How Autism Made Me Misjudge Friendships
I struggled making and keeping friends because of my autism when I was growing up, despite only realising more recently that I’m autistic. I was sometimes unaware of boundaries and how much time is enough to spend with friends before giving them space. Later, I overcompensated in friendships by going to the other extreme and spending minimal time with friends and on building meaningful relationships with them.
The one ‘friend’ who is most memorable is V, as I'll call her here. I started school a few days later than everyone else for reasons I can't remember.
Despite missing social cues and being the last to catch on when others were picking on me, I managed to strike up a friendship with V, and another girl. Eventually, the friendship fizzled out with the other girl, even though we didn't really fall out. It was just that V was a gypsy and that's probably why my other friend and the crowd she hung around with never spent time together.
Amanda Nicholson is an author, poet, podcast co-host and copywriter. She discovered she had autism later in life and formed the Substack page ‘I Am Not Calm’ as a safe space for autistic people.
I only ever saw V as my friend and thought her lifestyle was cool, rather than something to shun her for like the other kids did.
I knew where V lived because there was a caravan outside her house, so one Saturday I showed up in the same way I would call on any of my other friends to play out. She invited me in, but she never played out with any of my other friends despite me trying to get her to meet them.
I have some happy memories during my time with V, like her mum inviting me along when they went ice-skating. I had never been ice skating before and it would be another four years before I went again, this time with some of the other kids in the children’s home I lived in as a teenager.
I spent more and more time at Vs house, not every day, but three or four times a week for a couple hours at a time. Then, eventually, her mum told me to stop coming round. As a child, it was heartbreaking, but I always believed it was just her family who were fed up of me, rather than V not liking me.
However, over the years, I thought about this rejection, and it impacted my friendships. Whenever I met new people, I would take care not to overcrowd them. For example, I wouldn’t always go to them during break time at school. Sometimes they would seek me out instead, but other times, they probably thought I was shunning them, so didn’t bother.
I had several best friends at different times during my school days, but nobody I ever felt really close to. I held back a big part of myself because I thought I was too much in some ways and also not enough in other ways. There was a lot going on at home. In my teenage years, I went into care, but even when I had to share a bedroom with someone else in the care home, I felt like there was a line between me and her and I couldn’t cross it. I watched the other girls develop friendships, but I didn’t feel like part of that, even if they included me in something, like putting our money together to buy alcohol or running away from the home together and hiding out at one of their dodgy parents’ houses, who the girl had been removed from for reasons I won’t go into here.
Going back to V, I reconnected with her online in my late 30s and she told me she had written a book. As a writer myself, I was interested, but only read her book a few years later. I was mentioned and it wasn’t a flattering description. Not only did she see me as a joke from the first time that I showed up at her house, but she fabricated some of the things that happened and made me sound like a street urchin, rather than just a friend who didn’t judge her the way the other children did. It was clear from the rest of her book that she preferred to stay away from gorgers (their word for non-gypsies).
Even now I know this, I’m still unable to maintain normal friendships. If someone comments that we’ve seen each other x amount of times in a certain time frame, I’ll worry it’s too much and back off. Then, I probably won’t see them again for months if I can help it, because I don’t want to lose them as a friend. Reading that back, it sounds odd to do my best to avoid someone for months to keep them as a friend, but another part of me insists there’s some logic there.
Also, I sometimes feel like I don’t open up enough to people, but when I do, I feel like I’ve overshared and I’m a burden and people would be better off if I just back off. The whole thing feels so mentally draining, trying to be myself, be open and honest, but not overshare so I don’t scare people away. I just can’t figure out how to balance all of this, so I stop trying.
Of course, it’s not just V who made me feel like this. I recently looked up another school friend on Facebook and saw a post on her wall where she mentioned all her best friends from school. I wasn’t listed even though I was part of that friendship group too. I can understand this. I know she hates me now and blames me for something that wasn’t either of our faults. She sided with someone else, the person who was to blame, and I know why it was easier for her to do this, but it doesn’t make me feel any better. This and other experiences make me wonder if I’ve ever had friends in the same way everyone else does.
I have people I know and that’s not always the same thing. People I know won’t remember me years from now when they recall their friends. They won’t choose me over someone else when it really matters, or think of me for more than a few seconds before moving on to something more won’t really important. They care what is going on in my life, and I’ll just make things awkward if I tell them.
As someone who had masked for most of my life, I’m used to watching what other people do to try to match it, and I see how their friendships differ from mine. It makes me feel like there’s something wrong with me, and I’m not even sure I know how to be a proper friend. I alternate between being too distant and feeling like an awful friend, to worrying I’m being ‘too much’. But if I haven’t had what I would call a proper friend by now, at age 46, maybe it’s time to accept that I never will.
