Why Friendship Is Complicated When You’re Neurodivergent (and When You Aren’t)
Friendship is often painted as something that just happens. You meet someone, you have common interests, and BAM! Now you have someone to spend time with, talk to about your passions, and support in times of need. How great is that?
Unfortunately, most of us know that friendship is often far more complicated. As a therapist, I highlight the importance of community for mental wellbeing. Without people to support you, talk to, and feel heard by, we exist in an echo chamber of our own thoughts. We may struggle to understand our emotions, or feel loved and cared for.
When we limit our definition of friendship to something that is effortless and intuitive, we neglect the true miracle of what it is to connect deeply on an individual level. We reduce something truly complicated and unique to a run-of-the-mill event that just happens on the fly. In doing so, we inadvertently condition ourselves to believe that something is wrong with us if friendship doesn’t come easily. In this blog post, we will identify what it is that makes friendship so complex, and how those of us who are neurodivergent may especially struggle with making new friends in adulthood.
The Invisible Rules of Friendship
One of the hardest parts of friendship is that so much of it is governed by unspoken rules. Especially if you’re neurodivergent, those rules may not match up exactly with your own inner experience and expectations. Rules like: How often should I text? What counts as over-sharing or under-sharing? When is it okay to cancel plans? How to tell if someone is drifting away because they don’t want to be friends, versus when they’re just busy?
For neurotypical people, these rules may often be understood implicitly. For neurodivergent people, they may feel like constantly shifting, arbitrary calculations that limit directness and effective communication. Either way, it certainly leaves that aforementioned “effortless and natural” friendship connection to be more rare than anything else.
Some of the hard work, then, in pursuing friendship in adulthood is the constant social calculation. If you want to make friends, you have to be wary of what they expect from you in a social context. If you’re neurodivergent and typically find yourself in neurotypical spaces, you may struggle with feeling pressure to conform to these rules. You might be hypervigilant to rejection, and miss out on connections out of a fear of “doing it wrong”. You might replay conversations, analyze tone and facial expression, or even push people away first, in order to protect yourself.
Feeling Connection Intensely in a Casual World
On top of the existing challenges of making friends, many neurodivergent people also experience connection intensely in the initial stages of friendship, more than many neurotypical folks report. You might find yourself loving your friends to the point of insecurity, thinking about them constantly, wanting to understand them completely, and worrying that they don’t feel the same way. You may also crave long conversations, emotional depth, and shared meaning, in each and every friendship.
The truth is, a friendship built on this level of connection is one of the most rewarding friendships a person can have. It’s not only doable, it’s the gold-standard for many people, and what many of my adult clients report yearning for. Whether you’re neurotypical or neurodivergent, this type of friendship does seem to be the goal.
So if most people crave this type of friendship, where’s the disconnect? For many, it’s timing. Some people aren’t as comfortable with emotional depth, and therefore want to establish safety before deepening an emotional connection. If things get too deep too fast, they may feel insecure, or unable to match the tempo of the person moving more quickly. Rather than registering the intensity as demonstrating true interest in getting to know one another, they may feel intimidated.
This mismatch of timing and intensity, without direct communication, can lead to pain and rejection for the person more willing to put themselves out there. To express interest and vulnerability in a friendship can go one of many ways, and for some, that risk outweighs the reward.
In my perfect world, everyone would feel safe and comfortable approaching friendship in a way that is authentic to them. There would be no rejection, no indirect communication, and no risk of pain when putting oneself out there. Alas, I don’t get a say in how the world really works, and in general, my advice is this: Learn that your style of friendship doesn’t have to match the tone of other’s styles, but that you do have the power to make changes.
You have the innate right to be intense, or obsessive, or hyper-curious; And sooner or later, you’ll find your people. But, if the risk of rejection is too much for you, you can learn the rules of the game. You can do your research, play a role, and learn to match others’ paces, if that’s what makes forming connections feel more safe. Just remember, it can never hurt to embrace rejection as a sign of incompatibility, rather than personal fault, and move on to the next.
The (Exhausting) Power of Masking
If you’re reading on, and you’re thinking, “Yes, I want that deep, emotionally powerful friendship, but I’m not quite ready to keep being vulnerable and getting hurt”, I have news for you.
Masking is an incredibly powerful defense mechanism. It’s exhausting, it’s taxing, and still, it works. If you aren’t at a point in your life where you’re ready to fully embrace being yourself, you’re not alone. Everyone, both neurodivergent and neurotypical, masks in some capacity.
Unsure of if you mask? Let’s identify some of the most common techniques.
You may be masking if:
You force eye contact or mimic body language to fit in.
You plan conversations ahead of time, and rehearse what you’re going to say.
You calculate the “appropriate” level of excitement or interest to make sure you’re not “overdoing it”.
When someone says something that doesn’t make sense to you, you hide your confusion so you don’t stand out.
You choose how you present yourself not based on your own likes, but on what you see others choosing (clothes, hair, makeup, etc).
These are all forms of masking, and to a degree, everyone has used one of these at some point in their lifetime. Like I said before, masking is a powerful defense mechanism, but not everyone utilizes masking in their day-to-day life. For some, masking comes unconsciously, for others, masking feels impossible. But across the board, masking takes emotional, and sometimes physical, effort. Learn to rely on masking too much, and you run the risk of abandoning your true self. You might form real connections, but you might also be trapped in relationships where you feel you have to mask at all times to fit in.
In my opinion, the solution is to utilize masking only when needed, and continue to let your true self shine through. Identify which skills feel the most natural for you, and incorporate them into early connections as you gauge how safe the people around you are. Be yourself the majority of the time, and sprinkle in small skills when you feel overexposed.
People worth connecting with will still be drawn to you. They will see you as you are, and when you both feel secure in the connection, they’ll let their walls down, too. By picking and choosing small ways to protect yourself, you’ll learn more about pacing, and will be better able to match the pace of those who intrigue you. You’ll learn to register when someone’s pace is too outmatched, and you’ll hopefully save yourself time by allowing yourself to move onto someone who is more receptive.
Disclaimer: Everyone is Different
If friendship has ever felt confusing for you, you’re in the majority. To connect deeply with someone and build a strong relationship is not always a guarantee, and for many, when we can’t come across friendship easily, we develop internalized beliefs that do not fit the reality of the situation.
If you have struggled to build lasting and deep friendships, remind yourself that: You are not inherently bad or unlovable if you struggle with friendship. You do not need to change everything about yourself to find friends. And most importantly, if you’re happy with who you are, you are more likely to attract people who will see that side of you, too.
At the end of the day, I cannot speak for every single person when it comes to the topic of friendship. My writing reflects only my personal experiences, and my professional knowledge. I cannot speak for the entirety of the neurodivergent nor neurotypical community, and therefore, may not reflect any one exact experience.