Suddenly my close friendship makes perfect sense

[Wimmera]

I have had a good but troubled friendship with someone for three years. You could say that those cliches such as "we have a connection" or "there is chemistry" are appropriate for us. Being an aspie, this has been an unusual experience for me, not unique, but there have been very few who I have connected with like her. Whilst we feel close, we have also fallen out several times for seemingly unknown reasons, then come back together again... there has been a pattern like that.

I only learned that I have AS at the beginning of this year. I told my friend but she didn't want to know about it. Since then I have been assuming that the problems with our friendship are solely due to my aspieness, and that I could improve the friendship by learning more about AS and myself. This has led me to the amazing realisation that my friend is very likely to be on the AS spectrum too.

Until this week, I hadn't realised that female aspie traits are different to male traits. I had previously thought she could be "something like aspie" but she didn't fit the male traits that I had thought were for both sexes. Since learning about the female traits from my psychologist and online, I can see that she has a very clear fit. I just don't know what to do about this now!!

To me, it explains the connection we have felt. Has anyone else (with AS) had a good close friend whom they only learned had AS after the friendship was well established? And in particular, have you had this situation where the friend does not know they are aspie?

The question is, what if anything to do? I would love to carefully suggest to her that she could be on the spectrum, but I fear that it will push her away from me. I feel that a deeper and more stable friendship could be possible if she became aware, but on the other hand I sense she may not want to know about it and it could push us apart.

Any experiences to share and comments greatly appreciated.

 

[ExplosiveTMT]

There is a good friend of mine, who hasn't been officially diagnosed, but many asperger's traits are certainly there.

 

[Ste11aeres]

If she's not ready for it, it's probably best not to say anything. My best friend is probably an Aspie, as am I. He knew it about himself for years, but never said anything. I don't know if he suspected it about me, but when I came to this realization about myself and told him, he believed it so quickly, that I wonder if he may have already suspected it. However, prior to my own insight about AS and myself, he had never said a word about it to me. This was a good decision on his part, since I would not have been ready.

 

[Vanilla]

When I found out about mine, and suspected a friend, I had the same concern. Because of this, I chose to tell them about my suspicions that I had AS, and allowed them to come forward, if they felt the same. They confessed that they too were on the spectrum, but were not usually willing to tell people. They also told me they would have not suspected I was on the spectrum at all (likely because he too didn't know of the different traits women could have).

 

[paloftoon]

one thing you could try is invite her to autism conferences that you truly want to attend and wouldn't mind support for. Maybe she can discover or she can be the one to possibly ask you questions. If she doesn't ask you anything, that's okay too. Just try to enjoy the experience either way.

 

[Wimmera]

Thanks for the replies. I think the message is that she should be allowed to learn about AS and come to her own conclusions about herself in her own time, when she is ready. If I am open about myself being an aspie it may gently point her towards thinking about herself. For the time being, perhaps our friendship will have fewer bumps given that I now have better understanding about the reasons for some of her behaviors and reactions. It's an exciting time to have 'discovered' our similarity but stressful too because it seems as though it will change the relationship.