Last updated on November 26, 2023
Podcast 0052; Season 04, Episode 16; January 5, 2021
I’ve been reflecting a lot on friendships, the connections I don’t have. Many autistics I know are more social than I am, especially online. Not every autistic is an introvert, especially in virtual communities. My autistic traits and introversion lead to personal and professional isolation. Yet, it isn’t the social isolation that concerns me, it is the professional consequences of preferring to be alone. All cultures, all economic models, still favor people with social networks. We help people with whom we have relationships.
Transcript (lightly edited)
This episode of The Autistic Me Podcast was scheduled for Tuesday, January 5, 2021. The Georgia Senate run-off elections captured my attention and I didn’t finish the project. Wednesday and Thursday, my attention was consumed by the televised news coverage of events in Washington, D.C. This week might be as eventful, but I decided to move forward with this podcast.
Maybe now is a good time to consider the value of friendships.
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Hello, and welcome to The Autistic Me Podcast. I am Christopher Scott Wyatt, speaking as The Autistic Me.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, did you gather with friends on a regular basis? Were there people you met up with, in person, for no other reason than to be together as friends? Do you have people in your life with whom you communicate with predictable regularity?
When I was diagnosed as autistic in 2007, I assumed all autistics were natural introverts. Instead, I discovered there was an active community of autistics online and in some physical spaces. They even had their own conferences.
“You need to make friends,” doctors and counselors advised. “People need those connections. Try autistic social groups.”
A gathering of autistics? No thank you. I struggle to interact with autistics online or in person, just as I struggle with most people. Add in my aversion to some autistic traits, including my own, and the result is exponential anxiety increases.
A few autistics have told me they share this challenge when in the presence of other autistics. I hate tapping sounds, but I tap. Random vocalizations? I cannot stand them. And, of course, I make sounds while deep in thought. I grumble when I read something annoying. Then, I look to see who made the annoying grumbling sound. If I annoy myself, there’s no way I could be in a room of me-s. It’s not fair to other people. Yes, I should be able to tune out the input, but I cannot. Instead, I grow agitated.
If autism is our only shared interest, that’s insufficient for me. Plus, even if we do share other interests, I’m not sure I want to meet up face-to-face and end up seeming like a jerk when the inputs overwhelm me.
Autistics who want to be social, the extroverted autistics, tell me how painful it is to want friends. These autistics constantly fail at forming lasting, authentic friendships. Instead, autistics are abused by manipulative peers who claim to be their friends. Too many autistics end up in abusive relationships because they want to be liked or loved.
Join special interest groups and maybe friendships will emerge, right?
There was a time when I socialized a little, when I was 25 years younger. It was an exhausting effort to be normal. I do miss some of the personalities we knew during those years. I played darts and chatted with a handful of odd characters. Even a postman. Our own strange “Cheers” cast.
I wasn’t able to maintain those contacts. They weren’t friends. They were fascinating acquaintances.
The only social group in which I actively participated during the last decade was a small group of Apple computer programming enthusiasts who gathered outside Pittsburgh monthly. I liked the meeting space, at an Eat n’ Park diner. I attended sporadically, at best, before we relocated to Texas.
As an autistic person, I don’t have many friends. However, thanks to social media, I do have a loose network of people I consider friends, maybe six people. I have acquaintances online, but few friends.
I haven’t had a non-work-related dinner, drinks, or whatever, with someone else since October of 2019. Yes, I checked. Before that? July, 2018, when I met up with friends from college during a trip to California. There was a June 2018 dinner with friends in Ohio.
One dinner with friends in 2019. Two dinners with friends in 2018. It’s 2021. Pandemic aside, I’m clearly not a social connector or active friendship maintainer.
Not having friends means that our daughters have few adult role models. Even before and probably after the pandemic, the girls only see their teachers, my wife, and me. There’s no network of adults in their lives, outside education and healthcare professionals.
I worry that if my wife and I ever had an emergency, there’s no one around to help with our daughters. But, we’re also not the first parents to be alone in the world.
