Walking Man, you seem to have a good grasp of your situation and have made a lot of effort to advance yourself, as best you can.

One thing I will not tell you is that you can keep yourself content by pursuing hobbies that you can do alone. Human beings evolved to need companionship. There is no way around that. You are wise to identify your problem as loneliness and need for affection. Those are real needs and they are not going to go away.

It would be nice if you could fine a suitable girlfriend, but, at the very least, you need contact with people who care something for you. I once had a co-worker who had epilepsy. Do not be too sure that a condition like that is a reason not to be able to pursue employment. You are too young to simply be home all the time. That's a recipe for going nuts. And, besides, you have too much to offer. Find a job to do somewhere, whether it pays wages or not. Put your good mind to some use doing something that has you with other people.

Your analysis of your childhood sounds spot-on. As you realize, though, you can't change that now. But you don't need companionship and affection just because you didn't get enough as a child. You would still need those things, even if you got tons of it as a child. It's just that overly undemonstrative parents tend to rear overly reserved, reticent children. That's tough to overcome. Part of what is needed is to have more of a willingness to take chances of feeling foolish, which I suspect is something that you avoid.

I've got some tendencies like that myself. Rejection can be very hard to take. What I've learned to tell myself is that making a social mistake is not the end of the world. Getting rejected hurts, but I won't die from it. 40 is still very young. As far as you being husband material, trust me, women have taken chances on longer shots than you. It happens all the time.

The way you handle these normal needs is to try and get them met. You won't handle them by trying to repress them. I think you already know that. You sound like you are real under experienced for your age. Then, again, you've been involved in academic environments where you did have to interact, so you can't be utterly clueless. If you care about the welfare of others, people will pick up on that. Get out where you can show that you do. It may take a rather long investment before you get a return, which I think defeats a lot of people. Decide not to be defeated that way.

What your life will be like 15 years from now could be vastly different depending on what you do over the next couple of years.