maximizing all my social inabilities.

So that leaves work. Again, I avoid social interaction as much as I can, but there is one person there who can tell I'm 'not quite right' and doesn't mind. He's kind of a misfit himself, and he knows that not being 'normal' (whatever that is) is okay. This friendship has survived for a few years now, I think sometimes more spite of me than not...

 

[FreakyZettairyouiki]

Well where can I begin.
Personally I never had many friends. I was usually a loner and everyone could see. It didn't help that my town was homogenous racewise, so I stood out in two ways than one. Even my family wasn't as social as other families. I literally had only one friend in elementary school who then moved away. I had occasional acquaintances from time to time but nothing more than that until I got into high school. This girl befriended me because she admitted later that I was basically a sad person with no friends. She didn't say it like that but that was what it sounded like. People always saw her as the girl that got me out of my shell. Frankly I was scared of her extreme extroversion and I drifted apart from her because I felt like she was treating me like her daughter. I made another friend whom moved away eventually to. After high school, those were the last real friends I actually had. The closest relationship I have had in the past 3 years is with my freshman year roommate but once summer came, we drifted apart and we have not kept up with communication. I don't want to say I'm innocent in all of this but I know not all of this is my fault. I just happen to be unlucky and I honestly don't have the skills to be maintaining relationships in situations like this. I can barely walk up to someone and say hi.