Relating to others vs characters on tv

I can relate to your comments again. I have never been in any kind of romantic relationship that wasn't long-distance, and I can't ever see myself being in one now. I live with my parents, and care about them, but I am not very good at displaying affection towards anyone, and I feel no affinity towards, or even affection towards any of my step-brothers or my sister.

All but two of the members of my family I had any sort of close connection with are dead (from old age). I lost touch with the more distant family members long ago, as my connections with them were through the close family members. I've lost most of the connection with the two surviving ones too. I've never created a family of my own to replace them. When I read comments on forums that mention a partner or spouse, my reaction is rather like "wow! how did they manage to aquired one of them?", as I've never seen an opportunity to find one. For nearly 60 years I thought I was "normal", and it was bad luck that I hadn't met the right person, but now it's getting too late I think I understand why it hasn't happened. I think that's why seeing fictional happy events causes some emotion, but not a huge amount.

I can relate to how you feel, john, because I have always felt like that, too. Not so much with family, but definitely with so-called friends and acquaintances. I have never really felt as though I fitted in with anyone outside my family, and, as I have grown older I have begun to feel increasingly alienated from my family, too.

I don't have a TV, but do watch films and old TV series on DVD. I wondered why I get a bit emotional sometimes when watch something, when I almost never do in real life, but have just realised that it seems to be when someone has found a person or a place where they feel they really belong. In real life I've always been on the edge of things, on the outside looking in, and haven't yet found that elusive place where I belong, so seeing someone else find it has an effect on me. I'm not sure if it's happiness for them, or sadness that it hasn't happened to me though.

Thank you for your comment Trogluddite. It's a strange thing, but, often I have the impression of myself that I feel no emotion at all, other than irritability and, often, anger. I am not often conscious of feeling happy, or feeling any of the more positive emotions, and, when I watched that programme, and realised that I can identify with emotions displayed in a tv programme, but not with those of real people, I must say it disturbed me a great deal. I seem to feel more emotion for children and animals than I do for adults, too, but, again, mostly on television.

I can certainly identify with this.  As I kid, I can remember being mocked for being stoic and aloof most of the time, yet inconsolable when a TV character was harmed or died. (I still get reminded about mourning for 'Tarka the Otter' over thirty years later!).

Keeping things "bottled up" for fear of reacting inappropriately is certainly a big part of it, I think, as Maia suggests.

There's also another form of this that I get, which I think is closely related to being Alexithymic.  I have a great deal of trouble identifiying my own emotions - I know I'm feeling "something", but cannot name the emotion or work out how to react to it. It will often slowly "sink in" over a few hours or days, but even then, only if it's an emotion that I'm very familiar with already.

I find when watching a movie or reading a book, that I will suddenly become overwhelmed with emotion when the character is experiencing something that I've been feeling too, but hadn't yet worked out what it was.  It's a kind of "Eureka" moment when it dawns on me what the emotion is, and then the reaction kicks in, often to a very extreme degree.

Yes, that does make a lot of sense. Thank you for replying.