Can someone unpick this for me?

[CarlyS91]

Okay so, growing up I had friends, liked the idea of friends but really (as a girl) found it quite stressful around the bitchy teenage years.

through my 20’s, friendships at work and uni etc, never ‘best friends’ but would keep up with texting etc and meeting up, had good work pals ie had lunches together etc. this suited me fine. Always lived alone and enjoyed my own space.

fast forward a fair few years I’m a bit older with a child. I don’t struggle with confidence in some respects IE I have no issue telling someone on the bus turn your shitty music off, I could present something to 200 people if I needed to. I just don’t get shy in those ways

i don’t have any friends locally but have 1 or 2 I keep up with on WhatsApp etc .

the issue is, whenever someone wants to make friends with me I absolutely panic. For example, I’ll be at soft play with my child. Naturally you get chatting, I’m really good at this part and I enjoy finding out about people. Then they’ll usually say about meeting up again or swapping numbers and my heart sinks, I swap the numbers of course but then I ghost them as I just don’t want any friends? But why?

another example I recently joined a gym. In one of my dance fit classes got talking to 2 nice women, again they wanted to swap numbers and chat etc, I got so worked up I never returned to the class and changed gyms- it’s that intense.

Can someone explain why I’m like this?

im perfectly happy having no friends, I like conversation with people and am confident in general social situations, but the minute it seems to progress I absolutely lose my mind from worry and anxiety.

am I a total weirdo?

This is so sad to read.

I'm glad you're happy now but bloody hell, what mental cruelty to a kid.

I couldn't be doing with all those emojis and coffee and cake bollocks

Is it social anxiety?

Confident Introverts assemble!
It's definitely a thing - love my (few) friends, I like to chat, confident, happy to help etc. but I need to be left alone to recharge after any event.

OP I don't think you're doing your kids any disservice.
You demonstrate confidence and good manners in public; your husband demonstrates to them that it's good to have lots of friends, while you show them its equally okay of you don't want to be surrounded by people.

My only negative thought is that, as DW of a man who rarely socialises (and WFH and doesn't have hobbies), is it can feel a bit suffocating to be someone's only friend. I have had to remind DH in the past that I'm not his entertainer.

Well that's the other thing...I'm just not a "hunni", "live, laugh, love", "gin o' clock"

💕❤️😘😍🏝️🏖️😇🥳😻😽🍸🍹🎉🥳🍾

person and find that sort of communication alone invasive and exhausting.

I do this! Also seeking a diagnosis of ADHD. I think it is fear of rejection/conflict avoidance

@CoodleMoodle ha! I've 3 kids, I was going to the same primary every day for a total of about 10yrs as they all moved through it. Tiny village school & I spoke to NO ONE. I made no new friends, no interest in gossip.

I also have this odd thing where I'm convinced that if I see someone I know pretty well right down to 'are just familiar with but should say hello to' in a shop or just out at random, my brain tells me not to say hello cos they probably won't recognise/remember me - so I don't. Absolutely bizarre when I think about it, why wouldn't they recognise me? I'm tall & quite distinctive looking & yet the fear remains.

My dp is like this. He's very pleasant and people like him but he has no friends at all really. One from school/ childhood that he's crap at keeping up with.
He had a rough childhood with a rather aggressive dad and his parents have no friends really and don't socialise.
He's not as assertive as you sound though.
Hes in process of waiting for an ND diagnosis (suggested by a private psychotherapist)

@VaVaVoom25 I know she will be extremely hurt if I say, "sorry, I don't really want to meet up or socialise. I think we're too different and I really like my alone time and don't have enough of it."

Actually, I think that's a perfectly reasonable thing to say, and not too hurtful. Don't give up a class you love - that's a terrible thing to have to do.

OP, do you think some of your feeling about friends is the fear of being trapped in a friendship you don't want? You are unwilling to meet up with someone once because you think that if you don't get on you will be stuck with that person forever? You are allowed to "test drive" potential friends, you know. You don't have to accept a second invitation.

