@autismunicorn honestly? The internet.

I made a friend in school (because they immediately realized I was also autistic) that I keep in touch with, but the rest of my relationships have mostly been internet-based.

It's scary to reach out, but it can be rewarding too

@autismunicorn @autistics honestly? Pretty much all of my connections are superficial, or work-related. The exceptions are:

1. My wife - she basically did all the running as I was utterly oblivious to the fact she was interested.
2. My children - that’s just a different relationship all round.
3. One old school friend who for some reason has just always “got” me.

@autismunicorn @autistics
My best friendships all came from the same source: the local Star Trek club (which was a long time ago now). That's not to say that this specifically will work for others, but being able to share common interests is a big plus for us. And in my case it had the added benefit of meeting people with similar values as well. I'm sure that this combination resulted in a high proportion of the members being ND of some variety, which also helps.

Beyond that, yeah, it hard as hell. Even with my little friend group it's hard to do things with them any more due to various circumstances and I'd really like to find a few more such friends.

@autismunicorn honestly, after so many years of being treated badly, i just don’t

if something forms on its own naturally through no effort, great, but i do not go out of my way anymore

that said, i’m not typical in that i do not mind being alone all the time

@autistics

@autismunicorn @autistics All this is in hindsight (I got my diagnosis in my 40s) but I realised in my 20s I was introducing people to other people to avoid talking to them and had accidentally become quite good at facilitating networking within my niche interest groups, so I leaned into that and became the person who knew stuff and mapped the networks. In short, I made myself useful. (See also, working at events rather than just attending them.) This allowed me to filter for friends and I still have some close ones after all this time.

To be honest I have no idea how I made friends or why people wanted to be my friend, but they did and having a shared interest to bridge the fear of small talk nightmare helped a lot.

Romantic relationships I was fucking terrible at. :)

@autismunicorn Well, I’m getting adopted. Or I’m meeting other neurodivergent people. It’s best if I’m adopted by neurodivergent people. Most of the time, they’re people with ADHD. For some reason, that works out perfectly. So as a young person with undiagnosed ADHD and autism, I actually had something resembling a social life, even though I was always the very strange guy who somehow fit in, but whom people didn’t really know what to do with. By the way, it always took years or even decades before it became clear that my friends were neurodivergent themselves.

@autistics

@autismunicorn @autistics
The internet.
Forums at first, and then Twitter when it was still 'normal'.
Now Mastodon.

I can take time to process the interactions, and decide how I might want to respond. I can then respond, even after some time has passed, and my response will be perfectly acceptable.

Also, I can deal with one voice at a time, and there is often a thread to follow so I can go back to see who said what to whom and when. That is so much easier than in a pub, for example, where people are speaking partial sentences, speaking over each other, and sharing unspoken information that might change the meaning and context of the words spoken.

I have made a few connections and friends from IRL contact, but they have been specific 1-1s for a purpose that then experienced 'mission creep' beyond that initial need.

@autismunicorn
All of the IRL friends I have currently I’ve made all thanks to a shared hobby. As in we all met in person, plucked up the courage to see how a joke might land and went from there. Now we hang out at least once a week thanks to the shared hobby, and message each other almost daily.

I did meet my partner online, but that was almost 20 years ago, when times were a bit different.
I do have friends around the world, too, thanks to the Internet and in the past few years Mastodon specifically. I have even met face to face with some of these fedi people I’ve made friends with.
But for more personal and deeper connections, I prefer making friends in person.

@autismunicorn I might be unusual in this, but I tend to strike up conversations with random strangers sometimes, or I make mutual friends through my existing friend groups. I think I may be AuDHD, though, plus I have a brain injury. As opposed to just autism, this might make me more outgoing. I'm still socially awkward sometimes, but I've embraced it.

I think it also helps to find groups of people that share your "spins." For instance, if you're really into Dungeons and Dragons, find a local group near you that you can join. If you like knitting or crocheting, a lot of yarn shops host knitting and crocheting groups. I've joined some groups like these and have made friends there.
@autistics

@autismunicorn @autistics

I've met lots of asd people in kink spaces, in furry spaces, trans spaces, and in hobbies like amateur radio and rail modeling.

I think kink, furry, and trans spaces are friendly because people are used to communicating far more forthrightly. All the secret coding and implied hierarchies that are so frustrating get expressed verbally.

