There are lots of behaviors I once thought were universal. For example, I recently learned that not everyone has an internal monologue running through their head all day long—a fact that, frankly, I’m still struggling to process. In a recent viral thread, people with autism shared things they thought were "normal" until a neurotypical told them otherwise. It’s an absorbing read top to bottom, with the responses exploring everything from body language to conversational style to following social rules and etiquette.
One of the top comments on r/AskReddit relates to "maladaptive daydreaming," which Cleveland Clinic describes as a "mental health issue that causes a person to lose themselves in complex daydreams," usually as a "coping mechanism for other mental health conditions or circumstances."
"I only just this year learned the term 'maladaptive daydreaming' and I had no idea it was uncommon to space out so thoroughly in one's head as to be completely oblivious to all external sensory input for an hour or longer," one user wrote. Another replied, "This...isn't the norm? What do people do when they're bored or have spare time? If I don't have a book or don't feel like looking at my phone I'm basically playing full production movies in my head."
Someone else wrote they often "rehearse conversations in [their] head before having them—like full-on scripts for every possible response." They were "completely shocked" to learn that most people don’t: "It blew my mind that people just wing social interactions without a mental rehearsal. Still can’t imagine how that works."
Another user said they’re compelled to give people "factually correct information" and didn’t realize until their late 30s that it’s "considered rude by neurotypical people to correct their incorrect beliefs about the world." They added, "If something I believe to be true is wrong then I would like to be corrected, with reliable sources, of course. Who wants to walk around scientifically incorrect information?"
One popular response focused on how verbal tone shapes meaning: "Believing exactly what people say when they say something and being shocked when it turns out they didn't mean it the way they said it and there was something in the WAY they said it that I was supposed to have picked up on."
Elsewhere, someone shared that they have to "consciously them [themselves] to show emotions during conversations," with examples like, "It’s time to smile now," "people are laughing; I need to laugh too," and "remember to look at the person talking." They continued, "For so long I just thought that was how people worked. The fact that it comes natural for most people is still kind of hard to understand."
According to The University of Texas at Dallas, people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) "often have problems recognizing the emotions of others from physical cues, such as facial expression or body posture." But in a 2015 study published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, researchers sought to investigate how those without ASD experience facial expressivity in those with ASD. The report found that adults without ASD "could identify the emotions expressed by high-functioning adults with ASD, but they often rated the expressions as exaggerated and odd."
"Overwhelmingly, most research in autism focuses on impairments in the person’s ability to understand social and emotional information about other people,” said study co-author Dr. Noah Sasson.“Rarely do we think about others having difficulty understanding the emotions and the thought processes of people with autism, but social interaction is a two-way street."
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Pictured: A healthy practice?
Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.