... the Zumba class woman sounds a bit bonkers, to be honest! I'd run a mile from her; she's much too full-on!

If you're like me you're rejecting them before they reject you.

I don't know why I think I'm so thoroughly fundamentally unworthy of friends, but my subconscious seems to believe it anyway.

I'm like this.

I am autistic.

It's not a lack of self confidence that stops me making friends, it's that I don't do superfluous chat.

It's not masking that means I can present to large groups or pipe up to strangers. They are transactional interactions and easy for me to understand.

I have found myself some autistic friends and life is good.

Could your formative teenage years have tainted you? I didn't find the teenage years to be bitchy, friendship should be nurturing

i wonder if some of it stems from such low confidence as a child, also my parents didn’t have any friends- they just had each other really.

So you’ve copied your parents model. You couldn’t learn how to have friends from them if they didn’t have any. Parents have a large part to play in teaching their kids social skills and introvert parents tend to make less effort to encourage their offspring to socialise and have them over to the house.

The way to tackle it is when you get the initial panic see what happens if you don’t drop them immediately and work through what the panic comprises with your therapist.

I'm a socially-confident introvert who absolutely loves to socialise but needs a lot of solo time to recover, but that doesn't stop me enjoying making and having friends, or spending time with them, it just makes me factor in solo recovery time. I mean, I don't recognise the panicky 'freeze' the OP describes at the approach of a potential friend in my own introversion.

Agreed.

One of the things therapy has taught me is that the panicky response to an uncomfortable feeling is not inevitable -- you can sit with the discomfort, you don't have to act immediately to remove it. So yes, I think you're absolutely right that the OP should try to experience the panic and figure out what it's telling her without trying to eradicate the source immediately.

Oh my god - are you me?!!! I could pretty much have written this.

When you say you’re ND, is it something specific (autism, ADHD), or just a sense of being wired differently?

I recognise a lot of spectrum-y traits in myself and my son is diagnosed ND but I’m not sure I’d have anything strongly identifiable IYSWIM. Which I suppose is why it’s a spectrum - we’re all on it somewhere or other 🤷‍♀️. It’s interesting though. None of this crossed my mind until a few years ago, when I realised how extremely odd my behaviour sometimes is, and how much happier I’ve been since lockdown, which was a readymade excuse to opt out of social stuff and cut loose loads of people!

I can totally relate to this, I don’t really know why I do it either

Maybe it is because I think a lot of friendships can be very full on and it’s either all or nothing and the thought of dedicating that much time is something I don’t want, I like people that I can be friends with even if there is only a text or a meet-up every once in a while, quite light friendships

Maybe it’s because I have had a few long term ( 20years) friendships fall apart and I no longer want to dedicate that much time to friendships anymore only for the same thing to happen again

Maybe it’s because, at the beginning of new friendships, when people don’t really know each other the chat can be very superficial and meaningless and It takes such a long time to build trust and really know someone that the whole thing sound really tedious and may not even be worth the effort in the end

Maybe it’s because people may find out that I lead a very boring life and I’m afraid they will judge me when they find out

I don’t really know, the above is just a brain dump really

This.
High-functioning autism with a life-time's expertise in masking.

Presenting to a crowd is a "scripted" interaction - you know what is expected of you and what to expect.
Primary-school friendships are within the context of a peer-group in class, or supervised by parents, and so are much more manageable, especially as they are mostly about doing an activity.
Teenage friendships shift into being more about the relationship and interaction, and less about activities, so are very much more difficult.
Telling off strangers is again a kind of "script", or a transaction - you are not trying to build a relationship.
Online text-based friendships are much easier as there is nothing to notice but the written word (no facial expressions, tone of voice etc.) and you have more time to think and amend your reply.

