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Comment by halviti | Hacker News Reader

I think this guy gets it wrong, and this has nothing to do with being 'smart', but rather sitting somewhere along the aspergers/autism spectrum.

The one interesting takeaway for me was this:

"I realized that the reason people missed me was because they had received positive energy from me. And the reason I didn’t miss them is because I rarely received positive energy from them. But this wasn’t because they didn’t send it. It was because I saw it coming. I expected it, and therefore could never feel real gratitude."

I think he's on to something there that a lot of people like him might be doing but not thinking about. How to address this knowledge is left for the reader to determine.

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Yes. There's even something about the "tone" of this piece that screams "spectrum" to me.

As far as I know there's not reliable evidence that smart people have fewer friends. In fact, I would hypothesize just the opposite. This is pretty easily testable.

It sounds like he has a combination of Aspergers and depression. It's telling that he doesn't mention seeking out a mental health care provider. That sounds like the best course of action.

It's noteworthy that he was raised in a Christian household. Frankly, most religions do not do a good job of taking mental health seriously.

I sympathize with this post because I was raised as a conservative Christian and I had little to no exposure to modern mental health ideas when I was growing up.

I ended up struggling massively with depression in my twenties because of it. Finally, therapy and medication helped to change my life for the better, in a way religion* never did (and probably couldn't).

I hope this guy gets good professional help. Apparently, he's a coder so he can probably afford it. That would go a long way to solving his problems. It's also the truly "smart" thing to do.

* This is not meant to disparage religion, there are plenty of good, well-qualified Christian therapist. Whatever your belief system, a trained professional is probably your best bet.

>but rather sitting somewhere along the aspergers/autism spectrum.

I think this is as contentless as his assertion that it is about being 'smart'. Let's just describe his behavior, not try and ascribe a spurious category to it.

>It was because I saw it coming. I expected it, and therefore could never feel real gratitude.

I have a hard time understanding this statement, and I think that rather than trying to parse it I would rather assert that his understanding of what constitutes a good friendship is still unformed.

Forming good, deep friendships is hard. Our lives are idiosyncratic and complex; the emotional, political and social factors that satisfy us may become particularly gnarled and difficult. What I think most of us crave isn't reciprocal/mutual aid - this isn't really the basis of friendship, it's aid that is based on understanding.

What I want to know of my friends is not "X helped me", but "X really understands what I want". This is hard to find, and for the insular individual who has trouble projecting his emotional needs (or hides them behind a mask of constant cheer), it might be even harder.

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