Loneliness and being alone are different things, and autistic people know the difference better than most. Plenty of us are happy alone for days. What hurts is wanting connection and not having it: the evening you would like to tell someone about, the thing you made that nobody will see, the sense that you could disappear for a month and the only person who would notice is your landlord.
Studies consistently find that autistic adults report loneliness more often than other adults, and that it is tied up with mental health in ways that matter. It is also one of the least talked about parts of being autistic, because the stereotype is that we do not want people. Most of us do. We want them on terms we can manage.
Why the standard advice fails
"Get out more." "Join a club." "Just be yourself." The advice is not wrong exactly, but it skips the hard parts: the energy a social event costs, the small talk you have to get through first, the unwritten rules, the recovery time afterwards. Advice that ignores those parts is advice for someone else.
What helps is the same advice with those parts designed in.
What helps
Contact that costs less. A message a day keeps a friendship alive, and so does a move in a game. You do not need a weekly dinner. Many autistic friendships run almost entirely on low-cost contact with occasional longer conversations, and they last for years.
Something to do, rather than something to say. Loneliness often sits next to the fear that you have nothing to offer in conversation. An activity removes that. Two people doing a jigsaw are not lonely and are not making small talk either.
People who do not need the explanation. Other autistic people. The relief of not having to translate yourself is hard to overstate, and it is the reason so many people describe their first autistic friend as the first real one.
Structure. The same group at the same time every week. The same person to play against every evening. Loneliness feeds on the blank calendar, and structure fills it without demanding spontaneity.
One connection, not a circle. The goal is not to be popular. It is to have one person who would notice.
Where to start
- A local group. The National Autistic Society's directory lists social groups for autistic adults by area; many are free or cost a pound or two. We have gathered the ones we could check for London.
- Online, in a group. Forums and Discord servers for autistic adults, where you can read for weeks before saying anything.
- Online, one to one. We make The Pebble Club, a free app for autistic adults. It matches you with someone who shares your interests and starts you off with a game, a turn at a time, so there is contact without the pressure to talk, and question prompts for when you are ready. It is built around the low-cost, something-to-do kind of contact above. It is new and still small, which we would rather tell you than have you find out.
If it is more than loneliness
Loneliness and low mood feed each other. If you are finding it hard to do the basics, not just the social things, or you are having thoughts of harming yourself, that needs more than a friendship app. Talk to your GP. In the UK, Samaritans are on 116 123 at any hour, free, and you do not have to be in crisis to call. Elsewhere, your country has an equivalent line.
None of that is a failure. It is what the help is for.
For the practical side of finding people, we wrote a longer piece on making friends as an autistic adult. And if you would like to try the app, it is free on the App Store and Google Play.