Friends do a lot for each other. However, knowing that isn’t enough motivation for me to seek out friendships. I love my wife and children, and they are more than enough social contact for me. Seeking out other connections isn’t an exciting or interesting prospect.
The Autistic Me wants to defend my isolation. The pragmatic me realizes that social networks matter.
Scientists in a variety of fields theorize humans had to evolve as social animals to ensure our survival.
As animals, we’re not well-equipped to survive in the wild. We are slow, weak, and equipped with sub-par senses. We have no claws, no massive jaws, nor any other adaptations for hunting. With our mediocre senses, we don’t excel as foragers, either.
Our offspring require parenting not for a few weeks or months, but for more than a decade. They have no instinctive skills for survival. Everything has to be taught to our children.
Only one trait allows the human species to thrive and arguably dominate the planet, for better or worse. We form communal bonds. Those emotional bonds ensure we assist other members within our social groups.
Early humans had to hunt together. They formed families and tribes. Whether nomadic or settled, humans needed each other.
Solitary hermits who did manage to live out their lives alone were the exception.
Extroversion, the need for social contact, sustained the species.
How did the introverts survive? There are a lot of us. We must be important, too.
Research used to suggest only 25 percent of people were introverts. The problem is that self-identifying as an introvert doesn’t make you an introvert. A lot of people create self-narratives that conflate shyness or awkwardness with introversion. The spectrum model helps accommodate the differences among introverts.
Of course, not all extroverts are the same, either.
Yes, there’s a spectrum of introversion and extroversion, with many people in the wide middle of that social spectrum: the ambiverts.
Introverts aren’t misanthropes. Most are not anti-social. They simply need their quiet space and prefer smaller groups. Current research now suggests up to 40 percent of people have “ambivert” tendencies: a need to cycle between large and small groups.
Psychologist Jonathan Cheek and his colleagues have sorted introversion into four categories, ranging from the anxious loners to the thoughtful introverts who observe other people. Papers coauthored by Cheek in 2011 and 2014 explain these differences.
My wife is somewhere between the reduced social and thinking-contemplative introvert personality types.
The social introverts, who prefer small groups, still have the same numbers of close friends as most extroverts. Thinking introverts manage to isolate internally, lost in their own thoughts, while within a group of any size. This isn’t to say other introverts aren’t also contemplative thinkers, but the thinking introverts can partition their thoughts from external interactions. Introspective, is a word Cheek uses.
Cheek’s model then moves to the restrained introvert. Less social, exhausted by too much interaction, the reserved and restrained introvert must prepare mentally for group interactions. Some need to prepare for one-on-one interactions, too.
And then, there’s my introversion.
I am the anxious introvert who dreads social interactions. I’m not shy. I don’t have a fear of public speaking. I just do not want to interact one-on-one with people. Mistakes will be made. I don’t enjoy even small groups. My limit is about four or five other people, and that takes a lot of physical and emotional effort.
As listeners and readers know, anxiety comes up a lot on The Autistic Me. “Anxious” is a word that describes my daily state of existence.
So, even on the spectrum of introverts, I’m on the outer edge. I have the most pronounced and, for me, frustrating form of introversion. People and social situations exhaust me. I don’t make friends easily; the other person has to take the lead in the relationship. I don’t do what is necessary to maintain connections.
I appreciate the book Quiet by Susan Cain. I do wish our culture embraced introversion, instead of making it seem like a disability.
Introverts can focus and develop novel ideas. Because they are less social, they sometimes resist following popular opinions. There is creative freedom within the isolation and quiet. I cannot fathom how an extrovert could sit and be independently creative for hours or days.
How connected is the mythical average person?
A large body of research has found that people have 150 meaningful social connections at a given time. Evolutionary anthropologist Robin Dunbar and others have theorized this is the optimal small community size, something observed among groups like the Amish.
