Just avoiding the subject here.

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I should also say I have no intention of either unduly changing or adding to the anxiety that lives on this forum, the caveat is that I see honesty as the best way to move forward anywhere. Nobody has to like all the honesty but I'm still glad when it's the theme.

Remember I am still new to this diagnosis, so the commonalities amuse me:

Deep thoughts? Verbal difficulties? Honesty? You sound like you're on the Autism Spectrum.

Right there with you.

Not sure it would help if you are jealous at all. I'd even say you cannot have such a connection if you are jealous. Maybe you will not be jealous over non-issues, but then there are lots of potential things you will get to know that your partner would hide if he/she knows you cannot handle it because of jealousy.

I think I'm rehashing my own thread inside out & backwards now, I guess you could say I've encountered an entirely different bunch of problems since I was diagnosed early although the result is still a bunch of invisible walls everywhere. I can't read minds, I'm bad with names & faces sometimes but I'm not half bad at reading most intentions, even if that's only because of my outside perspective.

I think some AS folks see the many possibilities of what could be a person's thoughts and don't narrow in on one like NTs do. I tell myself I don't like to be presumptuous. Sometimes I don't like the thought the person is likely having (uninformed, mean) so I "naïvely" wonder (or ask) what they mean. I'm good with faces (I know this person: excellent visual recall), but bad with names (not sure how I know them: awful social recall).

Alexithymia is the worst. So many people take for granted just knowing their emotions, but if people just mess with yours there's no way to any longer.

I'm equal parts over-prepared to get back into my social life & completely spooked about it.

AFAIK, Alexithymia is more about talking about emotions than having them or feeling them.

That's interesting. I am highly emotional - big emotions, all the time. My AS-like BFF has few or small emotions - she says she's just "bleh". She reports that she has felt joy once in her life. I feel joy every few hours (mixed up with despair). However, we could both be completely "wrong" ---- I would bet that our measurable physical reactions are exactly the same (e.g. mild stress, mild contentment). I know we can see in each other the same outward reactions (a grimace, a genuine smile), and yet our internal or self-reported experiences are miles (or kilometers) apart. So if she attributes "nothing" to a mild frustration and I attribute "acute despair" to the same mild frustration - and our heartrate and other physical markers are the same.... ??? In fact, recently her blood pressure has gone up, so she concludes: I must be more upset than I think (re: an ill partner). And mine has been great: maybe I'm not as upset as I think (re: job angst). When we take the Alexithymia quiz we get "no" because we are not "confused": we know I feel all emotions and she feels no emotion. There's no confusion.

Therein lies the problem, I tread too lightly around discussions which would be much healthier to jump into. I need some sort of reminder not to.

Isn't it strange that the only reason I can discern that I haven't given up is that I'm still here wondering why?

Why does the most involuntary use of my time alive have to be the most difficult? Either I'm being trampled by invisible forces of natural selection or there's actually a lot more to the story. I mean rational people say never say never. Experience suggests it's pointless, pragmatism suggests I was already too bored to care about the odds anyway. I'll have plenty of time to get back in shape when my bed isn't burning.

Maybe it's more like I've been isolating so long that I don't know if any feelings of mine are valid to others in any wider context. Confusing, yeah, but probably because the monotony plays tricks on me. I'm aware of how I feel in some kind of distinct sense but that doesn't guarantee the luxury of being understood by myself or anyone else. As a rule I keep a lid on these things though, it doesn't feel like the part of me that would interest anyone. I guess this part of my life is worth rambling on about, regardless of whether I can remember why.

I suppose I'm at least internally working on it instead of only quietly going bonkers. Not that I know what to say to anybody...

My natural inclination is to do this as well.

When I really care about having a close relationship with the other person, I force myself to have those discussions.

When the alternative is allowing things to slowly erode, I suddenly have a lot of courage to figure out how to breech those difficult topics

Yeah, I still need to figure that out...

I can't say I ever developed that skill. Sure, I can try to talk about that stuff but I'm usually too shy for anyone to see it coming.

Bleh, I feel compelled to bump my own thread even if there's no better reason than to downvote all the negativity going on here.

Ugh

Rationale for my existence existing has nothing to do with my trying to justify it anyway. Being honest about something nobody wants to think about just brings about mobs with pitchforks...

On a tangent, I am trying to imagine a mob of AS folks. Is that an oxymoron?

FYI - I'm going to take a break from WP posts to turn my attention elsewhere. I'll be back.