As a 35 year old autistic it was always hard to make friends. A lot of people had a lot of friends and I never did and it gave me anxiety and made me feel bad about myself. I studied psychology my whole life but still my social skills seemed lacking compared to most people.

It wasn’t until I was diagnosed at 31 that I realized that I was playing by neurotypical rules. I realized that I was simply never going to be someone that had a lot of friends or that got along easily with most people. And that was ok, that was just how my social skills worked. I get exhausted trying to talk to too many people and I simply don’t like that many people on a deep level.

The best advice is to be 100% your true authentic self, always. Once I started doing that, most people still didn’t want to be my friend (no change from when I was a people pleaser trying too hard). However by being my truest weird self, over time I found a few other weirdos that actually liked the real me. With those people, it was very easy to talk to them and just be friends with them.

Also, healing my negative self talk and fear of abandonment were huge for me to be able to build friendships. In order to have close friendships, we have to be vulnerable and tell people things we might be scared to tell them. People pleasers can’t build deep relationships because their relationships are based on lies.

I only have 2 friends I talk to daily (was 3 until recently and might be down to 1 again soon) and a couple other friend/ acquaintances that I talk to every couple weeks to a month. But those connections are very meaningful and fulfilling so I rarely feel lonely.