Many people on the spectrum have various difficulties communicating with others. As a result, we become discouraged from conversing, and effectively make it much harder to make friends and keep our friendships in good shape. Sometimes we misunderstand what others are saying and we become humiliated. Other times others misunderstand us and are offended by what we said. Or conversations in a group are so livid and chaotic we simply can't manage to say anything.
Combined with other problems we have, the highest form of friendship for us is with a person who lets us be ourselves. Someone we managed to trust and someone we opened up to. And that ain't easy.
I find it easier to trust some people than others. And I suspect that there are people that I couldn't trust ever, no matter how hard they would try to gain my trust. Then, in addition to my best wishes, there's the matter of the right environment. I don't open up on a busy pavement or crowded park. Things like that are hard to say, and I can't do that when some passerby would force me to stop mid-sentence by entering the hearing range.
We can spend a lot of time with such a person and enjoy it. I'm talking of a person that knows our biggest weaknesses, that don't force us to keep constant watch over our behavior, or to worry all the time that something could happen. You could say such relationships don't drain our social battery (at least directly, there's still some drain e.g. from leaving our home). Unfortunately, this comes with a risk: if that person fails our trust, we're going to find it even harder to trust anyone.
The second category are "regular" acquaintances. We also find joy in spending time with them, but it drains our battery. And it becomes problematic if they expect more from us than we can actually provide. In the worst case, sometimes we abandon these acquaintances when things go really bad for us.
Then, there are conversations with random people. Sometimes they are joyful, sometimes not. Their main advantage is that we can reasonably assume we're not going to meet them again. Sometimes this makes talking to them easier — but also sometimes we end up regretting that we won't.
#ActuallyAutistic
mgorny-nyan (he) :autism:🙀🚂🐧 /
npub1xc…t2zan
2024-08-11 09:42:17
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npub1xcf8c45mvdddthcrfzdh066wlrp5t0hqy9kr27ey02h2n9vsk2rqnt2zanPublished at
2024-08-11 09:42:17Event JSON
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