Not feeling (romantically) - is that an AS thing?

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I was asked by a friend if I had ever been in love before. I said no. He then instantly asked if I was asperger/autistic.

Yeah, I didn't have a relationship where I thought I felt enough to truly claim I was in love. I had relationships and felt a bit of bonding, but not that.

Is that a common thing with AS?

I'm female, in my early 30s.

I think like everything it depends on how attunded you are with your emotions. I have very extreme emotions so fall in love very easily. It doesn't mean I go round falling in love with everyone. I even had a crash stalker who was showering with attention but I couldn't connect to him, hence I could never love him, he then got very violent and then I had a whole issue over Christmas.

So I think it depends on the person more than being autistic or not.

You just might be choosy, and are looking for the "right" person.

Do you feel much sexual desire for people?

You don't have to be "in love" in order to be romantic.

OK, thanks, it's true I'm not very attuned to the emotional side of life.




There's that too, my being choosy, but I don't know if that's the whole story.

I have no problem with having sexual desire. It on its own doesn't make me very emotional though and I don't confuse it for love.


So this friend was misinformed with this question and there is no connection whatsoever to AS?

Sorry, can you explain this a bit more? I don't understand.

Alexithymia affects 10% of the general population.

Wiki for Alexithymia:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexithymia

An online test and forums for Alexithymia:
http://www.alexithymia.us/test-alex.html

Score was 132, which is apparently in the lower half of the high (alexithymic) side on their scale.

I think I took this once before... But I don't relate to this in the wikipedia article: "difficulty distinguishing between feelings and the bodily sensations of emotional arousal".

I just don't have that problem by default. (Also, I do identify some basic emotions just fine. All the subtler ones I have had a problem with though.) But maybe it's because I separate the two things pretty strongly - if I detect a feeling or emotional state in myself, it is never ever localized in my body. I just have the feeling state "somewhere", and this "somewhere" is not in my body at all. And on the other side of this, I'm good at recognizing the bodily sensations of mine that have physical reasons so I don't tend to mix that with feelings either.

Due to this separation, it is very rare that I do see an emotion as felt in the body, it's not really like that, even if sometimes I do detect a bodily sensation that I know is not due to physical reasons, I can't really mix it with the emotional state itself. I see them alongside each other if that makes sense, hard to imagine the emotion as "blended in" with the bodily sensation. I do however know that I have the bodily sensation due to some sort of stress in these cases (stress since these are negative emotions but they not happen often to this degree that they'd cause a bodily sensation).

So if that separation of the two is alexithymia, okay...

Also the psychosomatic stuff is not typical of me. I did have actual psychosomatic issues only twice in my life, for shorter time periods - psychosomatic since I did not recognize these as being of an emotional origin or being due to stress. It took me a few days before I realized for the second one that it was due to that. The first one I can only theorize that it was due to that but I'm 99% sure it was (that also lasted about a week).

These two psychosomatic issues were in one relationship. That relationship was very weird to me on the whole, the most contradictory one I ever had, I definitely couldn't be in love though there either, that was the only missing element in that relationship, where I found the person otherwise great (more great than other guys, I found him special in that way). And that pretty much caused a lot of problem there really. I definitely wouldn't be able to exclude the idea that that's why I had the psychosomatic issues there, what's more, I'm 99% sure there was a connection yes.

So that's due to alexithymia definitely? Hmm that's something that'll get me thinking, thanks.

I think AS / neurodiverse people have stronger infatuations (actually, I've proved it), so, a definite no to AS and not feeling love / romance.

I also don't think alexithymia has anything to do with feelings of love and romance. It's about identifying and talking about feelings, something that is highly NT. Not being able to verbalize feelings doesn't mean you don't have them. I think the whole alexithymia thing is a total fraud.

So what is romantic love towards someone....

For myself, there is the infactuation with the concept of discovering love which lasts for a while. There are actions and things I do to bring a smile to my partners face. Though eventually I get bored and the infactuation disappears because I know I am at the same place I always come around to - indifference. I could care less if the person is there or not, sure I would miss interacting with them but I am empty towards them. Do I care for them, sure - though eventually the NT partners starts to question connection and feel insecure.

What I am describing is what I know as romantic love, thoigh what I know and how I express will never enable connection.

After having my DNA sequenced, I know that root/source of my Alexithymia. Yes I feel moments, though I express almost nothing and I shutdown when my love does not synchronize with others. Now I clearly see a difference, notice I did not say 'feel a difference'.

We all continue to learn about ourselves and the world around us.

[quote="Keigan"]So what is romantic love towards someone....

For myself, there is the infactuation with the concept of discovering love which lasts for a while. There are actions and things I do to bring a smile to my partners face. Though eventually I get bored and the infactuation disappears because I know I am at the same place I always come around to - indifference. I could care less if the person is there or not, sure I would miss interacting with them but I am empty towards them. Do I care for them, sure - though eventually the NT partners starts to question connection and feel insecure.

So can I ask you? When you get to the point of indifference is there any point in continuing with the friendship or relationship. Do you find it an annoyance after this point? Thanks

If I were to regularly consciously feel feelings, I would eventually learn to verbalize them.

