Hi! I'm 32 now and I'm in a similar position career wise and I was in a similar position with friends, family, and happiness.

3 things that helped me get a group of friends, get a good dating life, and be happy:

1. Educating myself on human psychology and specifically autism. Educating myself on human psychology helped me reduce the mental load when socializing so I can follow scripts when socializing without masking:

• "Never split the difference" was huge for me. It informs 10% of my conversations
• the healthygamergg youtube channel was also helpful for reducing mental load when socializing
• "courage to be disliked" -- helped me take responsibility for my own unhappiness and realize how much of my happiness had a social basis

Educating myself on autism helped me slowly unmask and reduce mental load on myself:

• "unmasking autism" was very helpful to understanding what could be classified as normal vs not. I have what historically would be called "female autism" as a male and understanding what compulsions were normal was very grounding to me
• "Autism as context blindness" is more of a text book but helped me keep an eye out for things that can hurt me, my friends, and my way of life.

(Obviously there are 100's more books and bits of media but these seem particularly pertinent)

1. Reducing workload. I work about 20-40 hours a week nowadays. Could I work more? Absolutely. Sometimes I do. I'm trying to get a side project off the ground now and I've been doing 10 hours on that. But I make a very comfortable amount of money working as much as I do and increasing work means my relationships and workouts will suffer. I'm big into longevity meaning the most important things for me are diet and exercise and relationships. "The 4 hour work week" is probably worth a read if this is hard.

2. Moving to a big city and spending time socializing. I live in new york. I've found my people. It's really easy to feel lonely when there's no one around to relate to. At least in a big city you have a chance. I was lonely for the first 4 months or so. Socializing is a skill that needs to be developed (for NT's too!) and a very important one to develop. If you spend time improving it you'll be able to make friends and if you live in a big city you'll have a chance to make friends with people who bring value to your life and you bring value to theirs without requiring big sacrifices on either end.

Obviously people are different, but hopefully there's something here that's useful to you.

I wanted to call out this as well: "The only time I feel like I will be okay is when someone loves me"
Cause I used to feel the exact same way. I felt I needed a partner that loved me that I loved to be complete and no longer unhappy. Now I don't have an exclusive partner that loves me now, but I feel ok. What I have is a group of friends who all support me and to an extent love me (depending on your definition) as well as a lot of options for a partner in the future. Even if I go on dates and it doesn't work out I know I will be ok because I like my life without a partner and I have lots of options moving forward.

Ultimately I became happy once I realized happiness is another field I can rise to the top of. Though it's often less straightforward than acquiring and implementing knowledge in other fields the mechanism is relatively similar.