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I've written before about friendship and commented on the phenomenon of male loneliness.

What really brought it home to me recently was when my wife answered a question in an app about meeting my friends, she just wrote "no friends".

Simple and bluntly honest.

It's been almost a running joke that that the only people I know outside of work are my wife's friends. But it's not a joke. Not in the slightest.

I've always said my big three issues are boredom, frustration, and impatience. But there is a fourth: loneliness.

I've always felt … different … for want of a better way of putting it. I now know that this is the autism manifesting. Since leaving school, with relatively few exceptions, I've struggled to truly identify with other people, to find "my tribe". I know they're out there, somewhere, but meeting them is the hard bit.

For all the ills of social media, at least it's possible to spark some kind of a relationship with like-minded individuals, even if only very casual or parasocial.

As I said before, my friends and acquaintances are always situational: "I know you because X". If X is no longer a common factor, the likelihood of us staying friends // acquaintances is extremely low.

It's not a deliberate thing, just how my brain works. Why would someone want to be friends under those conditions, knowing that as soon as circumstances change they will be forgotten?

I think it also makes it harder for me to enter into deeper relationships because I know, ultimately, that they are transient. Unfortunately, it leaves me isolated; not by choice but by almost inevitable action that I seem to have no control over.

The obvious answer, and the one said by those who don't struggle in the same way, is to just get out there and meet people. As if it were the simplest thing in the world.

For me, it's always been one of the hardest.

Ever since the realisation that I am both autistic and have ADHD, more and more of my life starts to make sense. I can finally put names to things that I have always experienced but couldn't explain. PDA and RSD are typical examples: Pathological Demand Avoidance and Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria.

Maybe I'll write about PDA in future, but for now, I want to concentrate on RSD.

Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria is described as:

a deep, painful emotional response to real or perceived rejection, criticism, or failure.

It is not simply "taking things personally".

A key word in that description is perceived — rejection or criticism doesn't need to be real, a reaction can occur when someone's response doesn't meet expectation.

RSD isn't just the immediate reaction to something, but an extended experience. Incidents can reverberate and cause problems years into the future as feelings of guilt, shame and rejection can all bubble up when remembering the initial event.

My own experience is that I find it incredibly hard to say no, especially at work, as I don't want to be criticised – it is classic "people pleaser" behaviour. RSD is also likely behind my lifelong desire for external validation and trying too hard to get it. From poetry to DJing, graffiti to music, I have made myself the centre of attention in a desperate bid to get people to like me, only to crash when the reaction isn't what my brain imagines it should be.

This links back to not having friends because I find it extremely hard to put myself in positions where I might meet new people. RSD isn't just the response to something that has happened, but also the fear that something might. The constant nagging doubt that I am setting myself up for failure, so why bother.

I surprised myself a couple of weeks ago when I posted on Bluesky that, as I was signed off work, I was up for meeting people for a coffee and a chat. That is so far out of my comfort zone and immediately brought on a sense of dread; not only meeting new people, but what if no one took me up on it? ¹

RSD leads to a sense of self-loathing: everyone rejects me so I must be awful. The slightest thing gets blown out of all proportion, adding to the belief that it is my fault. And the real kicker is that I know I am overreacting, that this isn't a true position, but there is nothing I can do about it.

I may tell myself I'm being stupid but it doesn't ease the anxiety and fear. It only serves to emphasise the feeling that it is my fault. There are coping mechanisms but I find those like emotional acceptance and self-compassion extremely hard.

What is extremely frustrating is the thought that, at my age, I should have all this stuff worked out; that I'm a grown man who should know better.

I don't really have any kind of satisfactory conclusion to this post – it's just a whole bunch of words on the page that do a bad job of expressing how I feel in the hope that explaining it to myself might lessen the impact.

Anyway, the offer is still out there to meet up for a coffee and chat. If you're not in the North West of England then Zoom is always an option.