I basically don't have any friends of my own anymore. The ones from high school I was never really close enough with to hang out outside school. We were just too different. Almost a decade and a half later and we see each other maybe once a year and don't talk outside of that.

College was supposed to be a place to meet new people, and I did meet a few, one of which is my current partner. But that also didn't last past college years, really.

I'm now in a different country, don't really speak the language well enough and don't really have energy or time to find new people. Plus, my introversion, social anxiety and health are only making it harder. My partner occasionally comments on me having no friends of my own, but then I look at his friend circle and want to roll my eyes. Most of his friends are from high school years, and he sees them maybe once or twice a year. There are a few he met through work, but it's easier for him because the field we work in is male-dominated. So for him it's okay, for me it sucks to be the only woman. But he doesn't hang out with any of these people on regular basis. Realistically, most people he knows are acquaintances.

I think about this whole situation frequently and it makes me depressed and bitter. I feel like even if I find new friends, I'll never be the friend, you know? They'll always have other people they've been friends with for longer and I will be either not as important or discarded later. It's been this way my whole life. Always easily forgotten and replaced.

I can completely relate. Additionally my specific standards also make it very bad.

I found out that I'm an Autist so for me it at least explains things but is also totally not helping to know.

Nevertheless I do not know for sure if all of this isn't totally normal, as in the regular human experience. The older you get the more difficult it is to find and hold friends.

Sometimes, a handful of friends is not just enough but the upper limit as well. And that's okay, right? If you have a partner and everything is okay, you will start your own small community regardless. 😅

Real friends are the ones that stick with you when shit hits the fan. When you're an adult and you meet new people, you usually want to show yourself from your best side and for everything to go well. She we were kids, shit hitting the fan was somebody kicking a ball into a neighbors window or falling of a bike, minor things as an adult, but as kids that built character. The stakes are so much higher as an adult when things go wrong, so generally you avoid it even though this means that most of your relationships are superficial.

I'm not saying that something horrible must happen in order to get friends as an adult. But sometimes it's better to simply work against the odds together to form a deeper connection.

You aren't doing anything wrong.

That's just how life is. Practically nobody makes friends as adults due to the structure of adult life.

As children you have tons of free time and no hangups or social status to maintain. As an adult you have zero free time, lots of hangups, and most adults are obsessed with social status.

I give you those “screwy things”. Somebody stripped the fifth beats from Brubeck’s magnum opus, and made the most waltz sounding 4 I’ve ever heard.

Take Four

This. I'm not a musician but have learned many types of dance and the time signature is key for dancing. Maybe it would help OP to do a beginner dance class, to learn time signature in a different context.

Metallica's Nothing Else Matters is a walz and you can't convince me otherwise.

You could write in triplets in 4/4.

So, the original Mission Impossible theme tune is in 5/4. When U2 re-did it for the 1996 Tom Cruise film, the beginning is in 5/4, and then they transition to a slower 4/4. For most of the "Dee da duuuuuuuuuuuh" sections, as far as I can tell it's just a beat shorter, but the tempo is lower, when they do reprise the Dun! Dun! Da Da! section they use two measures, 8 beats, making it dun dun dun dun da da.

Fun fact: The original dun dun da da was supposed to be "MI" in morse code. --.. dash dash dot dot, with a dash being a beat and a half, a dot being one beat, five beats total. U2 turned it into MMI. ----..

So funny (and kinda sweet) how many people are trying to explain time signature to OP

LOL I was checking the comments for exactly this.

My wife and I have ADHD and have the same issue. Emotional regulation is impaired in many with ADHD, so we tend to run emotionally "hotter" than most. We may get more upset about something than an NT person might, hence why we come across as very upset, but we may not see it as particularly intense because that's a normal reaction in our experience.

Not necessarily what might be causing it for you, but definitely what does it for me and many others I've known. DBT helped a lot.

many people are trying to explain time signature

I'm glad they did, because I also have a hard time with time sigs, and was hoping to see some explanations. In fact, one comment here finally elucidated that I understood signatures wrong this whole time.

