For what it's worth, I would avoid people complaining about my being intimidating. That's their problem, not mine.

Not sure if it helps but I also have trouble not just with empathy but all other emotions as well. And yeah, my sum total of emotional "intelligence" is from reading books.

Hey, this gives me an idea for a running thread (like Dear T or In Session) -- 'Weird Emotional Encounters of the Third (or Nth) Kind' -- where folks post about all the times during the day/week that they had no idea what to say / react in situations involving emotions? And, others can chip in with ideas? That way we'll have a collective encyclopaedic reference thread to check out whenever we're unsure how to respond? I'm totally serious.

For example, I had absolutely no idea what to say yesterday in any of these really normal sorts of situations -- 1. Folks who were complaining about their (incredibly sucky) jobs; 2. Folks talking about having a fight with their partners. I mostly just stared at them quizzically and made a few sympathetic-sounding-in-my-head-but-mostly-coming-out-as-a-constipated-burp noises (and was largely grateful that they most likely attributed my weird non-response to my being piss-drunk -- problem is I'd have been even more awkward and weird if I hadn't had a few).