For ann yeltrab: I suffer from a very similar situation, but without the autistic spectrum aspect.

I always thought I was patently unlovable. But my brother endured the same kind of hot-and-cold / or just completely icy presence of my mother. She was great with my two younger sisters, but not with my brother and me. We were really good kids; obedient, intelligent, and kind. But she essentially treated us like unwanted, bothersome wastrels.

She always jumped to the worst conclusions---she was deeply and regularly suspicious, even when there was absolutely no need to be---I don't remember her ever really being encouraging, or terribly patient, or doting---If it weren't for my father and his naturally loving personality, we would have grown up with fewer than 10 hugs between us, my brother and I. I don't remember compliments, or any kind of explanations for the tough questions in life. I grew up thinking that my opinion DID NOT MATTER, and wasn't wanted, even as I got older.

We did not receive a lot of life lessons that every child should get first from their parents.

Now, to be completely fair, my mother DID try very hard to rectify a few things after she received a diagnosis of cancer. I was in college, but was coming home fairly regularly for visits, so we achieved a bit of healing, and closure, between the two of us. I knew that at least, she recognized where she had gone wrong, and was trying to fix some things. It was not as successful for my brother, who suffered the brunt of her unexplained behaviour, and who lived on his own at that point, and who had developed a serious addiction to alcohol, as well. I do believe he was quite profoundly shaped, in a damaging way, by her distance from us (he was 3 years older than me, and extremely intelligent and also very sensitive). In spite of her efforts, I will never know where her inability to love us, and to show it, ever came from.

I do think that this aspect of my life is one of the most painful things a person can experience; second place would go to the actual loss of that person before their time.