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I'm in my 30s and have no friends and never had a girlfriend. I have always been awkward with people and it don't help that I'm stuck in a semi-rural area. It used to bother me a lot in my teens and 20s but as I got older and saw how lousy people can be I much prefer being alone.
I don't really fit in anywhere. My interests always change and come and go so I find it hard to relate to people.
I find it hard to click with anyone.. Not males my age as they are very "lawdy" and I cannot stand that behaviour. Don't like being forced to drink etc would like to fall into all of that myself. Don't get along with men who only drink and goto bars either..
Would hope I would have a gf and some proper friends by 25 though.. Not so worried now at 18.
At this stage it just seems like I have to bother with people because they aren't going to speak to me if I don't. I was at a function this weekend and spoke very little.. Everyone was wishing my sister good luck for her exams and I still have more left and study wayyy more than her. My older siblings know I have asbergers but make no effort and are very intolerant and think i'm just being a teenager to be annoying..
I find it kind of shocking to see women here say that they have no friends. The reason I find it shocking is that women are naturally friendly by default. Throughout my life, I have found it easy to make friends/acquaintances with women, and I'm a guy. So, I find it odd that you as females can't easily make friends with other females.
What I'd like to know is, how do you people deal with loneliness? Because hardly anybody in this thread has mentioned that they feel lonely from not having friends. We humans are social creatures, so how do you cope with feelings of loneliness?
I don't think you can define either gender as naturally friendly by default. I think a person's friendliness has more to due with their upbringing/surroundings and their own unique personality. As to your question about loneliness, I rarely feel lonely. If I do, it's a fleeting feeling that quickly dissipates. I'm pretty content with my own company, so loneliness is usually not a factor.
I swear, the people on this thread who claim not to have any friends should start talking with each other and become friends!
I'm 34 years old and I have Asperger's syndrome. So there we have that I'm in the stated age group, and there we have the main reason why I don't have any close friends. Anyone out there with Asperger's knows exactly what I'm talking about. (Any of y'all on this thread have Asperger's?)
My wife is the closest friend I have but lately she has been making it abundantly and painfully clear that she doesn't understand me, and she isn't doing everything she can to TRY to understand me. The same is true of pretty much everyone else - they don't "get" me and I don't "get" them - so I end up with nobody who understands me on as deep a level as I would like. You may as well call it "no friends" - often I feel like an island, even though there are plenty of people out there I'd call "acquaintances" who'd do just about anything for me if I asked. Yet, if I only had a nickel for every time I have said "nobody knows what it's like being me"...!!
That being said, there are people who invite me over to their houses... of course it's always me and my wife, not that that's a problem, but to me a friend is not just someone who enjoys your company enough to have you in his/her physical proximity by choice. A friend is someone who has delved into the depths of your mind because he/she wanted to, who has allowed you to do the same with him/her because he/she wanted you to see what lies deep beneath the surface, who understands you better than most everyone else out there and whom you understand at that same level, whom you can trust with your deepest secrets and who tells you his/hers, and who puts forth effort into maintaining the freshness of the relationship.
There's a guy I've been "friends" with for approximately 15 years. Yet, if I never called him, he'd never contact me. That's the way that most of my friendships have died. The people stopped wanting to contact me. Yes, some of the friendships have died because I told the people, in whatever wording I chose at the time, that I no longer desired their friendship... but there was always a good reason for that. When you don't have many friends to begin with, you don't just ditch the ones you DO have for BS reasons.
So... yeah... no friends, or at least no people who are close enough to reach the definition of "friend" in my dictionary. Were a serious crisis to arise involving my relationship with my wife, I would have nobody to turn to for advice aside from my parents - who'd just tell me that I should've waited to get married, which isn't advice at all.
I really don't want to be in that situation at 30. I have cried alot to my mum this year as this is my last year at school and feel that I should be out partying etc but haven't been. No one in my school year really bothers with me except for one girl who knows about the condition.
I have questioned is there something wrong with me but there isn't i'm pretty normal and smart.. Just intolerant teenagers. I am hoping it is better at university or I will really go downhill as i'm feeling so unwanted right now. I look at facebook and see so many people out partying and at friends house and it makes me want to vomit. I always have to text people no one texts me... Its awful.
I think its awful that people in my yeargroup seen me on my own yet never bothered with me once. There was a boy who was being bullied constantly and I seen him and asked him to walk around etc so I can't see why they never asked me..