I had a sort-of similar thing that took me ages to figure out, but it turns out my thinking/concentrating face just looks angry. So people would ask me things, I'd be thinking of a response and they'd think they annoyed me. So I'm trying to work on that, but also I just tell people my thinking face looks angry now and that's helped a lot lol.

It was middle school when I realized “you can only be cool if you’re not trying to be cool,” which I then said in an effort to sound cool. By high school that had sunk in better and I accidentally ended up popular, I think. That was when I first started looking past what people do to try looking cool.

In college I got into psychedelics, broke through to ego death while listening to Dark Side of the Moon with blindfolds and peaking, and found that the deeper level of existence was that there isn’t one. Most things in life can be as simple or as complex as you want, and I had been trying to make it more complex than it is.

But the thing I keep finding is that for as simple as most things actually are, people are consistently more complex than their surface suggests.

A week ago my cousin was in town and I had a one on one conversation with him for the first time in our adult lives that started with him showing me his relatively popular Instagram photos from the past couple years of him running the rave circuit. But as we got to talking about it, he revealed that he didn’t give a shit about his popularity, his ex-boyfriend was the socials guy who wanted the clout of being with a hot rave guy. He had become disillusioned with pretty much his whole life, but you wouldn’t get that just looking at his socials. And for as shallow as his ex is, if you peeled back the layers of bullshit he’s built around his life, there’s probably some interesting thoughts in there.

I guess I’m not sure what I’m trying to say with all this. When I make an effort to understand, most people I meet drop the facades and spill their guts pretty quick to me. I might be uniquely weird for that ability, but I don’t know that it’s narcissism on their part so much as trying to be cool and grappling with never succeeding because of that trying.

Yeah I also have autism

and you can watch in real time as their world view starts wobbling and they start making up rationalizations and excuses for behaviour that is utterly narcissistic.

I encounter this when chatting with a family member and she mentions that she "loves animals" and who "couldn't hurt a fly" while also being an omnivore. She feels sorry for the animals when she thinks of industrial farming, but does her best to never think about it. When this topic comes up, I don't say anything (we've been through the topic in the past), but she sees the impatience with her bullshit on my face, and gets flustered by the fact that someone doesn't consider this cognitive dissonance normal.

Add in a psychedelic experience or two, and it becomes impossible not to recognize how ridiculous it all is.

Can be done without them, of course, but psychedelics can blast you right to that position, for better or worse.

You don't have to fully integrate, I guess. As in, people don't have to be your intellectual/ideological peers or see things as clearly, but you can still enjoy their company. If anything, it's your moral responsibility to guide them and elucidate them when needed because, well, who else is gonna do it? They can't do it for themselves, else they wouldn't be posting a million selfies or doing whatever other nonsense they're up to after their PFC has developed sufficiently. You're gonna have to lead the blind to water, you don't want them to die of thirst, right? The way is important too, because you don't want them to see you as an annoying, moralising, "no fun allowed" kinda guy, they'll just run away from you... but with the right approach you can be the somewhat wise unc/paternal figure of your group.

Beware though, people WILL call you asking for guidance on your days off and it'll be up to you to define the limits of your relationships so you don't end up moving to a cabin in the woods disconnected from everything, but it is definitely rewarding and very prosocial.

I'm at the point where I don't even try to integrate any more. The only time I leave my flat is against my will because I have to go to work to be able to afford to live.

start making up rationalizations and excuses for behaviour that is utterly narcissistic

Humans are narcissistic and selfish because over the millenia the ones that were selfish outcompeted the ones that weren't. It's totally natural to be selfish. Some are just better at hiding it than others.

However there is also a simple social aspect to including yourself in photos. It's a clear visceral way to say "I was here". A photo without your face does not have capture the "you" part of that statement. Social interaction is not just an exchanging of ideas, it's also about building relationships, and for that to happen, the "you" part of the equation is vital.

To be fair I rarely include myself in photos, but for the same reason I am also less integrated into my social circles.

If its all a fake performance, perform the show well and find yourself in a better position to help more people do the same.

Strapping a snowboard to my feet was pretty intuitive, just keep the downhill edge up. Hard agree, I even wore skater shoes but a basic Ollie was something my brain and limbs just..don’t do that

I have a friend who's a skater and when he doing a kickflip I asked how it worked, as in, how do you make sure the board doesn't land upside-down or whatever and he was like, "You just launch off and then deal with it." which was not at all helpful lol. There must be some sort of logic to it!

