do autists feel lonely?

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I never feel more lonely than when I'm among many people. It's that feeling of not belonging anywhere, being different and not fitting in anywhere. It's a lonely feeling to not have anyone like-minded to talk to who would understand, and to always have to try to be someone I'm not when around people instead of just being accepted the way I am.

yea because we are lonely most of time but not because we want to all the time but from anxiety and fear of being strange in front of somebody else.

I feel lonely ALL the time. In fact that is my major problem. I keep having to do mind games like talk to myself to keep from feeling lonely. I have always felt lonely. To best describe it to someone who has no idea what I’m talking about:
It is as if you were born being able to read the mind of every person in the world, simultaneously, at on time, and then, all of a sudden, one day, you lose the ability to do so. Once you could but you can no longer know what every person is thinking. Just imagine that scenario. HOW WOULD YOU FEEL? At that exact moment in time, how would you feel? Well, I feel like that ALL the time.

I have a theory about feeling lonely. It is as follows. A normal person can be company to himself because his mind is not homogeneous. A normal persons mind has facets that differentiate from one another. A person who feels intense loneliness all the time has a coadunate mind. All parts of the mind are the same and there is no differentiation. There is no internal banter unless it is spuriously created.

i feel lonely

I've never felt "alone", even though I probably have always been classed as such by objective standards.

I don't seem to be able to feel the "lonely" emotion.

[quote="Amik"]I never feel more lonely than when I'm among many people. It's that feeling of not belonging anywhere, being different and not fitting in anywhere.quote]

Exactly. And when I'm around people, their joy at being with each other makes me feel that I _ought_ to want to be with them. But when I try to join in, I hate it, so I go off by myself again. And then the loneliness miraculously ceases. It would be such a simple solution, if only I didn't have to have _some_ contact with people. I suppose I'll always vacillate between loneliness and complete self-sufficiency.

Wow I love Coadunate's explanation...hits the nail right on the head.

10:30am...nothing like starting off another day with some morning dread. Ugh.

Yes I get lonely, and like some of you, it can be worse in a crowd. People with whom I feel no bonds just get in the way and remind me of the heartbreaking space that exists between most of us. But then I do live in a city.

I have an aspie friend that described loneliness as a "deep soul isolation". I loved that description. It's a kind of disconnect that most will not ever understand. The needing people, but unable to connect, except the few, and far between times when a connection happens.

I'm married, but I still feel pretty disconnected from the human race. It's a daily struggle to connected to my husband, and to be honest, it takes a lot of work on both our parts. There's always this wall between me, and others. Sometimes, it's transparent, and other times it's opaque, and solid. I just wish that I had found out about AS when I was younger. It wouldn't have stopped the loneliness, but it would've given me a reason. At least I now have a rationale explanation, where as before I just thought that if I tried hard enough I could be like everyone else.

I also try to convince myself that I like being alone. That I don't really need people, or friends. While I do need a massive amount of alone time compared to average people, I know I'm lying to myself when I do this. It's the only way that I know of to keep going on with life without being suicidally depressed.

What I have found about loneliness, is it seems to be a feeling of disconnection in general -- not just from people, but from some important aspect of life.

Because when I am able to feel that I am connected to that aspect of life, I am not lonely whether there are people around or not.

And if I feel disconnected from it, I feel lonely whether there are people around or not.

I do feel lonely.