Tuesday 10 March 2009

Hairpins and wide turns, do things on my terms

Like most people with Asperger's Syndrome I don't really have any friends (don't worry, this isn't a sympathy blog). There are people I am friendly with such as at work, but I'm not in contact with anyone from any facet of my past life. Rolling stones and all that.

However there is someone that I see most weeks as we're working on a project together. Now I have no doubt he would class us as "friends", I guess I would too. Thing is though…when we are working on our project I always visit him. Then there was a period where I didn't really have the time to work on the project but we'd still meet up at the weekend. When we started back on the project we still arranged to meet at the weekend…but every single time he'd call to cancel on the day. After a few weeks back working he stopped even arranging to meet at the weekend. I'm not sure if he thinks I don't know what's going on, but I also don't know how I'm supposed to react. Am I supposed to confront him and say "we're only 'friends' for your convenience as I help you"? Am I supposed to just break off all contact and spend my energies elsewhere? I know I'm being "used" but am I supposed to be up in arms about it? I'd be lying if I said it didn't bother me at all, but it's not a major concern.

The other side of the coin is that I'm hardly a good friend myself; I never call him, he always calls me. He might be writing a blog moaning about this pain in arse guy he has to keep seeing, and if he didn't need his help he'd never see him again as he's too much work.

However this guy isn't a one-off. My last girlfriend was the same…we always did everything she wanted to do, nothing I wanted to do. I always visited her, did loads to help her but got little in return. Either this is a coincidence, or maybe I just attract these types of people? Or maybe it's my social weakness that means I keep these people in my life when I know I'd be better off without them? I guess I should start making some promises to myself to not allow my time to be used by these people. Or maybe I should just accept that beggars can't be choosers.

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