Missing the obvious

Or, I was never meant to be like everyone else.

One of the life truths I’ve believed is that we get the lessons we need, repeatedly, until we learn them. Figuring out what the learning is, is the real battle.

Friendships and social relationships are something I’ve struggled with my whole life. Until recently, I viewed it under this light; that there is a lesson there in how to make and keep friends that I just haven’t learned yet. This is not to say I haven’t had friends, because I have.

As a kid, I remember being worried about this before starting my first year of school. I asked how to make friends. My mother told me at the time, “just ask someone if they want to be your friend, it’ll be fine.” I was sceptical because this didn’t seem at all like something people did, but apparently, I applied it on the very first day. Apparently, I say, because I have no memory of it, but the friend involved says I did.

Adult relationships are more complicated. Most of my adult long-term, close relationships feel like they happened by accident. I’ve always felt a bit like my friends adopted me. In the periods in between, the lulls of friendship as life cycles and seasons pass, and friends change, I’ve always wondered how to go about finding more. I rarely have more than two “best” friends at any time. I don’t need to be super popular, and in fact, probably wouldn’t like it. I would like, however, to feel like I add value to someone else’s life.

I have spent most of my adult life trying to figure out this friendship thing. I’ve found I’m not bad at bringing groups of people together. As a kid, this started as an in-person thing (that was before the internet) and since then it’s been largely virtual. Not hoards of people, but I’ll notice other people wanting a group of like-minded people, and create said group because I know how to do that! I can facilitate other people meeting each other and making friends. Part of the reason I’ve done this, repeatedly, has been in the hopes of finding stronger relationships, myself. That part hasn’t really worked.

It came to me not that long ago that perhaps I’m trying to learn the wrong lesson. All this time I figured that this lesson was about how to make and keep friends, and once I’d conquered that, I’d be sorted. Maybe, instead, my lesson is how to live without needing friends for fulfilment.

The psychiatrist I saw reckoned my main problem was anxiety around social situations, but I don’t think that’s quite it. His advice was that I need to feel the fear and do it anyway. What he doesn’t understand is that that’s what I’ve done my whole life. Yes, I have anxiety around it, but I still do it, because that’s what people tell me works. When it then doesn’t work, that causes more anxiety and triggers a strong sense of rejection as well. If instead, I learn to just be okay within myself, maybe that’s the true answer here. He saw my wanting to be included as a sign against me being autistic. I disagreed then, and do now as well. I think to some extent, everyone wants to be included. Just some of us don’t know how to do that.

Ironically, maybe he was onto something after all. If I worked to get to a place where I was fine without close friendships, that would certainly cause me less anxiety around wanting them.