Can you "feel" loved by another?

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As a child, I felt more hated by my parents and siblings than loved. As an adult, that feeling is coming back.

I know people love me but I don't feel that love.
The simple act of hugging is hard for me because I don't feel pleasure from it.
I also see other people as an entirely different species to me.

Maybe this is question I can ask an NT friend.
I truly don't know what feeling loved is like or if anyone feels it.

One thing was said though by my sister which I immediately took offense at.
She basically called me stupid for thinking people didn't care about me.
While I was discovering that I was having seizures nobody talked to me. I assumed they didn't care.
For this I was called stupid. How was I to know? They didn't talk to me at all.
Maybe I can't feel love.
When people are mad or argumentative I feel like they hate me. This is probably why I wonder why my sister can be so horrible and then be nice to me. To any NT she's just over opinionated and sarcastic. To me she is a horrible person who really must hate who I am.

I know I am loved but I've always had trouble feeling it....at least with humans. I can feel loved by my bearded dragon. Some say reptiles are not capable to emotion like that but those people propably still believe the earth is flat.

No, I can't feel people's love for me. I only feel their anger and disappointment.

This necrothread ran me over like a bus. I've found it difficult to "feel loved" myself.

In the past, I've seriously wondered what was wrong with me when I don't automatically mirror back the affection that others might show to me. This thread has brought me great assurance that this is a common thing for people with Autism.

BTW: The concept of a "love language" has gained currency in these last 14 years:



PS: There was once a poll about love language here, but it's closed now:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=114313

If I could have voted in the poll, my "love language" would be "touch", followed by "acts of service".

When the sexualities were handed out, apparently I have the sexuality of a cat. Cats can be very passionate, and they want to play bite as an exclamation of love, but they never actually smile at you.

Yes.
And it's more subtle.

It's safer in a higher way that had nothing to do with familiarity, but of understanding, inclusion and acceptance.

Quieter. Compared to, say, attachment.

Which is somewhat suffocating and unnecessarily reenacting.
Familiar at best, no matter how dysfunctional.

Sometimes people seem to mistake the attachment for love.


I say love is more than just the bonding chemicals of sociobiological functions, but that's the only type of love most humans understand or comprehend.


And I can feel love and being loved, beyond than just from anybody or anyone, of what they can and cannot do.


It is strange, really.

Let's just say I can feel the all encompassing, higher love more often than I ever feel lower, more physical, and definately the socially conditioned types love.

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ManErg,

Nice topic!
Indeed a subject not much talked about, but very 'close to our hearts' wink, wink...

CapedOwl and Edna are on to something.
My 2 cents boil down to what we (because we are in 'it') often forget, our underlying issue that unites us here but is also the biggest common divider between ND an NT brains. We are (in many cases) non typical because of differences in the way we experience, generate and manage limbic system (our brain's emotional centers) integration.

As such how we feel, or even more profoundly: how we 'Define' what 'feeling love' is for us is can differentiate big time from our NT peers. As you stated, we tend to involve much more of our analytical systems (PreFrontalCortex) in processing emotions in general.
But don't go as far as to think that NT-peers have a sort of extra empathic sense where they can detect 'love' at a distance.
My kids have gotten used to me asking how/why they are acting or interpreting an event/action in a specific way, and have taught me that what seems 'love-detection' is mainly their limbic systems reacting to triggers (verbal or body-language) that I missed.

So my answer to 'Can you "feel" loved by another?' is yes, in the way that I define 'feeling loved'; when my kids huddle up to me in front of the tele in the evening, when everybody is at the dinner table, without me having to beg them, they just show up. By feeling my partner reach out to hold my hand instinctively as we are walking across town,...

Kind regards,
Kada

I struggled with this concept for years. I didn't recognize that I was loved by parents and siblings, all I ever recognized or registered was the anger, resentment, arguments, constant corrections, "should haves" etc. . I realize now that love is much more complex, but still feel as though I have actually only been loved by my partner and a couple of lifelong friends. I am still working on sorting emotions since the first 7/8 of my life was programmed from early abuse and trauma ( and my autistic lack of understanding so many things nobody explained) "happiness" still eludes me too, but I have finally found safety (feeling safe in some situations) and feeling of contentment at times. Its a lot to sort! Diagnosed at age 68 5 years ago and still working at understanding all the answers to my lifetime of "whys" which diagnosis made possible. I do think we can learn these things. emotions have always been scary and I was taught my own feelings were irrelevant so I discarded thinking about them at all and worked at hiding and denying them for most of my life. Be patient with yourself as you go forward from here. Diagnosis suddenly shows us a new perspective on everything and there is a lot of emotional homework to be done as we see everything in our lives differently now.

I doubt I can
but
given that girlfriends in relationships who constantly give each other a hard time out of insecurity are common, even among NTs, I believe that the inability to feel love is universal.

The only people I really felt loved by have been my three girlfriends.

I never had a close relationship with anyone in my family including my parents. I kind of felt unwanted by my parents & like I was a loser because it was impossible for me measure up to my mom's expectations. Logically I know my family loved me & my mom was extremely frustrated due to the challenges of raising a majorly disabled kid & the kid still continuing to live at home with his parents as adult due to no other viable options along with my mom being majorly stressed from her job & she complained how she would have been able to retire early if I had wanted to be independent & moved out once I became an adult instead of being too lazy & selfish & manipulating her by pretending I was too dependent to get a decent paying job & move out on my own Looking back I know my mom has done LOTS more for me than most parents would do for their kids, especially once they become adults but her guilt-trips & passive-aggressive behavior about it made it hard for me to feel loved from her. My dad on the other-hand mostly got mad at me whenever me & mom were fighting but he did a lot less for me than my mom did though he still did a lot & I didn't feel close to him or really accepted & understood by him either.

As for as friends go, I never had many friends & I didn't get super close to any of the ones I did have. I know some of them cared about me but I wouldn't put it on the level of love though.

My three girlfriends were the only people I ever felt really close to & accepted by & along with them being there for me when I was having a hard time made it a lot easier for me to feel loved by them. However looking back I'm not sure if my second girlfriend really did love me. I readily admit that I did cause her lots of problems but another major problem was that she had a high desire to be more independent & I could not be the person she wanted/needed me to be in order for our relationship to have worked. I think some of my problems in that relationship were due to me being too desperate to read the writing on the wall so to speak. I was very desperate to try & make our relationship work because I had been single for 8 years straight without so much as a single date after me & my first girlfriend broke up despite my best effort. I felt pushed away by her & like she was trying to mold me into something that would have worked better for her wants & needs. I'm NOT trying to excuse my behavior or blame her here. I should have realized & accepted that we couldn't work by a couple months into it & explained that to her & initiated our breakup.