I primarily ask this, because for a large part of my life, I have found it hard to build meaningful friendships with neurotypicals. I don’t know any autistic people in real life, but wonder if it would be easier for me to build friendships with them?
Or maybe this has more to do with general struggles of being autistic, rather than how alike I am to others. However, I always find neurotypicals don’t really go deep in conversation, but they enjoy small talk. Yet, I’m the complete opposite.
What has been your experience?
Maybe I’m being too black and white in my thinking.
I don’t know. Socializing is difficult. Society has a different set of rules, guidelines, and conventions for different situations, and different people have different opinions about which ones are most important. Everything is gray. When does an acquaintance become a friend? I don’t know. There aren’t hard and fast rules about any of it. So many people socialize based on how they feel, and that’s hard for me to do sometimes.
I try to be upfront with people about being bad at picking up on social cues. I will tell people that I’m not trying to be rude if you try to make small talk and I’m not very responsive or engaging, I just suck at making small talk. etc.
I’m with you on it being so confusing. That’s constantly my experience with socialisation. Maybe I could try being upfront as well. I’m still not very open about being autistic. Although, I don’t necessarily need to give that level of detail in my explanation. Sometimes, I just get tired of trying.