Am i over reacting for thinking my friends behavior is guilt tripping and emotionally manipulative or am i misreading things because hes autistic?

I really need opinions because I’ve been going back and forth on this for a while.

For context, we’re both juniors in high school, my friend has high functioning autism.

I’m still friends with this guy, and I don’t really want to stop being friends with him. I originally became friends with him because he got bullied a lot and I felt bad. I have a pretty big friend group and I’m pretty well known at school, so after people started seeing him around me, a lot of the bullying stopped. I’ve also always been the type of person to speak up if I think something is wrong, so I wanted to be there for him. He’s autistic, so I’ve always tried to keep that in mind because I know it can affect communication and social boundaries. I really don’t want to mistake autism for manipulation, which is why I’m asking here.

Over time though, I’ve started noticing a pattern that’s been making me really confused and making me feel awful because for the first time in life i truly do not know what to do .

He tells me the exact same story in different fonts almost every week usually its about how he lost one of his friends because the friend’s girlfriend lied and said he tried to hit on her. Every time I ask who the friend was, he says he doesn’t remember the guy’s name, which has always seemed weird to me because he talks about them like they were really close and says he lost the friendship the same day he tells me it, but cant go into detail about what happened.

Almost every conversation we have somehow turns into something horrible happening in his life. If I ask if he’s okay, it usually turns into him talking about hurting himself or saying he wants to die. I always try to help, but he pretty much refuses every suggestion I make so its very hard for me to know what i am supposed to do

There have also been a bunch of times where I found out later that what he told me wasn’t actually true.

One time, after one of my friends rejected him and did it in an extremely rude way which i do not agree with, he told me he admitted himself into a mental hospital and wasn't at school for two weeks. I completely believed him and felt awful. It even caused me to stop being friends with her and be super harsh on her when i knew she was already struggling because I thought the rejection had caused him to end up in the hospital. Later I found out he never actually went and he was just at home.

Him and my ex got into a fight, not over me specifically but he also me that my ex, who he already knew I had a lot of issues with, threatened to kill him. I believed him, and it made me even more angry at my ex than I already was, and we ended up arguing even more because of it. Later I had found i that never actually happened.

Another time he told me his girlfriend broke up with him literally right after he woke up that morning, but that wasn’t true.

In a completely different situation, he told me his ex who i was friends with broke up with him while he was crying because his aunt had died. Later I found out she had actually broken up with him before his aunt passed away, not while he was crying over it like he said, he sat there and revealed his aunts death after she broke up with him.

He also told me he wasn’t going to be able to go to college because his mom wouldn’t let him go to community college, but he only brought that up right after hearing something about his ex, which just felt really random.

He texts me all the time and compliments me a lot. My current boyfriend started getting uncomfortable with how much he was texting me, so I told him I needed to set boundaries because I wanted to respect my relationship. Instead of just understanding, he told me, “If you’re gonna stop texting me because of a guy, then you might as well block me.” I deleted the messages from this day but it was way more of him being mad

Later, when I told him we couldn’t keep talking the same way because I have a boyfriend, he said I had “given him hope” that we’d be something. I never flirted with him, never led him on, and never liked him that way. I was literally just being nice because I didn’t like how people treated him.

My little cousin is 8 and she hates him, hes very aware of this and i cant fault my cousin because hes extremely rude to her ever chance he gets and we were raised in a house hold to not let people disrespect you, but when i told him i couldnt call him for this reason and he just told me she does not control me

he has lied many times about being starved by his parents when in reality he is just actively choosing not to eat, he also has a huge habit of lying about his parents not being home and being hours away when their just around 30 minutes away at their parents house.

There was a very recent situation that really made me uncomfortable which is leading me into making this post. I was in a group call with my boyfriend, two of my girl friends, and him. My friend is super close with him so she asked if we could add him to the call which i did not mind. My boyfriend made a joke about coming to sleep in bed with me, and afterward my autistic male friend started privately texting me about his masturbation habits, how long it takes him, and how it was easier when he had an ex. I told him that’s not something you tell your female friends because it made me uncomfortable. Instead of apologizing, he basically said that’s what guys talk about in their group chats and that he just tells people everything.

After I told him I was uncomfortable, he later told best friend (who’s also one of his closest friends and was in that same call) that I hated him and that I made him hurt himself because I told him he should not say stuff like that to me. I never said I hated him. I literally just said the conversation was not something you talk to a female friend about.

I honestly don’t know what to think anymore. I know autism can affect communication, so I don’t want to assume he’s trying to manipulate me. But at the same time, I feel like there’s been a pattern of things not adding up, being told things that later turned out not to be true, feeling guilty whenever I try to set boundaries, and just feeling emotionally drained after a lot of our conversations.

I cant add photos unfortunately to show a lot of stuff that happened,

I really do care about him, and I don’t want to stop being friends with him. That’s why I’m asking instead of just cutting him off.

Do you guys think this sounds like emotional manipulation or guilt tripping, or does it sound more like someone who struggles with communication and boundaries? If you were me, what would you do? I honestly just want outside opinions because I don’t know if I’m overthinking all of this or not. I have the ability to cut him off but he does have a disorder so im not sure if im reading too deep in to this,