does anyone else have this problem? inability to be around

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people?
sometimes i just want to scream. i dont want to talk, socialize, or be around people, and i dont even want to talk on the phone! the neighbor knocks on the door and i have to let him in, and he just settles and goes on and on, and it's torture! every second stretch into internity.
last time he knocked, i didnt open the door. i cant even be around people i like for more than a few minutes at a time.
how can a person get married or have kids while feeling this way? i'm forty six and never been in a serious relationship and no friends. nothing.
and i read here in this forum so many aspies are married, with kids, or have friends. or two or three of the above!

Most of the time. In the last few days, my mood increased drastically due to my grandmother and uncle moving out of the house. Now it is only my mother and I, and she works from Monday to Saturday while I am on shutdown from work until January 2; which means I have spent most of the time completely alone. The silence on the house is something I craved for years, since the old hag came to live with us two years ago.

When I am too bored and I cannot find anything to do alone, I wish I could have a friend to go out with, or even to play video games. However, overall, I am much happier now that I am alone than on the previous week, when I was forced to listen to her complaints and her loud TV. Really: I cannot describe how good it feels.

My grandchildren never call me an "old hag" They like me a lot and love visiting me and staying with me on winter and spring break.

I regularly can't stand to be around people, but I am married and have a job so can't avoid people. I work 3 days a week (Tue, Wed, Thu) and am supposed to have Mon/Fri to myself to recover from all that socialising at work without my husband around as he works five days a week ... then sat/sun with husband. It works well except when he decides to take a long weekend and ruins my Mon/Fri ... I want to scream then! Often in the evenings I have a long bath (I mean like 2 hours or more) to get time alone.

I don't answer the phone and I don't answer the door (most people have figured this out so no longer call or come by!).

Probably because you are a good grandmother. However, my grandmother is both a terrible grandmother and an even worse mother. Here is a list of her favorite things:

1- Complaining about everything;
2- acting as if she is a martyr (if somebody has a problem, my grandmother will say she has the same problem, but worse; she wants to be pitied);
3- trying to control every aspect of your life (not so much with me, since I do not let her, but she was very controlling of my mother);
4- telling lies about you to make other people turn against you (usually as a way to control your life), since she is a "poor old woman" and people usually believe her, at least until they know her better;
5- forbidding you from having fun (for example, when I was a kid, she did not allow me to play video games because she said it would result in a very expensive electrical bill. Also, she was very rude to a friend I had when he visited me, even though the boy was very polite. And she also tried to forbid my mother from having friends and boyfriends);
6- despite everything, she insists she is actually a kind old woman whose life is unfairly hard.

She reminds me of Granny Goodness, a character from the DC Universe. Here is an example (skip to 1:36 and keep watching until 03:55):
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6Q9BZ1hZr4[/youtube]

I feel the same way! The "problem" is that I am married and have two kids, so I am forced into countless social visits and have to ruin my daily habits by going on holiday, following the kids to football practise, music lessons, karate lessons and whatsnot.

Family life is really demanding and you have to turn your life of habits up side down to make it work. The worst things for me is the sudden changes in daily routines and that the phone rings all day long, and there is always someone on the door that invites themselves in.

I really try to blend in, but I hate social situations and avoid answering the phone. I try to reduce visits to friend as much as possible and in such extent that I feel sorry for my wife. But the worst thing is that I can't see any value in visiting people or being social with lots of people.

Why should I use my time on this? I would rather do my stuff, pursue my hobbies or read books rather than interacting with others. I prefer the company of cats and birds to that of neighbors, distant friends or relatives. I have managed to reduce the number of friends I have to 2. I think that is too much and I call them perhaps once a month, maybe less.

In many ways, I think this is not fair for my wife and kids, because I reduce their social life just to make my life more bearable.
Perhaps you should consider that not everyone is family material. I know I would cope perfectly on my own, not having one friend or family to nag and disturb me. I would have bought a house at a desert area and only showed myself in public when I needed groceries and cool stuff. But now I am a Familyguy and have to cope as best as I can. (Have to arrange a birthday party for one of the kids next week! ARGH!)

Every time I get lonely and say that I need more friends (which I do - I have some RL friends but they never have time for me, so it's almost like having no friends at all), I am reminded that I can never stand to be around people for prolonged periods of time without emotionally shutting them out and wanting them to go home/be taken home myself. Which is all true; being around other people - even my own family members, with the sole exceptions of my parents and younger brother - thrusts me right out of my comfort zone. I don't know why, but other people suck the life right out of me. I only truly feel energized and like my "true self" when I'm alone, which is why I stay up all night and don't go to sleep until the crack of dawn.

Yes

Not answering the phone and door, and not going out (unless you have to), is how I fix it.

I did all of the exposure when at school -- all that did was make pain, and it never got easier.

I don't have the inability to be around people. I always do my own thing around others and I don't mind but I prefer my own comfort zone and go back to it eventually and prefer to stay there. I don't feel how others here feel when they are around people. I am hardly alone now because my son is always with me. But I still feel alone even when he is around because he is a baby and doesn't talk yet like anyone else. My mind doesn't see him as a real human because he can't talk normal yet, can't carry on a conversation, can't respond as normal yet like everyone else. He can answer yes or no questions like if he wants to go to bed and he will shake his head but he doesn't always respond. My husband gets offended when I say things like he is looking like a real boy now, he looks like a real child now so I am always thinking before I say it first and think of something else to say instead so I remember to say "Older child" or "toddler."