If Your Friends are Just Using You, They're Not Really Friends

Tonight I posted a response to someone whose "friends" didn't seem to really care about xem. While the message board itself is anonymous, so I won't post the original message or details, I thought my response might help some of my fellow Aspies and autistic children of my NT readers. Here it is:

Hi XXXXXX,

You are not alone.

Unfortunately, I don't have the answer for you, but I can tell you a little about my experience... warning, this is very long...

It was heartbreaking for me to realize, toward the end of my senior year of college, that my friendships were shallow and one-sided. Every once in a blue moon I'd find someone who just liked hanging around me- watching the same things I watch, going to bookstores, going hiking, but for the most part my "friends" had specific agendas:

1. They didn't have anyone else to hang around with at the moment
2. If they wanted to talk and whine about their problems and all their other friends were tired of listening to it
3. They wanted to use me/take advantage of me

Some examples of "3" include:

In school I was one of few students who had a car, so I would get offers to go places if I drove. I often got "friends" who needed help on their homework (I was an honor roll student) and "liked me" long enough to get the homework or project done. Sometimes the Christian and Mormon girls would need a "chaperone" and invite me to tag along with them hiking with a guy.

Even though it's in my nature to want to help everyone and do things for people, I try really hard to resist now. People that are just using others do not care about the people they are using. In fact, I've worked with a lot of people that think those of us who are willing to help were put here to be taken advantage of. Basically, they subscribe to the belief that some people were made to be used, and it's ok to take advantage of someone if they deserve it. Of course I don't believe this, myself, but since I know most of my coworkers do I try to keep myself from doing things for them so I don't establish a cycle of being used.

After realizing most of my friendships were not really friendships at all, I made a concerted effort to minimize my involvement with those who are only out to use me. So I saw that someone didn't really care for me (because they never wanted to do what I want, and when we did stuff I always gave, never received, or they never cared how I was, only about themselves), I stopped doing things for them and I stop talking to them. Not completely, but mostly. It hurt to lose my friends. But they weren't really friends. And the funny thing is, I opened myself up to finding new friends (at church, the bookstore) now that I wasn't wasting all my time trying to please people who didn't really care about me.

Nowadays, when I meet someone, I am very careful not to do things for them or to tell too many of my stories. It's hard because I always want to help. Early on, I let others to talk more about themselves because the more you let others talk, the more they will enjoy being around you. But I keep an eye out for clues that this friendship will be one-sided, abusive, or just plain depressing, and if so, then I minimize my time spent with that person.

Some main results of this are:

1. (good result) I feel much better about myself. I don't feel like a doormat anymore. Sometimes I will accommodate someone who is just trying to use me, but usually only if it's in line with my own personal goals to do so.
2. (good result) I have a lower percentage of "superficial friendships." When I stopped letting people use me all the time, they moved on to other targets, er, I mean, more accommodating people. And it seems like when I started treating myself better by getting rid of people who were toxic for me, I started attracting better people into my life. Not MORE people, but BETTER people.
3. (sometimes depressing result) of course, that unfortunately means I have less friends overall. I go more places by myself and do more things by myself. I'm not completely happy about that, but now when I do go out with people, I have more meaningful interaction so when I get down about being alone more than I like, I tell myself "choose quality over quantity."
4. (really caught me by surprise) Finally, I want to note a side-effect of this change in my life is that, over time, I stopped really trusting people who come in to my life. meetings notwithstanding, I find if someone new is really friendly to me, or really seems interested in me, I get wary and start looking for "what do they want? what are they trying to butter me up for? what are they trying to get out of me?" 99% of the time they are, indeed, trying to take advantage of me. But I try to keep an open mind because every so often someone comes along who is just happy to meet someone like me (who is just like them).