It is just physics. Obviously. Getting the intuition for it is pretty difficult without actually doing it. It requires practice but it's also not just muscle memory. You can figure out a lot of the techniques by thinking about it. It is important to be able to visualise a trick before you have any chance of doing it. It's a constant process of thinking, trying, thinking, trying, and suddenly you just feel it, and only then can you do it.

As for the physics, it's always a battle of opposite forces. Gravity does win, but you can fall with style in the meantime. I guess most people can juggle a football a few times simply by kicking the ball and then get in the position where the ball lands. A skateboard is the same, only with less room and you being on top of it. The secret is the Ollie. Your center of gravity is not at your feet, so there's some room to juggle the board underneath you.

Also helpful to know where it’s appropriate to take a breath on a wind instrument if it’s not marked.

Get a sleep study. This sounds like a sleep disorder. Especially if you also take naps easily throughout the day.

Could be something like needing a cpap machine. My husband got one and it changed how he slept entirely. Could be a lot of reasons for sleep not being refreshing though!

You might be nocturnal. I used to work nights and felt better getting up at 4pm every day, even if I had less sleep than I get now getting up at 8am

that's fascinating and DIDN'T HELP AT ALL HOLY SHIT.

it's like saying "oh you don't understand basic physics? here watch Einstein explain his most complex concepts"

Fantastic music

△

I just discovered these guys last week and have had their two albums playing on repeat ever since.

This has NEVER made sense to me. I've practically never happened upon something I want to buy in a corporate store

Same. But I've had a couple breakthroughs: I enjoy it if I'm looking to buy something for someone else. And also when it's random junk: thrift stores, flea markets, yard sales, bin stores, that kind of thing. With those it feels like I'm exploring, not just shopping.

Parents are really good at this because it's their only alooone time

I've done this lots of times, especially at malls, only because it's considered "spending" money. The reality, though, is that I'll rarely actually buy something.

this is your own bias working against you.

everyone has this problem. you just don't see it because you aren't there every moment of every day in their life, like you are with yourself.

people 'seem' to not have this problem because they have learned from experience what other people want, and frankly, what most people want, is mostly the same. so once you figure out the use-case that covers like 90% of people, they are easy to please.

plus most people are dumb animals and if you treat them like they are... you rarely fail.

This 1 million times.

I've always told my friends and significant others to just tell me what they are thinking or wanting. It truly is that simple with me. I do not beat around the bush, nor do I appreciate others doing that. We are adults (those I tell this to) so just tell me, "Hey, I want to do this on this day" or "Hey, I really wish you would do this thing".

"I am not, and never will be, a mind reader."

Is this like, "I didn't know you were mad" or "I didn't realize I was supposed to tip my hairdresser" or "I didn't realize they'd turn off our electricity if zi didn't pay the bill"? The first is pretty complicated, but the second two are various flavors of "proactive research is part of maturity".

This seems common for people from dysfunctional households. I come from a similar (though not as extreme) background and I wouldn't consider myself capable of love. Not in a way that matters, at least.

Mine is similar. I adore music but I can’t lock into a melody to save my life. Songs I love & have heard a hundred times before—I’ll try to hum or whistle along with them and I’m all over the place. It’s like I’m purposely trying to sound bad — but that’s actually the very best I can do.

I can relate, I'm an avid listener to music. I've tried playing guitar and piano but I cannot manifest it somehow.

Music theory ditto. I usually love nerdy mathy content but somehow music theory finds no place to, well... resonate in my brain.

Try trackers, in particular Renoise (it's free to use as a demo, without exporting, though there are workarounds for that). At the first glance, it's a spreadsheet where you place samples playing notes. In practice, it works great for people like me who can barely tell what different notes sound like, much less feel intervals and stuff. You just put your samples such that you get the rhythm you want, and don't forget to twiddle the effects because they make a big difference. Of course, this works best for dancey electronic music.

Do you find music not amusing, or just can't "sync up" with others' peoples opinions of it?

Autism?