Understanding “Friendship” Among Autistic Adults: Insights From Narratives of Everyday and Social Life

ABSTRACT This work explores the ways autistic individuals describe and perceive their friendship relationships. Through qualitative analysis of participants' accounts, I discuss the importance that autistic adults attribute to values of “comfort,” “acceptance,” and “trust” in their relationships with the people they call “friends” and explain the centrality of these aspects to how they understand and define “friendship.” By conceptualizing friendship as relatedness, I argue that perceptions and practices of friendship among autistic people cannot be fully understood if not examined in the context of the intersection of personal difficulties, physical‐social environments, cultural attitudes, and lived experiences of autistic individuals. Accordingly, this study offers an analysis of how these intersecting aspects constitute a basis for the building of intersubjectivity among autistic persons and construct the shared moral values and expectations that underlie their understanding of, and approach to, friendship. Furthermore, by showing how friendship perceptions among autistic individuals stem in part from shared corporeal and perceptual experiences, this study offers insights into the perceptual foundations of social relationships. Through examining friendship and sociability, I tease out the intricate daily and social experiences of autistic people and elucidate the complexity of the category of friendship and its efficiency for understanding human experiences.