So I discovered the hard and painful way that my 5 year friendship with my autistic friend (same age/gender), as a autistic person, isn’t quite at the point yet where sleepovers make sense. However me and my friend live 2 hours apart on exact opposite ends of the same city. So I’m not exactly sure what our options are for hanging out in person; considering we live quite far from each other, but sleepovers are impractical and don’t make sense yet.
Since both of us are autistic and young, we don’t exactly have the money for restaurants or movies. Plus the city libraries close at 4:45pm on Saturdays and Sundays, meaning that when we have the weekend off, options for meeting is limited. Living 2 hours apart from each other makes meeting for a meal quite time expensive, since one of us would have a 4 hour round trip commute. Meeting in the evening means leaving at 7:25 p.m. for a 10pm bedtime, or going to bed after midnight if we were to meet til 10pm.
For me in particular, I come from a particularly very toxic family, so meeting at my home isn’t exactly the best idea, and I have a desire to be less reliant on texting/voice chatting; and put greater value on face to face interaction with my friend. I only recently met with my friend’s family for the first time attending his graduation, at his now-alta mater, on his behalf.
So what are good options/activites for me and my friend to hang out IRL in this situation? The two of us can’t drive due to our autism. We both rely on the city public transport’s bus and subway system for transportation and will need to do so for the rest of our lives. (Both of us do like trains, and we tend to prefer deep convos and share our obsessions with minecraft, weather, transportation, etc.; but we are comfortable with other activites like going walking outside together, etc.)
Depending on the city, meeting on a day with good weather in the middle and just walking around might be an option.
Maybe there is a boardgame café somewhere inbetween the two of you. Gives you plenty to do, and usually is not very expensive.
Then for food, hit a supermarket and find a park or bench to make a sandwhich or some other food that can be eaten straight from the supermarket packaging. If you are planning PBJs, all you need to bring, is a spreading knife.
As one comment already mentions, you could always meet in the middle, making the burden of transport shared, and neither has to do the very long round trip.
With no money, the options are limited, but things like walking in a preferably beautiful park and just talking about stuff can be very good for mental health too as a bonus.
What I do a lot is just grabbing a few (can be surprisingly cheap!) drinks from a grocery store, then sitting by the docks or in some green park or other nice and beautiful surroundings, shooting the shit so to say, drinking and enjoying the view and each other. Of course this is entirely doable without beverages, or the beverages can be non-alcoholic, but I’ve found it just gives the gathering a little bit of an extra purpose kind of. It’s better and more natural if there’s more of you, but works for two too.
Also, bonus if either can play an instrument (a portable one), and you bring it with and if either needs some time off social stuff, it can be good to play a bit and the others listen or let it be background music and continue just chatting. As a neurodivergent myself, that’s what I do. I need a lot of pauses from social stuff, but they need not be long pauses, as long as I can escape for a bit. For me it’s playing and singing with an acoustic guitar, but can be pretty much anything I suppose.
Oh, and one thing we’ve been doing in recent years, is bring one or two chess boards with us and just casually play while we talk about stuff and/or drink. Other board games too, but they have to be portable and minimal in moving parts to work. We have a few of those small magnet chess boards that fold into a case for the pieces. They’re fun side activity at a pub too, but that’s generally a lot more expensive so maybe not something for you guys.
Just a few things from my pov. Hope they help, if not directly, at least inspiring new ideas otherwise.
Camping! Assuming that you and your friend would be fine spending the night in separate tents. Campsites are usually $30-$50 and often have pools, fishing holes, hiking trails, minigolf, etc.
I have iterated in my post above that me and my friend are unable to drive due to our autism, and I don’t think camping sites are accessible by our city’s public transport bus and subway system. I mentioned that a sleepover is overkill and me and my friend’s friendship isn’t at that point. It is more of a casual friend relationship in that regard, although we prefer deep convo topics with our autism.
Oh I understand now. Forgive the misunderstanding - in my area you can take public transit or rented bicycles to campsites. And not wanting to spend the night around eachother regardless of separate sleeping areas is valid. Maybe a walking tour of a historical area in a town or city would be nice? There’s sometimes free pamphlets or audio tours that can accompany a walking route.