Two big caveats I need to add to my advice are:

1. I, like most Aspies, have the problem of driving away "quality people" by expecting them to be like us. They're not. Even another Aspie isn’t going to be just like me. We can't always gauge someone's friendship potential by what we want or by whether or not our needs are always met because we may have unique needs other people are unable to meet. For example, I am a very "intense" person. Most people are not as intense, and will never be able to satisfy my need for that "intensity" in friendships. For example, I'm sure you couldn't tell by the length of this post, LOL, but I love long detailed descriptions. Most people (especially NTs) like to keep emails and posts to one or two paragraphs at most, and get overwhelmed when I send something this long. I can't allow myself to feel like they don't care about me if I write them a book and they just send one or two lines back. MOST people send short emails. That's NORMAL. They don't LIKE long emails. So I have to accept that. I have a few friends who like to write the way I do, and I always have to encourage them to ramble on and express themselves, otherwise they have been so conditioned by everyone else that they will automatically shorten what they say to me. I can't judge others by my own personal conduct because my conduct is not "normal."
2. Many people are, as XXXXXXXXX2 mentioned, narcissistic and only friends with us to feed their own egos and meet their own goals. It's good to stay away from those folks (because they drain us, and make us depressed) but we need to be honest with ourselves and realize that most of us are a little like that- we want friends that like US, make US feel good about ourselves, listen to US, and are interested in US. Since I know this is true for me, I don't cut off interaction with everyone who is just out for themselves, but I keep my expectations realistic. For example, a coworker often arranges events (dinners, trips, museums, etc). She has the personality that always finds special deals and gets people to make special concessions for her. We have spent a good portion of free time together, but I have no false expectations that she cares deeply about me. She simply does not like to be alone, and since I'm adventurous but unable to come up with the cool events she does, the "relationship" works for both of us.

Wow, that's longer than usual but I hope you are encouraged to know you are not alone and that you DON'T have to SETTLE for poor quality relationships. We still have to work with (and sometimes live with) people who are not good for us, but we don't have to spend our free time being hurt and ignored. It takes time to attract quality people into your life, but the first step is valuing yourself enough to put aside the people who are causing you pain.

Aspie Trance

Came across the concept of an "Aspie Trance" the other day, and I'm wondering if that's the answer to my latest problem. You see, I've been pondering a strange, trance-like aspect of my personality. Kinda difficult to explain, but I shall give it a try:

Often when I'm in class, meetings, church people tell me I'm sleeping. Yet I take pages and pages of notes, learn the material, and if asked to give a review often do such a through replay that it puts others to shame. Folks often comment with amazement, "how did you get all that, sitting there asleep?"

Over the past few weeks, I've been paying better attention to how I appear in meetings, and have discovered I do indeed seem very drowsy. And I actually am drowsy sometimes. Most of the time I'm just bored. But, in my own way, I'm paying attention. Problem is, paying attention doesn't help my professional standing if my colleagues think I'm asleep.

So I've been looking for ways to keep myself more alert- caffeine, getting more sleep, finding other things to do that keep me awake (such as writing or drawing). Unfortunately, while each helps a little bit, each has it's drawbacks: One soda or cup of tea "perks me up" but then I have a headache that night. When I get more sleep, I'm not as trance-ey, but then I have less time for my family (already minimal). And if I draw or write articles (or outlines for the many books I need to stop writing and just publish) I am more alert and interested-looking, but then I'm not paying attention to the speaker(s).

From the discussion on Wrong Planet, I don't think this is the exact thing meant by "Aspie Trance" the way most people use it, but then I read descriptions about "living in a haze" and feeling like one's consciousness "never fully developed," and I wonder if this isn't part of an altered state brought on by some of the below suggestions from Creative Minds:

Besides occurring spontaneously, different types of altered states may be induced by flickering light (e.g. from TV & computer monitors, fluorescent lights), electromagnetic stimulation of the brain, music, repetitive movements (e.g. rocking back-&-forth), drugs, air-born chemicals, pain, shock, fear, sex, stress, sensory overload, allergic reaction, fatigue, precipitation, deep concentration, meditation, prayer, contemplation and hypnosis.

I can definately vouch for the alergic reaction contribution: A couple of years ago, I discovered that after eating certain types of fish I would get exteremely drowsy- as if I was drugged. I've not had it proved medically, but I think that's possibly an allergic reaction to the fish. So I don't eat certain fish when I know I need to be alert later in the day. I shall pay more attention to this (what conditions cause me to appear sleepy or trance-ey) and let you all know what I come up with.

PS: I'm playing around with the date and time options, to see if I can "prepare" some posts ahead of time. I suspect I will have little time for blogging during the week, but (for symmetry's sake- don't ask why that's important to me, I don't know) I would prefer the posts to spread out evenly rather than make 5-6 over the weekend. :-)