Unlike most asbergers I do want friends and think about it all the time. If it was thing i'd want that would be it.. I don't feel like I deserve this as i'm more interesting than alot of folk who do. I went to a councillor (whom classmates seen me going into) who said she can't understand why no one bothers with me and that I can prosper alot.
Seems like Asperger's is a common thread among people who feel like they don't have many / any friends... or at least people who meet their uncommonly high standards so as to be called friends. I wonder if this is true... it'd make a great study, for sure.
So much of what you said is the way I feel too. I get together with guys, and they talk about things such as football, hunting, and drinking. Well, I don't play nor watch football, I don't hunt (though I wouldn't be opposed to doing so if I also knew how to strip the carcass and cook the meat), and I don't drink. I get together with women and at my age all they talk about is their kids. I don't have kids. I find myself having far more in common with women than men, but it still isn't much. When I get going in a conversation, I can go a long time... but who else really wants to hear about the life of a performing musician, when so few people actually are performing musicians?
I guess this is why I have a lot of acquaintances but hardly any friends. With acquaintances you don't have to have commonalities. You don't have to have shared experiences. You just know each other and would be nice people to each other whenever you're around each other.
I conducted an interesting experiment two years ago when I ditched Facebook. I had over 100 "friends" and I decided to get rid of Facebook. For seven days, once each day, I told people "In [however many] days, I'm getting rid of Facebook. Any of you who want to stay in contact with me, I'd love to keep in touch... my e-mail address is [address], so shoot me an e-mail." This shows up on their "news feed" every day, and anyone who actually cared to check my profile would've seen it too. Remember what I said - SEVEN TIMES I did this. You know how many of my 100+ "friends" actually contacted me?
FOUR.
Okay, so a few of them were people I also talked with outside of Facebook, but it was still over 100 with whom I didn't communicate outside of Facebook. Some friends, when <4% of them actually wanted to stay in touch outside of Facebook. Really makes me wonder why they wanted to "friend me" anyway... maybe just to jack up THEIR number of friends so that they wouldn't feel as much like losers.
I have a family member that has social anxiety and has trouble making friends. He is such an awesome guy; anyone would be lucky to know him. I told him that the world is full of people just like him, and that he should try and speak to someone new everyday. Maybe he will connect with one or two, but if he doesn't, maybe he made someone else's day. As far as myself, I have really close friends that I have known my whole life, but new people are more just people I speak to occasionally. I don't think I could count on them in a crunch. People who claim to have many friends probably don't; they just have people they know. True friends are people who care about you, even when you aren't really lovable.
I find it kind of shocking to see women here say that they have no friends. The reason I find it shocking is that women are naturally friendly by default. Throughout my life, I have found it easy to make friends/acquaintances with women, and I'm a guy. So, I find it odd that you as females can't easily make friends with other females.
What I'd like to know is, how do you people deal with loneliness? Because hardly anybody in this thread has mentioned that they feel lonely from not having friends. We humans are social creatures, so how do you cope with feelings of loneliness?
You're a guy, of course you don't understand. A lot of women are competitive and it affects every area of their lives and they have to drag everybody else into it.
Tell me about it. My mum is always ranting about other woman. I say she is jealous and she could dig her nails into me!! She really does not like me saying that
Tell me about it. My mum is always ranting about other woman. I say she is jealous and she could dig her nails into me!! She really does not like me saying that
What I'd like to know is, how do you people deal with loneliness? Because hardly anybody in this thread has mentioned that they feel lonely from not having friends. We humans are social creatures, so how do you cope with feelings of loneliness?
I don't have to deal with loneliness. I'm simply not familiar with that feeling. I was diagnosed with Asperger's, but I'm not sure if it's related to that or not. Having no friends just isn't something I think about unless posed with a question on a forum such as this. I have lots of other peculiar interests I focus on that consume my time and for some reason being alone gives me inner peace and non-judgment that friends never could. I'm even alone on Christmas. This is by choice though. My stepmother always invites me over, but I've attended her parties a couple of times. It was really loud, crowded, and I felt so uncomfortable. That's how I feel most times when I'm forced to socially interact with others. When talking with others, I'm thinking that I'd rather be at home alone instead. My stepmother and dad could see how uncomfortable I was at the parties, so they don't press the issue when I inform them I won't be attending the family Christmas gathering.
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