the impact of ASD

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Thanks for that reply I don't think I would have been able for any of that.

Looking back, I am surprised I survived those years. At the time, I just figured that this was what I was ?supposed? to do.

For people who feel empty, do you think that you would feel less empty if you had a goal to work towards?

One of the big impacts of ASD on me is the seeming impossibility for me to maintain a relationship either friendship or romantic with a person who has much more social and emotional needs than I do and would require an amount of attention and interaction from me that I can't give. So far, I haven't found any neurotypical men who don't have overwhelming social and emotional needs that I can't meet. I don't know if I will meet anyone who is a match for me in terms of needs that I can meet to maintain a long-term relationship. Also, I can eggstremely obsessed with my research, and most of my thoughts are about research, and it pains me to divert my attention from it for even one day.

A goal to work towards yes but what that is something I have not work out yet.

I have found that the feeling of emptiness dissipates when my mind is actively occupied, hyper focusing on something that I find useful or important. Having meaningful goals to pursue, is one way to keep my mind busy for an extended period of time. Hope that make sense.

That's the biggest of the reasons that my last romantic relationship ended. Way too much time together for me was nowhere near enough time together for my partner, and most of the time we were together we had to be actively interacting and doing the same things. It was too much and I just couldn't do it.

I do okay with friendships, though, when I have them (meaning when people befriend me, and I eventually learn that our relationship is indeed a friendship because they refer to me as a "friend" or when I ask them if we're friends). I even have a handful of friends who remain friends even though I might go months or years without talking to them or seeing them...I think maybe I just lucked out with friends.