I feel like neurodivergent people often love talking about specific stuff, they just hate small talk.

@autismunicorn

I'm not great at friendships. Do I have friends? Yes. I now do, but I don't see them that often. Friendship is mysterious to me.

On the romantic front, all my relationships started online. Yes, even with my ex-wife. It was in 1996, and we used email. I also met my boyfriend online, on OkCupid. For romantic relationships, I now use dating apps. All dating apps are crappy, but Feeld is the least crappy of the bunch, as far as I am concerned.

@autistics

@autismunicorn @autistics Nearly all of my partners were from dating apps like OkCupid or mutual friends/partners.

Friendships are usually forged in shared hobby spaces, e. g. hobby-related communities, events munches and such.

@autistics @autismunicorn
Regarding friendships, I formed some through the traumatic experiences of middle school and high school (made friends with other similarly neurodivergent queer people though some of us didn’t know about being queer at the time, myself included). I’ve formed other friendships through college, with student organizations aligned with my interests and/or identities.
And nowadays I build physical reality friendships through a network effect, of them being a friend of a friend and hanging out through that before eventually being friends with them directly, along with attending hobby-based spaces and hobby-based events

Regarding romantic relationships:

• my first good one was very strongly by chance. We met at a 2 day learning workshop in a physical reality space, and were among the few young people there. We conversed during the breaks. Exchanged contact info at the end of day 1 and messaged a lot that evening. on the evening after day two, we went on our first date. We still keep in touch on occasion, but each time feels meaningful
• my second good one was met through OkCupid. Would i recommend that specific service nowadays, I don’t know. Both them and I infodumped a lot on our profiles, which helped with the initial vibe checking. While we’re long distance with regards to physical reality nowadays, we interact pretty regularly
• my third good relationship, I met her on the fediverse first, we became online friends, then physical reality friends when I moved to Seattle (as she already lived in the area) and then, after a few months of having physical reality interactions, I realized that I had unaddressed romantic feelings, and told her, and as it turned out, she also had similar feelings towards me, so we started “dating”, and then some number of months later, started using romantic relationship terms like girlfriend and such

All the spaces that I make these meaningful connections in are ones where my autistic camouflage is down, either deliberately or accidentally in a good way. I’m not necessarily dropping the camouflage for every interaction in all of the spaces I’m trying to make friends in, I try to feel the vibes of the space and people first

@autismunicorn @autistics Work, online and community work.

I met my ex and wife online (AOL back in the day, and a dating site in the mid naughties). As I moved 300 miles to live with my ex, I lost touch with my childhood friends, and ended up with no proper friends, other than work colleagues for about 10 years. When I moved again to be with my now wife, I was still without other friends until I joined a club, and later started up a makerspace. Although that fell apart, I'm still friends with some people, though I haven't seen most of them much since my burnout started.

@autismunicorn @autistics For me it’s mostly been people I work with. Though I’m really not that close to anyone.

I’ve only recently discovered I’m AuDHD, but the world let me know, from an early age, that I was not “normal”.

I tend to think I annoy people after a period of time, so I recede from connections after a while. I’m really happiest doing my own thing.

Romantic connection has always been a super weird space for me. I’ve been married forever, but only had one short relationship before dating my wife.

I had lots of friendly women classmates/co-workers when I was younger, but it always felt like expressing interest/dating was for other people – who knew what they were doing.

@autismunicorn @autistics i don't have any trouble being friends if we have autistic traits that match (and, non-autists can have autistic traits!)

the trick is, finding such people. there's no science to it; it's just luck. But the internet helps *a lot*.

@autismunicorn @autistics

Slowly. Masked. I don't initiate contact but instead let random collisions do their work.

If they're NT, I handle them like potential abusers until they show they can be trusted. If they are able and willing to do so: most don't even understand what is at stake for me.

@autistics @autismunicorn

@autismunicorn
I don't have any trouble walking up to people (after being in the same space with them for more than a minute--too fast is creepy) and articulating in the form of a question something I noticed about them that they probably want noticed, something self-expressive vs. necessarily appearance-related. They put it out there on purpose, and I'm indicating it was safe with me to do that.

The problem is when they recommend a follow-up thing I can do, I'm just not there.
@autistics