My numero uno internet friend is something like autistic -- we've been chatting for nearly three years now and even today he was asking me - well, let's hear him:

Young Person: we haven't had much of a meaningful relationship talk
Young Person: we've just been crapping on about superficial things
Young Person: but is that what friends are supposed to do?
Young Person: i am your friend then?
Robert : yes you are
Robert : i think we can be quite diverse
Young Person: (whew! emoticon)
Robert : range from the meaningful to the playful
Robert : as the mood and inspiration strike us

I don't know if he'll ever be completely satisfied that he knows what friends are and whether he has one or not.

How autistic are you? Is the idea of love as much of a mystery to you as friendship is to my friend?

Such things can be explained very technically if need be, but it's easier if you just happen to be comfortable with the concept and feeling already.

Also the technical explanations require an idiot-savant ability to tolerate near-circular logical dynamics, as illustrated by RD Laing in his book 'Knots.'

"Mother loves me
because she is good
I am bad, to think she is bad
therefore if I am good
she is good
and loves me
because I am good
to know she is good

I am bad
to doubt she punishes me for doubting
she loves me by punishing me
for doubting she loves me

She says
it must be HER fault
if I doubt she loves me

She feels bad because
I don't think she loves me because
she feels bad when I don't think she loves me.

She feels
it is her fault
that I can be so cruel
as to doubt she loves me
when she makes me feel cruel
to think she tries to make me feel cruel."


A good calculating prodigy has the mental stacking capacity not to be boggled by those last two stanzas. One in ten autistic people has some savant properties.