Beyond 150 individuals, our other connections hold little socio-emotional value. Those 1500 “friends” on Facebook? They aren’t friends.
The average person has emotional bonds to fewer than 50 people. Most of those people in our lives are still not what researchers consider close friends. Researchers measure physical responses we have to someone else’s joy or suffering. Apparently, humans have a limited capacity for deep connections, possibly explained by our earliest tribal existence.
Do most adults have close friends? According to researchers, yes. Most people have five or more close friends outside family. My closest friend is my wife. She’s family, so researchers wouldn’t count that friendship.
What is a friend if we don’t have 1500, 150, or even 50 friends? Who are those five genuine friends most adults have?
Researchers describe a friend as someone you communicate with on a regular basis, voluntarily. Regular communication is defined as several times annually. The researchers also describe close friends as those people we seek out or who seek out us during moments of emotional need. Friends know when you need them and are there for you.
Friends connect outside work and any organizations. People enjoy sharing a variety of experiences with friends.
Studies find friendships are more durable than romantic relationships.
Yes, there’s even a science of friendship. Scholars have documented that friendships typically require one person with good social skills and intuitive socio-emotional intelligence. There are papers in “friendship chemistry” and why the best friendships are so enduring.
I understand how important friends are, based on the research data. Intellectually, I understand there are statistically significant benefits to friendships.
Friends are the people who check on you when they haven’t heard from you for a few days. They ask what’s happening in your life. Friends can literally save your life through their vigilance.
Ten percent of adults have no best friend. Relate.org, a U.K. charity dedicated to studying human relationships, found 80 percent of adults do have a romantic partner they consider a friend. The organization also found most adults have a best friend. Still, ten percent of people surveyed, many of them older, reported no close bonds.
I have to wonder, how many of the ten percent are neurodiverse? How many are introverts who lost a life partner? Who ends up alone?
According to a meta-analysis of surveys, 45 percent of people actively maintain friendships. Nearly half of adults schedule monthly or even bi-weekly casual gatherings outside work and other group obligations. They might not gather with the same friends every month, which makes sense. People are busy.
I know some of those active connectors. They love hosting game nights and dinners. They buy double ovens and seek out excuses to host parties. They are extroverts who are energized by gatherings.
Maintaining friendships sounds like work to me. Yet, these active connectors organize what’s considered a “casual” gathering at least monthly. The connectors make an effort at friendship and value those relationships enough to ensure gatherings happen.
These friend-rich people are, according to researchers, happier, healthier, and more content and successful in their careers.
In 2019, the New York Post featured a story on friendships. The headline? Why the Average American Hasn’t Made a New Friend in Five Years.
Quoting the article:
[H]ow many friends do adults actually have? Turns out, 16. The average American has three friends for life, five people they really like and would hang out with one-on-one, and eight people they like but don’t spend time with one-on-one or seek out.
We form our closest friendships before the age of 23 and tend to keep many of them for rest of our lives. Even when we move, most people maintain the three or four closest connections in their lives. For thirty percent of people, their closest friend is someone met in childhood.
Friendships require social skills. If you repel people quickly, as I do, then you’re not going to have opportunities to form bonds. Friendships require some effort, beyond thinking about the friends. I’m not good at initiating contact, especially for “no real reason.”
An autistic anxious introvert? I’m lucky to have my wife and any friends at all.
The lack of friendships doesn’t bother me as much as what the consequences are of lacking a social network.
I know that any career would benefit from friendships. I realize that my lack of social skills and my negligible interest in connections penalize me in life. My professional progress is handicapped by my introversion and autistic traits.
It bothers me that being social matters so much, long after we had to collaborate in person to survive as a species.
Autism exists on a spectrum and so does introversion. I cannot separate my autism from my introversion — or either of these from my anxiety. I am content sitting and writing alone. I don’t mind doing this in a quiet café, with tea or coffee.
The Autistic Me projects connect me with many other people. I do appreciate that.
I am Christopher Scott Wyatt, speaking as The Autistic Me.
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