What is ironic about that statement is you mentioned you may be diagnosed with Autism, and what is the stereotypical autistic person supoosed to be like? Rain man. A loner. But in reality many autistic people are like what you just stated.
One thing that often isn't taken into account with autistics is that oftentimes I'd imagine that they in part wind up being loners because they have too many misunderstandings with neurotypical people. A lot of folks naturally always think of things like whether your married or single, isolated or surrounded by people, and so forth as being by choice, but there's not always much in the way of choice about it.
Imagine being in a world full of people who's very thought processes are alien to you and to whom your very thought processes are alien. Then imagine further that these people who are different shape the common culture and the structure of society. Think of all the times people would completely miss the point you're trying to make and you'd completely miss there's. Think of the difficulities you'd have trying to integrate yourself into an alien social structure designed to really only be understood by and be accessible to people who have a naturally different pattern of thought and perception. One would almost have to be a genius just to be able to do the minimum to understand the basics of why the people around them behave as they do and how to navigate their system, the latter being genuinely impossible in many cases. That is the world a lot of autistics face.
Then, add to that, the fact that neurotypical people are generally biologically driven to force people who are different to comform to normal behavior patterns and, if that fails, shun them. That's instinctual behavior we can trace back since well before the dawn of human history. So autistic children often get taunted and teased and beat up in school and then as adults told they must do things they can't do and why can't they just think and behave like everyone else, by the people who choose not to just ignore them altogether.
I actually think that if there were a society of autistics and we stuck a few random "normal" people in there, the neurotypicals would actually wind up not understanding the system and generally being considered loners who can't be successful in life also -- because the societal system would be designed for people so unlike them and they'd be surrounded by people so unlike them that it would be nearly impossible for them to navigate.
I'm not entirely sure that world would be worse than the one we have now. It would be interesting to see how it might operate. The one thing that jumps immediately to mind is that there would be nearly no lies because so many autistics are incapable of falsehood and are very literal and straightforward in the way they behave.
Anyhow, all of this is not to say that autistics don't have a natural disposition to be less social than most people. I'd imagine they probably do -- and research on infants and very young children bares this out. But they are also have reasons beyond what their condition itself dictates (Such as being overwhelmed by a lot of chaos one might find in say, parties, large social gatherings, other people in general, or being thoughtful contemplative people who are content to engage in deep thought and sort of draw back from what is going on around them) not to be social and also to learn to like not being social. I mean, almost anyone who has ever been unpopular probably has some experience with accilimating to solitary activities to a certain extent -- imagine how much stronger this would be if the world in general seemed a confusing and overwhelming crazy sort of place and everyone seemed to hate you, plus you had natural inclinations towards wanting routine and stability and predictability that real people don't often offer.
If an infant felt touch was overwhelming and hated change and unpredictability, couldn't even an adult randomly reaching in a crib making strange baby noise and randomly poking and prodding seem more like an attack than comforting? That's the sort of problem autistics face from literally the beginning of their lives. Things that other people like such as fun surprises and random touch are perceived as almost unbearable torture.
Autistics also tend to have a few obsessive interests and not really be able to generate much interest in anything else at times. People don't understand and tend to say "Why can't you just stop doing ___ and focus on ____?" not as a question, but as a criticism, whereas to an autistic it's the most naturally thing in the world to be enveloped in an obsessive interest to the detriment of doing things that a neurotypical would find easy and an autistic would find impossible.
The specific type of autism I might have is called Asperger's Syndrome, which is considered a type of high-functioning autism. I am getting formally tested for it in the next couple weeks. Because it's so high-functioning, I can pass as normal in a causal conversation, and I've made it into my twenties before it was discovered. But my life is beginning to make a lot more sense as a result. I've always at some level understood that I perceive the world in a different way and couldn't function normally in some respects, but I could never understand why and all of the sudden it just begins to click.
Anyhow, more to the point, interestingly, I actually made a major point of finding a wife, spending about five years searching very aggressively, to where it was the main goal and dream I had in life. I could never quite figure out why it was so hard for me to find any success at it, exactly. I could point to various reasons and say, hey, maybe I'm not good looking or weigh too much or don't have enough money or have too many physical health problems or whatever, but then I'd see an ugly guy without the use of his legs or something (Which is a much worse physical disability than anything I suffer) on tv who found a spouse kind of randomly and it just wouldn't make sense.
But why was it that I'd have to find 1,000 people to talk to on the Internet with the intent of maybe dating and I might get one to agree to go out with me out of that bunch? Why did all my actual relationships eventually fail for reasons I couldn't determine? I literally would date a girl exclusively for a long time, we'd speak of marriage, and then all of sudden things would immediately fall apart and I would always be the one dumped. I thought, geez, I'm really honest and predictable and loyal and forthright, shouldn't women love that? But apparently people like surprises and chaos and small little social lies that I just couldn't manage, or might have hinted at things I couldn't pick up on because even as a high-functioning autistic I wouldn't be able to grasp subtle implications in a lot of social behavior.
Not that it makes the fact that I had to give up on finding a wife any less sad, but I guess it's neat to know that by having so many long term relationships of a serious nature, I was actually way overachieving for an autistic rather than being a mysteriously underachieving normal person. It makes me sad, though, because finding a wife was really my only true dream or ambition in life and it's just not to be. Somehow it doesn't seem right that I couldn't find that. But I've done everything I know how to do and so that was pretty much that. I certainly explored a large enough sample size to pretty much know.
I'm really a romantic in my own way, and fortunately I'm very affectionate in relationships (In contrast to everything else -- I actually went from about the age of 9 to 19 without any physical contact with a human being because I hated hugs and handshakes and such, though I would pet and wrestle with my dog occasionally, but for some reason I am very different when it comes to women of the opposite gender, which is definitely a good thing, I was pleasantly surprised at my ability to enjoy cuddling and kissing and so forth). Maybe that's one area where I am not autistic, interestingly, but in a sense that's more a curse than a blessing if I can't find a spouse. Unfortunately it seems I'm just autistic enough not to enjoy dating lots of different people and switching back and forth -- I genuinely just wanted to date one person and marry her, I found the change and so forth of adjusting to new people constantly very difficult when I was actively looking for a spouse and having to find someone new periodically after I'd get dumped.
