Can you please provide some things to read on this as I've never heard about this before and I'm genuinely interested in learning more about autism and by extension myself.

I am really curious about other people and some of my special interests are relationships / social phenomena For example, I find couples who are married for a long time very interesting and I've read lots of memoirs and research on what makes some relationships last longer. So I totally get being interested in people.

What's really different from what I know of autism and my experiences is the idea of expecting special interests to reciprocate your interest in them or like / love you. I've always experienced special interests as topics / subjects that are intrinsically absorbing to me, that I can't turn my mind away from, but that I don't expect anything back from and don't really have an intense emotional attachment to. In fact special interests are calming to me precisely because they don't involve intense emotions which I find unpleasant even when they're positive.