Face-to-face small talk or "getting to know" new people is hell, totally unscripted, you don't know what to say or do, you have too much to think about (your face, their face, your voice, their voice, your hands, their hands, what they just said, what they might mean by that, what you are supposed to reply, etc, etc, all in two seconds, and repeat for the next two seconds and so on).
No wonder you panic.

@EnjoythemoneyJane haha maybe I am you! I'd say we should meet up & find out but we both know we'd rather chew off our own right leg 😂

It wasn't till it became obvs eldest was autistic (he was like 5 when it was picked up) & then DS3 is autistic (missed it when he was little cos of eldest) that I started examining my own behaviour. I'm obsessive & hyper-focussed about things so learned absolutely everything I could to help understand eldest & things started to fall into place. DH would make the joke 'Caerulea, stop being autistic about xyz' (affectionately!!) when I was doing perfectly normal things or having perfectly normal reactions to absolutely ordinary stimuli...yeah not normal at all. I've misophonia but extra things will cause absolute panic in me, like progressive jazz. It's not just a dislike, it's panic at the discordant noise, can't tolerate any amount of it.

And once something goes on the no list, like foods with certain tastes & textures, it's never coming off & I can't eat a single bit even in something even just to be polite - which can be really embarrassing. Conversely, things I love or enjoy I can do over & over & over ad infinitum - I can listen to the same section of a song for an entire car journey, just over & over.

Incredibly sensitive to smells - I'm a chef & I don't taste anything I make, I smell it. I sniff things to see if they'll go together, I'll sniff things to see what is in them. It's not a special talent, I don't have a special nose it's just something to do with how I process things I guess cos when I read about food & things I can smell them in my head lol. I thought everyone did this until last year!

Once opened a catering jar of Coleman's mustard & reflexively sniffed it - nose right in! Holy shit that hurt for hours.

What are you like in relationships OP? Is it a woman / man thing? I have plenty friends now but struggled to have close friendships when I was younger. I had a lot of superficial friends and always got invited to lots of parties but often would be on the periphery of each group. I really noticed when people started to settle down a bit i was first to be forgotten when the circle decreases. I always found women friendships tricky and intense and was more drawn to men.

A different thought - why do you want to change? Do you want to change?
You could just be happy the way you are, and say to people you have started getting friendly with but don't want to have on your conscience: 'It's been lovely chatting to you today and I hope we bump into each other again, but honestly I'm terrible at keeping in touch, so I make it a rule not to swap numbers with people I meet in these situations. I never seem to have time to reply or arrange anything and it just makes me feel bad. It's nothing personal!' Then walk away.

I have a 'bestie'. She is a total extrovert. I love how much energy she has. She wants to see me/do things with me all the time. If it wasn't for her then I would do very little, except things with DH. However, I find it hard to fit her in amongst working FT/DH/DC/running the house/my hobbies/DC hobbies/seeing family/running errands/the never-ending home to do list. She doesn't give a flying fook about the state of her house and her attitude is very much 'life is for living' (while I'm at home rearranging my kitchen cupboards for the 5th time and hers look like a tupperware jumble sale).

I just don't see how it is possible to always be able to fit friends in.

All of a sudden 5 years or so ago, life just seemed to get really busy in terms of home admin/jobs to do at home ... and my foot has not been off the brake once since. There was not trigger for this.

Another way of looking at this is that it's nothing to do with introversion or extroversion, just that you're choosing to rearrange your Tupperware rather than see your closest friend. Which is obviously fine, if that's your priority.

Just a note - the spectrum refers to people with autism, rather than a spectrum that the whole population is on. People like to say we’re all a bit autistic, but it’s not really true. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk 😂 autism (not sure about ADHD but it’s likely the same) is genetic (though it’s caused by combinations of many different genes, rather than a single one - hence the “Spectrum”, so it’s likely you are ND since your son is).
I couldn’t withdraw completely from socialising when we had Covid since I was a key worker, but I did love wearing the masks - I have natural resting bitch face. And hate being told I need to smile. I’m not miserable, in spite of appearances lol.