The environment / the people in your environment makes a huge difference. People on the higher functioning end of the Autistic Spectrum don't seem to have a great deal of trouble communicating with / relating to other people on the Autistic Spectrum. It isn't that people on the Autistic Spectrum lack empathy - it is that they are differently empathetic. It wasn't that you didn't send out signals... It was that the people around you didn't know how to read them.

What I'm trying to say... Is that there isn't anything wrong with you. But you are different from most people, and that makes it hard, sometimes.

You can learn (painstakingly) to improve the quality of your relationships with people who simply don't get you... I think it is worth doing this, to a certain extent. But I also think that it is important to seek out people who are more like yourself. People who you can relax around instead of needing to devote vast resources to translating their words / behaviour which is... Exhausting. Is there some kind of in person support group you can access?

One thing that has perhaps been a bit difficult for me to come to terms with is that my intimacy requirements are different from most people. I feel comfortable with people being at arms length. I don't need to interact with people every day. Most other people are different from this. I have had to come to terms with things like... How the person who I think of as my very best friend in the whole wide world... Can be someone who I only talk to every few months. I realized pretty quick that a proper relationship / marriage would be off the cards for me. I don't need to see people every day. Maybe I could get married... If we lived in separate houses. Perhaps spent half a year (or more) of each year apart... I feel sad about this, sometimes.. But it has been a process of accepting myself and what I need and what it is that is good for me.