Can you "feel" an emotional connection w/ someone?

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I feel Connections with people ...especially my husband

The whole notion of empathy and connecting is fascinating to me, though I struggle with its practice. Mostly it feels like working in darkness......sometimes I get a really warm feeling when I've been in a social situation, and I guess that could be that feeling of connectedness, but to me it's just like the feeling of warmth just dropped out of the sky onto me, and I have to work out later what the interactive dynamics were that might have made me feel that way. But it's a great feeling, whatever it is.

e.g......when I was visiting a friend who'd been incarcerated after a meltdown, I remarked to a counsellor that I felt I'd done no good, because he was very confused and barely seemed to recognise me. The counsellor said that just being there for him was probably helping a lot, and it took me a while to see the validity of that.

e.g.....I've made friends and partners with no idea what has attracted me to them, or them to me, and it's often years later that I work out what the shared attributes were that caused us to connect.

I've read here that Aspies often feel deeply affected by the strong emotions of others, and I've had that, but I think that's emotional contagion:
The ability to transfer moods appears to be innate in humans. Emotional contagion and empathy have an interesting relationship; for without an ability to differentiate between personal and pre-personal experience (see individuation), they appear the same. In The Art of Loving, Erich Fromm explores the autonomy necessary for empathy which is not found in contagion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_contagion

Emotional connectedness, and all that, is a brilliant subject

I'm able to feel that connection with certain people such as my mom and brother.

I remember feeling that connection with my former best friend. I had gone over to her house one day shortly after my grammy had passed away. I told her about it and started crying. Then she put her hand on my shoulder, told me that she understood how I felt, and then she started crying too. I think that was when I felt closest to her. It was one of many things that made our split so difficult for me.

I seem to be the opposite of most people on the spectrum in that I get I tend to get extremely emotionally connected to certian people, and at times it happens even when the person does not have the same connection that I feel towards them. I have had extreme crushes on people since I was 6 years old. When they do reciprocate, its the most wonderful feeling in the world.

It always happens with people who are incredibly different from the norm...they may wear strange outfits, listen to weird music, or have unconventional belief systems. It always seems to happen with people who are pagan or who are otherwise classified as hippies

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I'm assuming that because I don't understand this I haven't felt some sort of connection. I mean surely if I had some sort of connection with someone I would know it right?

Maybe or I'm just bad with words(Highly probable). It seems 'rapport' would be a closer match to what I'm thinking of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapport

Only with a very select few. I've always felt a strong emotional connection with my pets though, but only about 3 people so far in my life. And only 2 people nowadays.

I felt what I would describe as an emotional connection with my ex-fiancee. Currently, there is a woman at work I've always felt drawn to. I don't know if it qualifies her as one of the empathic people you speak of but last night I saw her for the 1st time outside of work. At one point I looked over at her and she met and held my gaze for longer than normal. I know it may sound cheesy or corny but it felt like she was staring straight through me and into my soul, that's the best I can think to describe how it felt.

When I read the description, I realised that's what I've been doing (or trying to do) for years. I've been successful with it at times, i.e. people have sometimes seemed to warm to me, they'll seem more aware that I've arrived, and they'll look at me more....they'll make it easier for me to greet them, they'll stand closer to me and they'll signal that I'm somehow more acceptable to them. Most importantly, if I'm lucky, they'll start to do the same thing back to me.

The connotations with salesmanship bother me. Sales people take decent human behaviour and turn it into deception.....they feign affection when the only thing they're really interested in is to make that sale and score that bonus. I suppose sexual predators work the same way, which doesn't help the women to trust genuinely friendly guys.

But rapport is one of the things I live for. Getting into the other person's head and actuially giving a damn about how they feel. It's not always easy, and doesn't always work, but when it does, even a little, I know what I'm doing on this weird planet.

Almost a perfect description of my experience, particularly confusing fondness for love. I'm now learning the difference between the two. Really, though I couldn't begin to describe what love feels like because I don't think I've ever felt it, no matter how much I've wanted to. Even with family members, I have never felt any sort of emotional connection with them; even the ones I like. I could never understand it. It seems like I should be feeling a certain way about certain people and in certain situations, but it doesn't automatically happen to me and I sometimes have to fake it because it seems like I should. When it comes down to it, I just know if I like something or someone, or if I don't. Either I'm drawn to them or I'm not. It doesn't seem to have much to do with feelings to me.

Almost a perfect description of my experience, particularly confusing fondness for love. I'm now learning the difference between the two. Really, though I couldn't begin to describe what love feels like because I don't think I've ever felt it, no matter how much I've wanted to. Even with family members, I have never felt any sort of emotional connection with them; even the ones I like. I could never understand it. It seems like I should be feeling a certain way about certain people and in certain situations, but it doesn't automatically happen to me and I sometimes have to fake it because it seems like I should. When it comes down to it, I just know if I like something or someone, or if I don't. Either I'm drawn to them or I'm not. It doesn't seem to have much to do with feelings to me.

I dont know how to feel emotional connections to people. Apparently I am considered by people to be totally unempathetic. I have never felt any emotional connections with animals either. Someone was talking to me about 'love' in a broad sense going on about how important it is etc., I didnt think it would be a good idea to tell them that I disagreed with what they were saying as I dont love anyone.

Uh...I can. But only with my father and my best friend who moved away. That's it.

Yes, I can feel that.

That said, I only "really" feel it with very few people but it's not a foreign emotion to me.

I can also connect to many others on a much more shallow level, I enjoy some friendships like that but I can give them up really easily and not miss the person. Only a few people do I really miss.

This is true, too.

Sometimes I can share other people's moods and really tune in to their emotions even if I don't like them or feel any kind of attachment to them. In that case, I just want them gone.

I can feel the same for people who I actually do like and in that case I really want to help.