Everyone wants to have life more abundantly. One of the best ways to achieve that is to have good relationships. But good relationships don’t usually happen overnight. They need to be built like a house. A house or a relationship needs to be built the right way or everything will fall apart.
I recently saw a TV program on Netflix called -Love on the Spectrum-. The show is about autism dating relationships. People that have autism have trouble understanding how to do relationships. They are usually are good at many things but not relationships. There is an autism organization that invites autism men and woman, in their twenties, in one big room, to chose a date with each other. After they choose the person they want to go on the date with, someone from the organization comes with them, on the date, in case there is any trouble.
For most people the relationship mistakes that autism people make are easy to see. The tag along person from the organization video records the date. A few days later a counselor meets with each person and goes over what they did right and what they did wrong. They can chose to go on another date with that same partner or chose someone else.
This is what I learned from watching that Netflix series. For starters we all have the same relationship problems, but with autism, relationships are harder and require more work to get it right.
I also learned something important when the show examined two different autism couples. The first couple was excellent at helping each other, but the emotional disconnect that autism people have was very much present. That couple loved and helped each other in a very loving way, but any outside person was hated despised and rejected.
The next couple loved and helped each other just like the first couple, but they also loved everyone else in their life, just like they love each other. Around other people they were able to keep their autism manners to themselves. They both are employed with outside work. They absolutely love their jobs. They are the happiest people I have ever seen. I would love to be their friend. In the show, I hardly noticed their autism. If everyone acted like them, this world would be a much better place to live in.
Without going into detail, I pretty much had 0 real life relationships until I was 36. I had no real relationships with anyone, and the only chances of real relationships I had were when I was age 6 and then moved house (so the best chance I ever had disappeared), and then later at age 11 when the boy I hung out with a few times had his best friend accuse me of stealing. This wasn't disproven until later when they found the lost t-shirt buried under some hay where the other boy left it. Not sure when they found it to be honest, I was just notified 3-5yrs later.
Anyway, I've had a best friend (a female aspie from another country) for 10yrs now. She has a bf which I'm totally cool with, and she's like a big sister to me (even though she's 6yrs younger lol). She's way more socially capable than I am, as she has other friends.
For me the problem is finding friends. I know I can be the best friend ever to many people, but unfortunately I don't seem to relate to *any* Neurotypicals. This dramatically lowers my chances of finding friends, since most people aren't on the spectrum. Even though I can get along with 90-95% on the spectrum (to some degree at least), ones suitable as close friends are rare (maybe 1 in 10?) and for real life friends maybe 1 in 3 at best. Plus the other factor that totally kills things is distance. There's virtually no chance of me making a non-close friend unless they live in the same town, since I'm agoraphobic and I'm not going to go travel 20 miles to see someone unless they're amazing.