Maintaining friendships on the spectrum

This is the eleventh post in my autism awareness month series. My wife tells me I have friends. She's probably right. But I don't feel like I do — not in the way the cultural template describes. The deep reciprocal bond, the person you call when something happens, the relationship that persists without a reason to persist. That version of friendship feels mostly out of reach, and I've spent a long time wondering why. The answer isn't that I can't connect with people. I can, and often do, sometim