Can you "feel" loved by another?

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happymusic
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07 Aug 2010, 8:27 am

No, I can't feel love from someone else. I just believe them when they say it.

GrimmRomance
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07 Aug 2010, 8:42 am

I can, by using logical reasoning, come to the conclusion, that I am loved. However it is very diffucult for me to feel it. When recieving affection in some way I do get that warm, fuzzy feeling, letting me know, that I am cared about. Usually it takes a long time for me to figure out just how people feel about me. In the end: I've never been quite certain of other people's feelings towards me. It's all very foggy to me. :/

CMaximus
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07 Aug 2010, 11:22 am

I sort of hope I can't, otherwise I'd have to conclude I never have been.

biostructure
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09 Aug 2010, 9:04 pm

ManErg wrote:

Ok, I'm aware this question can so easily be misunderstood, I'll clarify what I'm asking. Firstly, I'm not asking whether you can love others. Reams have already been written in relation to this and Aspergers. I'm asking, when somebody else loves you - a parent, partner, child, relative, friend, can you actually *feel* it from them. Also, I'm not referring to logically calculating that your partner, child or parent loves you. I want to know if you can actually *feel* how they feel towards you.

I ask because even when logically I have every reason to believe somebody may well love me, I cannot feel that love from them, although feel my love for them very strongly. And only recently, it struck me that maybe some people could actually feel love from another, without needed to rationally process the words from them. It explains why as a child, I don't recall feeling loved by my parents. I assess how people feel about me based only on their words, and when parents criticised me for my behaviour not coming up to scratch, I naturally assumed they didn't love me. How could they when they were so critical of my behaviour?

In relationships it's the same. I can only process the words of my partner. If I don't regularly hear clearly that she loves me, then I start to assume she has lost interest in me. And it makes initiating relationships even harder as I am in effect 'flying blind' all the time, with no idea what the other person feels about me. And as initiating and flirting is filled with hints and double meanings and (worst of all) subtle body language, it's no surprise that generally I have got it horribly wrong.

If other people (NT's?) *can* feel what another person feel towards them, it explains a lot of things that have mystified me. Such as the 'sparring and teasing' I've seen between people attracted to each other, where they verbally say negative things, but still end up together. If they can sense the others feelings, then this would explain it. The slightest negative comment towards me and I assume the other person dislikes me. Also with children who get in trouble with their parents, but don't feel rejected by them as they know they are still loved.

The alternative explanation is that nobody really has ever loved me, which is what I tended to believe until pondering this question. Or perhaps that I have had such long periods being unloved, that I no longer have the capability to feel it.

Does anybody else feel like this? It would be good if NT's could reply too, as perhaps this could be a difference between AS and NT.

I think I'm totally the same way.

Aimless
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09 Aug 2010, 9:15 pm

Have you thought about asking this in the NT/AS hot line thread? I'd be curious to hear some NT perspectives.

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09 Aug 2010, 11:07 pm

My parents used to report that they didn't think I could express love which may have been true but I also had difficulty feeling loved. I remember my parents getting upset with me a lot and yelling at me for being impulsive and stuff. I felt like I was walking on eggshells a lot during my childhood, despite what it looked like to others.

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Last edited by PunkyKat on 10 Aug 2010, 1:42 am, edited 1 time in total.

anbuend
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09 Aug 2010, 11:20 pm

(I'm leaving out sexual love because that's a wholly different category as far as I'm concerned, and seems governed by different rules.)

As far as 'regular' love and affection...

When my cat climbs onto my bed and snuggles up to me, I feel her love for me automatically, as well as my love for her. And it feels different to me depending on the intensity and variety of affection she is showing. And to share that affection back and forth is one of the best things in the world.

I honestly can't remember if I feel it with humans. And if I don't, I think it may not be because I can't perceive the affection, but rather because some aspect of the giving-of-affection thing on their part is aversive or uncomfortable to me, and then that discomfort blocks out any perception of there being something 'good' there.