So to me this seems a simple connection between difficulty to verbalize and difficulty to feel much.

For me both parts of this "equation" are true for sure.

What seems like a fraud to you about the concept of alexithymia? I don't understand that part of your post, say more please.


As for AS people having stronger infatuations... well I can be VERY interested in someone. Intensely. However, I do not easily have feelings with that. "Not easily" is an understatement. Where I say "interested", I am involved on the intellectual level. Not emotionally or at least I'm unable to see it if so. I will have zero feelings if I have not seen the person reciprocate my interest by actively expressing emotional interest. Now, I have never been in a situation where I could truly get emotional myself, truly living the emotions, truly connecting in the real world. Once I actually was somewhat emotionally affected in that way I describe (them reciprocating emotionally enough), but I could not keep my interest on the intellectual level (let's just say I found the person too incompatible after a short while even though initially we seemed compatible).

In that strange relationship with the very special guy where I had psychosomatic symptoms, I did get to see some emotional interest from that person, of course. But somehow it didn't work still, that is, I couldn't feel enough. A little yes, some bonding, yes, and that was about it. (And intense interest on the intellectual level. Special.)

So, I can't say I was ever truly infatuated (on the emotional level, which is what people mean when using that wording), but a little "simulation" of that I did get a glimpse of with that person where I got somewhat emotionally affected for a short time (and almost in some other cases, including the "special guy", but a lot less than in that one case).

There is also the case where I just have physical-sexual attraction, based on the guy's looks (that does have a subjective component, I don't need the guy all muscled-up) but the emotions I get out of that aren't many, they can be strong-ish but are short lasting, a day or so at a time, especially if without that intense interest on the intellectual level that I described above. I wouldn't call it love or even infatuation because it seems more "primitive" emotionality than even infatuation seems to be (based on descriptions of it) and I hardly take that on its own seriously. I see it as just some emotional desire for sex lol. It doesn't seem to provide emotional connection beyond having sex. I was closest to taking that looks-based attraction seriously as a teenager, but I just could not fall in love then either. I think it may also be because I was too cautious about feelings back then without much experience.

I hope this made sense.

Disclaimer: I'm not AS actually, just have some mild "AS traits" that might actually fit alexithymia + some other stuff better.

Last edited by itsme82 on 05 Apr 2017, 5:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Any idea why you lose interest? How fast do you lose interest? Were any of your partners able to keep things emotionally interesting and variable yet you lost your interest?

As for your love shutting down if it's not synchronizing with others... yeah I think I have that, except it doesn't even have a chance to start boot up if the other person doesn't start it. As I describe a few lines above. Do you have anything like that?

Also, what does it mean, "infatuation with the concept of discovering love"? You are infatuated with the idea that "oh I'm going to fall in love with this person"? Or what? That's not familiar to me. Seems to require imagination which I don't have.

Another difference: with my relationships even without these love-related feelings, I did not feel explicitly empty, just neutral or just not feeling good in some way (which is also hard to notice by default). And my partners didn't get to feel insecure, I stayed attentive (even if unemotionally).

In answer to your question, Itsme:

I have "loved" somebody in my life, but have not been "in love" with that person.

To me, being "in love" means you want to spend all your time with that person, and perhaps even not hang out with anybody else. You are immersed in that person, obsessed, really. Nobody else is even a close second to that person. I don't like it when I feel this way; I lose perspective when this situation occurs.

But I do feel romance when I am not "in love" in the way I stated above. It's a more "virtuous" thing to me. I feel sexually turned on by that person. I also feel like this person is my best friend.

But I don't feel like I have to spend every waking moment with her, and I feel like hanging out with other people, though I would prefer a monogamous relationship with the person whom I "love," but am not "in love" with. I wouldn't make love with anybody else, but I would be friends with other people. Like being "in love," my romantic partner is #1---but I keep perspective as well, and don't become immersed with her to the point where I lose track of the reality that is around me.

Thanks, I see. Well I didn't entirely get what you meant by "virtuous" romance, but otherwise I understand what you mean by that love not being so "manic". I wasn't equating feeling enough to call it love with such a strong "manic" version, either. I would not want to lose track with reality around me, for sure.

So hmm, you sounded like you have had even this "manic" version though. I was always very far from feeling that much, though the interest on the "intellectual level" could be obsessive, to be honest, that happened before. But I was not explicitly feeling that I wanted to spend all day etc. with them.

OK, I guess the alexithymia thing fits to explain this, especially if what I wrote about the separation of the bodily sensation and feelings fits it... I have no idea how that friend connected AS to this

So can I ask you? When you get to the point of indifference is there any point in continuing with the friendship or relationship. Do you find it an annoyance after this point? Thanks

This is my first relationship where my partner is aware enough to point out the concept of "indifference" where I actually listened and considered. Yes, I have constant annoyance with the partner from that point forward - the reason is due to the realization that once again my energy applied towards "fitting in" don't result in "fitting in". I see now that the problem is not feeling some emotions and not having the ability to describe my emotions that do feel for a moment.

My infactuation is with the desire and possibility of actually discovering the emotional feeling associated with "being in love" rather than no feeling at all.