I’m someone who craves (and thrives) on intimacy and closeness. I’m never been afraid to be vulnerable (I’d actually had to learn that I shouldn’t be vulnerable with everyone). I love it when someone is really passionate about something, even if that thing bores me to tears. I love hearing about peoples’ hopes, fears, dreams, opinions…
But I often feel like people hold me at arm’s length. Like they say, “OP, I like you, you’re interesting, but stay right there.”
And it doesn’t seem like it’s a matter of following the “relationship journey” either. It seems like eventually I hit a wall of someone not wanting me to come any closer. And it hurts.
Being neuroatypical I do realize I have an intense personality so people may not know how to interact with me. That may be part of it.
Anyone else experience this? How do you cope?
People have all kinds of personal reasons for keeping their distance from others, which are all valid of course. However as a neurodivergent person myself who also experiences this freezing out from others, I can’t help but think it’s linked to the fact that they’ve clocked me as different. Often people are motivated by building social capital and I don’t have much of that so I feel like people think there’s just no real benefit to connecting with me.