And... hmm that might be one reason I love spending time with cats so much. I find that even when we are not touching, simply being in a room with cats in a comfortable and companionable way gives me a social experience I get almost nowhere else, and includes the sharing of affection if such a thing is being communicated.

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katzefrau
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10 Aug 2010, 12:58 am

Aimless wrote:

Have you thought about asking this in the NT/AS hot line thread? I'd be curious to hear some NT perspectives.

i'm curious as well.

+1 on the cat love issue. also i have no trouble interpreting their behavior. of course there is no way of knowing i'm correct, but it seems so. one cat misinterprets the others trying to play with her as attacks and becomes anxious; they perceive her as being aggressive when she is "defending herself" and so, a cat fight, even though none of them are aggressive. or she will run away. she feels safest when she doesn't have to interact with the other cats. she's very sweet, but they don't understand her. she must be the aspie cat. :wink:

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StefanoB
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10 Aug 2010, 1:05 am

No, I can't, I have to deduce it logically - which is often far from accurate. I can feel it intensely for others, but they often don't seem to notice, even when I point it out.

I DO, however, have dreams where I feel love (or some sort of euphoric emotional connection) so very strongly that I wish I could stay there forever. I think the way these dreams work is that because I am the writer, director, and all of the actors, I know every character's thoughts, emotions, and motivations as well as I know my own because they ARE my own. Too bad they only happen once or twice a year.

spongy
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10 Aug 2010, 1:45 am

As the op mentioned before I can only rationalize how someone feels about me from their actions,words etc.

fleeced
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10 Aug 2010, 4:00 am

me too, with assuming my parents didn't love me when they criticised me. someone told me you can love someone and not like some things they do and i'm trying to get my head round that. i can't feel love and always doubt it and think that even if someone does love me it will be temporary - they will get fed up with me or realise i'm flawed

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katzefrau
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10 Aug 2010, 4:37 am

fleeced wrote:

me too, with assuming my parents didn't love me when they criticised me. someone told me you can love someone and not like some things they do and i'm trying to get my head round that.

i can't quite grasp that either. (and so, of course, one failure of mine - meltdown, misunderstanding - and i assume i have lost whatever care or respect i have earned from someone else)

fleeced wrote:

i can't feel love and always doubt it and think that even if someone does love me it will be temporary - they will get fed up with me or realise i'm flawed

this is a confounding topic since there are really several things that seem to comprise the lack of feeling love which some of us are describing:
1. inability to recognize the emotions of others, except by thought or rational deduction
2. difficulty in believing ourselves to be lovable because of our flaws (our AS?)
3. all-or-nothing thinking (which i think to be a common part of the AS thought pattern in re other people)

#2 is a chicken-or-egg thing (is it an effect of the other causes or an exacerbating factor?); and so maybe with recognition that #1 and #3 are somewhat predetermined by our neurology some of us can minimize #2, as it could largely be a result of a flawed thought process in the first place?

i actually think this discussion is very helpful yet it also indicates that there are many more layers of difficulty with interpersonal relationships beyond what is generally indicated in AS literature. by which i mean that this issue of feeling love has greater depth and could be far more traumatic to someone than being trivially shamed by taking a metaphor literally or continuing a monologue when someone is bored.

this is precisely why discussion with others on the spectrum is so valuable.

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Aimless
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10 Aug 2010, 6:07 am

StefanoB wrote:

I've had a few of those dreams. I'm just lying next to someone who I know loves me unconditionally and I can feel it envelop me. Those dreams are sad to wake up from.

Aimless
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10 Aug 2010, 6:10 am

fleeced wrote:

The revelation that approval and love were two different things was fairly recent for me. I've spent my whole life thinking my family loved me less because I couldn't measure up. I should have given them more credit.

Aimless
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10 Aug 2010, 6:12 am

spongy wrote:

As the op mentioned before I can only rationalize how someone feels about me from their actions,words etc.

Yes, and if the people around you are non demonstrative it's easy to feel unloved.

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10 Aug 2010, 9:17 am

I can't feel if someone loves me. I think everyone hates me.

:cry: :cry:

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