Serious Issues Connecting with Others

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I'm not a sociopath or anything, but I feel no deep connection to other human beings. It is really starting to bother me, especially when friends ask why I have never had a relationship yet I am close to 33 years old. I find people interesting and fun to hang out with but, afterwards, I realize I don't feel any connection with them. Is there any way I can change this? I feel more passion for my new watch and shoes than I do for others.

Hmm I have this problem too. I think the only way you connect with someone is just opening up to them and letting them see your weaknesses and in return have them open up to you. Also if you have conversations about your theories on life and that kind of stuff it makes you feel closer to them.

I don't know if it can be changed. Maybe it's a matter of willpower? I, personally, do not wish to change because I am happier being true to who I am. Consider what Tim Gunn is always saying on Project Runway. "Make it work!" I guess that's what you do when trying to understand others. Be determined to "make it work."

Maybe my problem is I'm always the only one opening up. What you say makes sense though. I only feel closse to my mother and we do exactly as you described.

I have similar feelings, I am more attached to useful objects than people around me. I am fortunate in that the friends and family I have continue to reach out to me, otherwise they would have gone the way of all the others I have lost contact with. I'm often teased about my "Use your friends wisely." Attitude lol

I know this is who I am, but it doesn't make me happy half of the time. I want to feel what everyone else feels. How do you force feelings though? Don't they just come naturally?

One thing that may help are acting lessons and coaching. Actors are taught how to feel a certain way so they can portray characters with emotions they are not feeling at the time. If you had an acting coach, he might teach you how to connect with a feeling you are not actually feeling at the moment. Then, when you want to feel a certain way, you use the techniques you were taught.
For instance, think of something that made you really sad. It can be anything, not necessarily something that makes everyone sad. Just you. Then, when you want to feel sad because someone told you something depressing, you think of what made you feel sad. The person that told you something sad doesn't realize you are sad for a different reason. This way you can appear to be sad about what the person said.

Feelings do not come naturally all the time. I remember when my Grandmother died. When I first heard, I was in shock, I cried for hours. After the initial crying, I could cry no more, not even at her funeral. I didn't feel sad like everyone else. But, it's not like I never felt sad. People in my family were insulted that I didn't appear sad at the funeral but I couldn't connect with that feeling the way I could when I first heard from my Aunt she died.

Feelings come and feelings go.

Thank you for the advice. Yes, I currently act pretty well. I took some acting classes in college. I know how to fake emotion (which is why no one believes I have AS), but deep down I just don't connect the way others do. I never cry at funerals either. What I mostly feel is anxiety over the sense of depression pouring out of everyone else.

I'm confused here. No deep connection, but you have friends. That's a start. Are you talking about a "love" relationship? Better to have none than be in a wrong one.

I get this - most people are disposable to me, I can just never see them again and it doesn't bother me, I don't miss them.

But there are a few people (I can count them on the fingers of one hand, if family is excluded) that I have connected with and these people I will think about often, probably for the rest of my life.

I am in my early 50s, and have felt the same way for as long as I can remember. I have never really felt connected to anyone, including family. I've never understood why, and it used to bother me a lot, but I've become used to it. All of my life I've read about people feeling bonded to others, seen it portrayed and talked about on TV and in the movies, and on the radio, and I've seen people walking around in stores and malls, just holding hands, and acting bonded. However, except for pets, I never felt bonded to anyone. Even with pets the bonding was somewhat limited, and I found myself feeling less and less bonded with each successive pet--we always had one dog at a time. I am used to family, but there is no real bond there. I really have trouble perceiving what this bonding is supposed to be, and have no idea on how to generate the feeling. I guess it's like trying to describe color to someone who has been blind from birth. Or like describing a smell to someone who can't smell. I know that bonding must exist, because I've seen people actually acting like they are bonded, but I seem to have been born with a defective bonding ability, and what little bonding ability I may have had, has declined even more with age.

I provide my own companionship, supplemented with the radio, TV, the I-net, and my many daydream universes. I do try to learn about bonding by having some of my daydream characters be bonded in various ways, but I have never been able to carry the feeling over into my own real self.

Bonding is a real puzzle to me.

Oh, I have friends yes, but I don't feel particularly close to them. I just think they are fun to hang out with and chat with from time to time. IMO, it's not a deep connection. As far as a romantic relationship, I don't want or need one, but I am worried over the fact that I can't connect to anyone on that level.

I'm working on the same thing at the moment - how to connect with people, what relationships with people are about etc. I dont really do the whole hang out thing, but am developing some freindships with people who are aware of, well, my lack of, uhh, whatever it is that causes friendships etc. to just happen. I can totally relate to feeling more passion for an inanimate object than a person. And the use your friends wisely attitude mentioned by a previous poster, though in my case it is probably more of a use people wisely attitude.

Glad to see many others here can relate Well, I mean, I guess I shouldn't be glad though.

If you feel you don't need a romantic relationship, then why be worried about it?

Likewise, if you don't feel a deep connection to other human beings, embrace it. Enjoy the company of your friends and don't worry about how 'connected' you feel.

Society sends us a constant bombardment of messages saying that we must be attached to others. From an evolutionary viewpoint, it makes sense, but we're not tribes living in caves anymore.

Be yourself.

I have the same issue.