Do aspies have trouble with feeling/expressing love?

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In this post, I don't intend to focus on romantic love (I guess it could be included in the discussion here but...). I'm mainly talking about love as in caring and compassion, sympathy, etc...

I gotta admit, I have real trouble feeling it. Sure, I might appear to express it once in a while, when someone had a bad day or something, but it doesn't seem natural to me. It seems as though I don't "feel" anything but rather, I think to myself "this is the right thing to do".

I definitely know what to do and what NOT to do under certain circumstances so to not offend someone, but it seem like its more of a "learned behaviour" rather than me acting out from my feelings.

Does anyone else feel like they have trouble feeling the emotion of love?

I don't so much "feel" love as I think it.

Not wanting a person to get hurt, concern for their general well being and putting their needs ahead of my own constitute what I feel to be love, even if I don't actually feel anything.

For sure. I've learned the right things to do at the right time, but still never developed the natural inclination to do them. Feels like I'm faking it the whole time, relying too much on mirroring emotions and energy levels.

I think it may actually be a good thing. I mean, when tragedy strikes someone else's life, I won't need time to "cry and sob" but I will be calm and think of what appropriate actions I shall take to help. Of course, the downside to this is that sometimes, I won't be aware of the true extent of how bad someone else's life is and will end up not doing enough to help.

Never. Sexual feelings come natural to me. If I fancy a man, I give him ''the eye''. If I speak to a man I fancy, my groin goes all weak and I feel all tingly. Then I get an elation each time I picture his face in my head....

I can relate to this. However there are two thoughts I'd like to share.

First, there is love, or let's say emotional relatedness that's in our subconscious. It's there, just we or our subconscious self suppresses it. I think party because of not complying with our basically logical thinking. For example, if we like a person, say, our mother, we may love her despite we feel the repercussions of former resentments too. Or simply we just don't feel the need to show our attachment to be more than a helpful co-operation. Our (real) emotions are not walking hand in hand with our thoughts. In extreme life situations such as serious diseases, trauma, death our real feelings tend to show up, I've seen/experienced a couple of examples of it.

Second, in romantic relationships, chemistry may take over the control of thoughts, quite literally. I experienced this, this is like a mega dose of endorfine/adrenalin or whatever that makes you high. It eventually makes you emotionally attached to the related person well after the chemicals are turned down from maximum to idle.

I'm not so sure about this one. I do feel empathy, sympathy all that - but I have to vividly imagine myself experiencing it to be like, "alright I guess I can see that." But still i tend to be able to see the justifications alongside the harm in anyone's actions. Its just a matter of knowing the psychology behind it. Hell, wise men have been saying for thousands of years one of the keys to enlightenment is detachment from bias. Maybe we're just... farther along?

Yes and yes. For people at least.... I'm asexual becuase not only do I not want a romatic relationship with anyone, I also just can't feel attracted to anyone. I'm happy with my orientation...or lack of an orientation but for some reason society just dosen't want to accept that.

I do feel love, but I don't know how to express it properly.

I guess I feel love, I mean love is a deep feeling of attachment to someone and wanting to be with them. I also have no trouble expressing it, well, my way of expressing it is through cuddling and kissing, or writing them romantic poems.

Yep

Don't stop that Soulreapersenna. It is perfect. I know. I had that once. Just don't forget to tell them. They need to hear it.

I can feel love but not often. I didn't know what love felt like for others until I had my son because I felt something I never felt before. I think I felt the same way for a human I did for my cat when I had her.

I can feel sympathy too and some empathy but not much. I think I have more sympathy than empathy.

I can feel love but I have an extremely hard time describing it.

For a long time (until I was 20 or so) I was barely able to even say it.

I have no problems feeling love, but have no idea what issues there would be with me expressing it.

Love, whether platonic or romantic, is so much easier than simply friendship.