My optimist outlook on my autism isolates me.

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Truer words have never been spoken. I couldn't express this better. Autism is both a gift and a burden, that simultaneously brings great joy and great hardship. Like Arganger my view isn't entirely positive, as I do struggle significantly in certain areas, but isn't entirely negative either, as I like the way my life has played for the most part so far, and can't fathom what it would be like without all the quirks and strengths that come with being autistic. I think "beautiful, yet not easy" is one of the best ways anyone has used to describe it.

I see you are rather new here, so welcome to wrong planet btw

Perfectionist: You say you "don't get the experience of the neurotic and that their behavior seems illogical and baffling to you." Neuroses of one kind of another are quite common even among NT's. I've briefly tried looking for an estimate of how common it is in the States, w/o success but it is a fairly high percentage of the adult population. Anxiety disorders at least involve human emotions, so why would they be something you could logically understand? Besides being someone who has prominent anxiety myself enabling me to empathize emotionally w/someone else experiencing that, I don't think I'd have a problem doing so cognitively even if I didn't suffer from from it. Everyone experiences fear at some point in their lives and, to be blunt, we live in a very potentially anxiety-inducing (or stressful if you prefer) time in the States, b/c of the precarious labor market we have, to take one example. 80% of households live paycheck to paycheck so if you imagine missing one, that means 4/5 of households could quickly be plunged into financial trouble if that happens. That's scary s**t, ergo it's not hard to see (even logically, if you can put yourself in someone else's shoes) why alot of people experience anxiety on a regular basis. And that's just one reason. If you can't understand that emotionally or logically, I'm not exactly sure how to explain it to you, other than that you have to be willing/able to look at the perspective of other people. That's a big part of what empathy, for example, is about.

You finish your post by saying: "I know that if I was NT I'd feel much more pressure to follow the group, but something about my ASD makes me not even feel anything for the group, it's like I'm indifferent and I play by my own rules and live in my own world and I love my life for this reason. I'm just confused on to why some others don't share this viewpoint. Whenever I express it people act like I am patronizing or arrogant and dismiss me, and it's very isolating."

You're right NT's in general feel pressure to conform or otherwise follow group pressures, especially in social situations or re: status markers. No one likes being ostracized, being at the bottom of the social totem pole or made the object of scorn or ridicule or being ignored completely. A handful of NT's don't care at all, but that's the exception. Maybe a higher percentage of people w/ASD feel the same, I have no idea, but I don't think most of us do either, not completely.

You say you love your own life b/c you can play by your own rules in your own world. Ok, cool I guess. But your last 2 sentences perplex me. You say you don't understand why others (including on the Spectrum) don't share your views in this regard and that saying this to others leads to you being dismissed for being perceived as patronizing or arrogant which makes you (feel?) isolated. Given that you say you like living your life in your own way in your own world makes you what, happy(?) and confident, do you actually care that you're isolated? Or is this just intellectually baffling to you? It isn't clear from your original post. And I guess my question would be how does that isolation make you FEEL?

To state what to other posters may seem obvious, people want to feel like they belong (to something, some group of people). I know I do and the fact that I don't have enough of that in my life induces depression, anxiety, sometimes anger and other often "unpleasant" feelings. You might wanna look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs to try at least cognitively to understand that b/c it's a fairly basic psychological need for the overwhelming majority of people on and off the spectrum. Doing something like this, again, would be an example of trying to take the perspective of other people, even if you just do it cognitively if you can't feel what others do about this issue. And that, again, is a logical thing to do. I can also see why people find your view patronizing or arrogant: b/c they think you see yourself as superior to them, since you say you don't care what others think or do. In part this is happening to you b/c you're not (yet) making an effort to relate to them, so they have difficulty in relating to you (even people w/ASD). And yes I can see how that would be very isolating for you.

So I guess the question to me is what are you gonna do about it? If you're happy w/the way things are (which is also unclear to me), then you don't need to do anything. Otherwise, you might wanna think this over some more.

I get plenty of social contact at work, which also happens to be one of my special interests. I also go to garden club meetings to meet a different set of people. Last year I got invited to several parties via the garden club.