Are you immune to loneliness?

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I am. People rarely believe me when I tell them I don't get lonely. I remember people responding to the statement by saying things like "of course you get lonely everyone does". I find it mildly amusing when people simply wont believe something you know to be true. For all its downsides high functioning autism has its fair share of benefits. How is it for all of you?

No.
I can get lonely for human contact but not as frequently as others.
I like people around - in PROXIMITY - just in the background, but with a lot less engaging.

hmm.. interesting! i was thinking about this today.. im really not sure. which probably means 'no'.

for me people are like ice cream- theoreticaly nice, but makes me ill in practise (dairy intolerance/exhausted by being around people).

im aware that life slips by, which makes me sad. id like to marry, but because i have such deep problems being around other people, never can.
that makes me terribly sad.

i live almost entirely in isolation, and only really 'talk' to people online, which is nowhere near the same.

i feel something sad about it all, but i dont know its its lonliness. its probaly just boredom at a dull, pointless routine.

I never get lonely either, and I live in solitude in the woods (a nature preserve). It is beautiful and quiet.

Absolutely.

I was brought up as an only child until I was 17, when my little brother arrived. So I was effectively hardwired to being alone, and happy to be so. Then I met my husband, who pursued me for 2 years, spent the next 2 decades insisting on us being together all the time, then he decided that he'd had enough, and killed himself. Now I feel negative side of being alone, the b*st**d.

So I'm re-learning to be alone again. But I remember a time when I was used to being alone, and repeatedly surprised by this person who kept on wanting to be with me in all kinds of contexts.

Nice. I've always lived in the city myself but I did a grow operation out in the country a couple of years ago and I had a friend with me the whole time but it was still fairly cool.

misslottie: Honestly I don't think you'd be missing much as far as marriage is concerned. Would you really wanna be stuck with one woman for the rest of your life?

There are degrees of lonliness, I suppose, as our needs for contact with others can certainly differ ... and if I may ask:

Would you miss your interactions here if nobody else came to visit?

Not entirely. But I'm "low-social" and have a really high threshold for loneliness. I can't remember the last time I got lonely.

I have this theory that human contact is in itself a form of stress.

In NTs, their threshold is high enough that most of the time it is a positive form of stress. But ours is much lower and it quickly spills over over negative stress.

I may be wrong.

I would miss the interaction.
I also know I hate seeing no-one.
I live with my son and my son's father and i thoroughly enjoy their proximity.
Holidays are difficult because of the increased requirements placed upon me for social communication. I find this incredibly difficult. However, things have improved since my formal diagnosis, as my son and his dad are aware I just do not have anywhere near a regular capacity for to and fro communicative exchange. Monologue or leave me alone, tends to be my two states of communication.

I do my 12 step meeting each week and sometimes we meet after for coffee somewhere. I enjoy being with people and talking at times, but the frontal lobe exhaustion that comes from trying to cope with multi-channel communication is palpable and distressing afterwards.

yesterday, my son went to a friend's house to play. I lay on the couch from 9 am until 7pm at night with a few diversionary stints on the computer. Basically - this is my life in holidays...coping with increased communication requirements and then sleeping and resting because of the exhaustion i experience from it. It is not a normal level competence life!

thanks, horse- im female!!- but yes, totally want to get married and have babies.
no problem with the thought of being with the same person for ever.

im 36- soon wont have any choice about not having children. ;-(

i miss most just lying in someone's arms on a sunday afternoon, doing the crossword, eating croissants, watching a film. thoughts like that make me sad- is that lonliness? i want freinds and a family- just not able to.

i want to live in a nature reserve- that sounds excellent.

Haha for some reason I assumed you were the guy in your avatar picture. I don't see any reason why you couldn't get married. Have you ever looked into NLP? Its interesting stuff there are lots of tricks which can be used to anchor different emotional states and change your model of the world. You can most likely use some of the techniques to override lots of the problems you have with interacting with people. Especially if its being used in conjunction with hypnosis.

I think it's probably true that most people get lonely, and that it's hard for them to grasp the idea of not getting lonely. I don't want to go so far as to say I'm immune to loneliness 100% of the time, but I do think I'm more like you in this regard than the average person. I'm trying to think back to the last time I felt loneliness. I can't think of one, but I'm sure I must have at one time or other. Sometimes it's nice to be with another person, but I can always, always, always find something to do by myself. I enjoy just sitting in a chair and imagining things.


Since I'm married with two kids, I rarely have a chance to be truly alone for any extended time, but I kind of like the idea of just being left alone for a few weeks. I really enjoy my space and my time to myself.

I'm more likely to feel the emptiness of not being alone. There isn't even a word for it, is there? When you feel the emptiness of not having people around (or pets), it's called loneliness. But what if you have people in your space, and need to be away from them? I feel like that quite often. When I was working at a job (now I'm a stay-at-home mom, which is still work, but unpaid), the hardest part was always trying to do a competent job with other people lurking around. I don't dislike people. Well, I somehow manage to dislike nearly every boss I ever had, and most co-workers. And most roommates. But in general, I don't dislike people. I just prefer them out of my space.

Being in the Air Force was torture, because, except for the times when I was lucky enough to not have a roommate, there was always someone in my space. At work, or at home in the dorms, there were always people around. When I'm thinking or trying to work, my face moves, or I stare into space, or otherwise look "abnormal". So, unless I want people to start giving me the third degree about what drugs I'm on, I need to spend all my energy "looking like I'm working" or "looking like I'm not an insane weirdo." Which basically left no energy for getting things done or enjoying life. So, that's the opposite of loneliness. It's more like, "OMG, can't these people just go away?!"

Yep. I believe you when you say you don't get lonely.

I seldom get lonely, but I'm not totally immune to it.

I feel like my iq drops to 40 when I'm around people. I have exactly zero interest in people or in having friends.

I'm not immune at all. I get very lonely, especially by nighttime.