Aspies have a hard time making and keeping friends…
One of the more difficult aspects of having Aspergers Syndrome is the social challenges of the condition tend to lend to aspies having a hard time making friends and having few long term friendships. Most people with Aspergers Syndrome tend to have some serious social challenges and having these social challenges early on in life makes the time when most other children are making friends much more difficult for the aspie. While kinder garten and grade school days are often spent building friendships for neurotypical children, children with Aspergers Syndrome often find these times rather challenging socially. From my personal experience, grade school was hell. My parents thought that my struggles socially would be helped by my switching schools in between 4th and 5th grade, but instead of that helping, it only made things worse. The new school that I went to was in a different town than the one that I lived in, was a smaller school than the one that I left, and it took me a full two years to begin to fit in with my classmates, the rest of whom had been together since first grade. I wanted so bad to fit in and to not let my parents down that I did not even admit to them until mid way through 6th grade that I did not fit in very well with my classmates. Then right when I was really starting to make any progress, we moved in 8th grade and the process started all over again. Needless to say I do not look back with any fondness upon my grade school years.
It is easy to see how children with Aspergers Syndrome could have a very difficult time fitting in with their peers. Their difficulties lie in the following areas, but are not limited to: limited focus of interest, their difficulty or inability to read non-verbal cues, difficulty understanding nuances in language, difficulty with social appropriateness, difficulty understanding other people’s perspectives, lack of eye contact, difficulty staying on topic, etc. The difficulty staying on topic and often reverting the conversation back to a topic of interest alone is enough to give a person who has Aspergers a difficult time making friends. Especially with kids, most people do not understand what the aspie is dealing with and mistake them to be self-centered and disinterested in what they have to say. And thus go up the barriers to any real type of friendship.
Often the Aspie is seen by others as cold, rude, standoffish and self-centered due to their difficulty engaging in neurotypical social behavior, thus negatively effecting their ability to make friends or keep friends for any sustained length of time. Again from my own experience, my own family has written me off as being cold, rude, standoffish and self-centered because I have a very difficult time engaging family members who I might see twice a year maximum at gatherings. Because of past experiences where I did not know what to say or was left with no one to talk to at a large family gathering, I would often just sit there with my food and drink and not talk to anyone. Thus I was judged. When I would talk to others it would be about things that I am comfortable talking about, not because I am narcissistic which is what my Aunts and Uncles have decided I am, but rather because I don’t know what to talk to said people about. Again I would be judged because of this. This would only further said peoples negative feelings of me and further my lack of interest in communicating with them. I have cousins who I have barely ever met who have passed judgment upon me because of what other family members have said about me, which does nothing to make me want anything to do with the vast majority of my family. In the end it turns into a very negative cycle that is very difficult to break. To quote a friend of mine who is also an aspie “ the accumulative effects of the negative experiences can lead to a state where the Aspie learns to keep to themselves in stead of facing the harsh and judgmental attitudes of others.”
Because of the above listed social challenges, aspies tend to have a very difficult time keeping long term friends. I can not say how many times I have met people who have from the get go pronounced to me that they were going to be my life long friend, only to have that person not even speaking to me 6 months later. Granted many of these people came into my life long before I understood that I had Aspergers and understood the nature of the social challenges that I face. But it has happened again very recently. I am now to the point that when I meet someone who tells me that we are going to be friends for a long time that I completely disregard their statement. In my life I can count 6 long term friends. One who I have known since I was 2 months old, another who I have known since high school, and four who I have known for 20+ years. None of these people live anywhere remotely near me.
The positive end to this struggle is that it is not completely hopeless. Just because people with Aspergers Syndrome have a hard time learning social skills, that does not mean that they can not learn them. I think the beginning to the solution is two fold. First by shedding light on the issue and bringing awareness to the fact that not everyone learns social skills at the same rate or even the rate that neurotypical people view as normal, we can help bring understanding to the struggles of people with Aspergers Syndrome. We live in an age which is far more open to understanding the struggles of those who are not the majority. One can hope that in this age of openness and understanding that people will learn to not treat others poorly just because they do not develop the same way the majority does. The second solution to the problem is by helping aspie’s to develop positive self beliefs, we can begin to override the vicious circle of negative social experiences and negative self beliefs. This process can only be done one person at a time and one experience at a time, but it clearly can be done. I know this from my own experience. Once the cycle of negativity has been broken, then continual positive experiences can lead to much less social stress on the part of the person with Aspergers Syndrome. It is not easy work, but the prognosis is not hopeless either.
NB: Do you have Aspergers Syndrome? Have a close friend or loved one who does? Reach out to me! I would love to hear from you!
