I love affection and intimacy - can I still be aspie?

[Foobaroo]

I hated physical contact when I was a child, to the point where I'd once push away my little sister when she tried to hug me, which in hindsight was actually quite sad.

Things changed when I was 17, though. Our school had us take a “social internship” and I chose to take it at my childhood kindergarten.
I quickly made friends with two children (a girl and a boy) who happened to be siblings and we absolutely fell in love with each other. On the first day there was this thing where all the children were standing in a circle and the girl leaned on me and I instinctively moved away, but I quickly realized that this wasn't “normal”, so I stopped and ultimately, even enjoyed hugging/being hugged. Over the course of a week I not only learned that physical contact was actually nice, but I even learned to look the kids in the eyes, even though I had previously always instinctively avoided eye contact.

So yeah. While it's true that aspies may be more likely to dislike physical contact, not only does that not apply to everybody, but an aspie may eventually learn to appreciate it.

 

[Gerald Wilgus]

I hated physical contact when I was a child, to the point where I'd once push away my little sister when she tried to hug me, which in hindsight was actually quite sad.

Things changed when I was 17, though. Our school had us take a “social internship” and I chose to take it at my childhood kindergarten.
I quickly made friends with two children (a girl and a boy) who happened to be siblings and we absolutely fell in love with each other. On the first day there was this thing where all the children were standing in a circle and the girl leaned on me and I instinctively moved away, but I quickly realized that this wasn't “normal”, so I stopped and ultimately, even enjoyed hugging/being hugged. Over the course of a week I not only learned that physical contact was actually nice, but I even learned to look the kids in the eyes, even though I had previously always instinctively avoided eye contact.

So yeah. While it's true that aspies may be more likely to dislike physical contact, not only does that not apply to everybody, but an aspie may eventually learn to appreciate it.

I too am sad and ashamed that when young I could not hug my grandmother. But, after gaining some social and emotional maturity I enjoyed physical contact and still do, especially snuggling with my spouse.

 

[Captain Jigglypuff]

I actually don’t like making eye contact with people for long periods of time. It makes me uncomfortable and honestly this caused quite a bit of problems when I was being verbally abused by the woman who raised me because she’d scream at me for about twenty minutes nonstop and demand that I looked at her in the eyes as she yelled at me and it was uncomfortable because as an Aspie eye contact was something I just didn’t like and also because I was being screamed at for more than 20 minutes about how I “ruined” her life. If my eyes strayed even for a millisecond, she’d scream at me even more for being disrespectful. And it isn’t like she didn’t know that people on the spectrum didn’t like eye contact as she worked in an autistic school with kids and knew all about the disorder. Sometimes she smacked me hard because I didn’t keep eye contact and then she’d wonder why I avoided making direct eye contact with her whenever she was talking to me.

 

[Luca]

I posted a thread just like this a while ago.
I love physical contact, especially snuggles. I’m not interested in anything of a sexual nature, just snuggling.