Greetings

christianofhobart · May 6, 2010

I'm a 27 year old guy from Australia and I have always been a loner. I believe this is cause of many things, my mild autism is one of them. However not the only one and I am beginning to deal with this in my therapy.

My story begins when my parents divorced when I was four and I lived with my very atypical mother until I was 13 or so. As a kid I was certainly the loner in the playground, but I also interacted with the other kids as well.

Then I moved in with my dad and his then wife (he is now on his fourth marriage). I believe I became socially quite withdrawn as a teenager due to the fact of my unconventional father and stepmother. Well she was an escort and my father had acted as her pimp at times as well. Secondly, my father was then a nudist, also he advocated (still does) and practiced polyamory. My response to all this was to become socially withdrawn and also become quite conservative in my style and attitudes.

Not having a paid job for long time and my very drawn out tertiary education (I am just about to complete my accounting undergraduate degree this year), has contributed to my social isolation. I am generally a person who is very introverted and does not have a high social need or get particularly lonely easily. It took me some years to realize my social isolation and starting to feel lonely.

Things have started to change for me in the past couple of years, I have met a few friends through myself doing pub trivia for a while. However a couple have major psychological issues and I doubt we would be friends if their circumstances in life would be different.

I guess there are many issues I face, namely not having any friends I would consider close, although I have a number of friendly acquaintances I have made through church and other avenues) and a few people who would consider me a close friend. Along with that, since I was effectively an only child as a teenager, I have difficulty relating my peers (especially the opposite sex).

In conclusion, once I finish my degree (hopefully) this year and find suitable work. I will be moving away from the town (which has 90,000 people) I am living in at the moment and moving to another likely smaller community to work. Making friends will be an extremely hard task for me, who is not very great at making friends in the first place.

Solitary · May 6, 2010

Welcome christianofhobart,

Even though I can't relate to that part about your parents, your lack of social need is very similar to mine, and so is introversion. I think some people are just naturally less social and there is nothing wrong about it.

The issue of not many close friends is also very known to me. Acquaintances are easy to make, but also easy to lose. Friends are hard to find, but true friendship is hard to break, too.

And when you will be making friends, just remember that friends accept you for who you are. If you will meet someone and try to be their friend just for the sake of having friends, that friendship won't be very real. There should be an emotional attraction of some sort, a feeling that you can relate to that person, a feeling that you have lots to share between yourselves.

Heh.. Anyway. Excuse my thoughts if they sound too ridiculous. It's just the way I think

Welcome to the boards.