13 year old friendships

[am15]

Hi - my 13 year old only dd is a friendly, quite reserved person who has about 5 friends at school. There is only 1 friend out of the 5 that my dd wants to see out of school mainly as she says the others can be a bit bitchy, tell lies etc. (I have seen evidence of this from the messages on msn). The problem is that this other girl has a large family and doesn't have much spare time to come over, so my dd spends a lot of time on her own. She's quite shy so will not go to clubs, even if the friend goes with her. She would prefer to hang out at home, either with the friend or just with my husband and I. We are a very close threesome, and I must admit we do not have many friends ourselves (something I'm working on too!), but I do want to encourage my dd to be more outgoing. We go out at the weekend and have started playing badminton, but again it's just the three of us. She really does not want to do anything without either my dh and I or the special friend. Should I just leave it up to her (bearing in mind she will probably, given the choice, stay on her own for the entire 6 weeks summer holiday coming up), or do what....I have no idea!

My DD1 has Asperger's Syndrome (not suggesting yours has) and has always preferred her own company. I used to organise friends to come round for her, meet families with children the same age, etc. I have recently been told to butt out and stop trying to make her make friends. She pointed out that you can't make people be friends and that's she should be allowed to choose her own way of life.

At 13 I think she's right although it feels hard to let her be alone. Both girls are old enough to know what they are choosing and old enough to cringe if we try to organise their social lives for them. I think we both need to back off and let them choose for themselves. One saving grace for my DD is that she loves being around horses so they replace friendships for her. Does your DD have something which is better than friends too? If that's playing badminton with you I think it's fine - make the most of it because she could change her mind at any time.