Loneliness and family

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Anyone ever feel totally alone even when with your family? My wife and children always seem to have this connection with each other. I'm in the room. But not really a part of what ties them all together.

This is one of those things that functional levels completely miss. So what? I have a wife and children. I still can't feel what a family is like.

I can't say that I know what you mean. I'm the one to get bored and willingly leave the room after an hour. Heck, that's what I'm doing right now. Everyone else is downstairs talking, and I'm up here at my computer. Do I care? Not really, I need some alone time every once and a while.

I have an awareness that they share something that I cannot.

I value my solitude, but I cannot live in utter isolation.

I feel the most lonely when I'm with my family.

I have a lot of issues related to the absence of a close, loving father figure. No doubt they have something to do with my own disconnect with the rest of my family in general. Now I'm almost proud of the fact that I don't have anyone's last name...

I totally echo that sentiment.
I live with my son and his mother, and they get along splendidly and share emotions and thoughts and closeness and are a family.
I spend time with them. Lots of time. Yet it all feels empty. There's no closeness and very little emotion other than anger and frustration from them towards me for the insensitive things I seem to do all the time. I feel like I try really hard to get along and be close, but it just never works.
At this point, it seems like my existence in this home is to pay the bills and be an occasionally aggravating 3rd wheel.
Very much this...

Relation to extended family is virtually non-existent. "Family" is ceasing to mean a whole lot to me these days, and it really is starting to worry me that I might end up an old man, completely alone, and that the people I care about might just drift away for their own sanity's sake.

I know what you mean. I feel the most alone when I am in a group. I feel awkward and never say anything.

Same with me and my family. They all chat with each other, whereas I'm left out and don't fit in.

From what I understand you're saying that there's some sort of metaphorical connection with everyone in your family, except for you.

Yeah, I don't feel that. Either because I'm too blind socially to notice it, or because I too have some sort of connection. If the latter is true, it is most likely because my family attempts to "bond" with me, rather than me creating said bond. Or, perhaps I simply do not desire any sort of connection. That does seem to be rather common among people my age with their families.

When I'm around more than one family member, they do tend to talk around me, and I tend to leave because I can't participate.

I don't feel lonely, though. And I don't perceive "connections." Once my mother told me she thought one of my nieces and I had a close connection, and I was, "really?" I had no idea, and I think she was seeing something she expected to see.

For most of my life I've felt a "social wall" between myself and family members. Even with my son, although there's clearly a lot there, it's a strangely wooden relationship in some ways. If the chips were down I'd do a lot for them, but from day to day there's a weird feeling that they don't really count as social. With unrelated people I can be a lot more immediate and I can show them aspects of my personailty that my family have never seen. I'd go as far as to say that I seem more aspie with family than with unrelated friends. I don't understand the reason for this.......the only thing I can think of is that family members are somehow "fully explored," they don't seem to have the potential to develop any more, whereas with unrelated people there are a lot more unknown things about them. Or it may have come from when I was a teenager, seeing family as the thing that held me back while hanging about with others was at least taking some kind of social step. My parents never seemed to understand that I had any social needs, and wanted me to focus purely on doing well academically and getting a good job......they would compare me with my reclusive cousin - he's very bright but he doesn't have social needs like I do.

In the past when I've been depressed, yup. However... Recently I've gained alot of confidence and there isn't any loneliness anymore.

That describes pretty well how I feel about myself and my beloved family.

I dont talk to anyone in my family... just cant connect with them... my brother would be close to an exemption... but not quite... it makes me feel a bit guilty that all my friends can have a friendly conversation and talk about their problems with their parents... I still feel uncomfortable just talking to mine in general...

To be honest i dont really like them as people... all bad examples that i would rather not expose myself to... hence why i spend as much time as possible out in the ocean...
In saying that i am greatfull for what they did for me when i was younger... but thats in the past now...

Metaphorical? Not hardly. These emotional connections are not an abstraction.

I've always felt like an outsider in my own family. I had a father that was abusive and a brother who phyologicaly tourted me and a mother who basicaly tells me I had it coming.