I'm self-absorbed and uncaring

This is no epiphany, and nothing new to me. I've always known that I'm not moved by passions and emotions in the same way that most other people are. I just can't get worked up over things. Whether it's anger, joy, jealousy, or despair, nothing people do really gets to me. I also can't read people's emotions very well, and when they tell me how they do feel (having given up on hinting), I'm surprised and baffled. Family and friends have been pointing all this out for years, so I've come to accept it, and mostly shrug it off. The problem is that lately I feel embattled, forced to concede that there's something wrong with me, rather than with all these irrational people who keep wallowing in hormone-induced emotions. And I sometimes resent the stereotyping and occasional snide comments. My ex used to drive me crazy (I lie, it was only mildly annoying) by going on about how I should be more spontaneous, I should express how I feel (ie, be clingy), and I could be more considerate. I wasn't demanding enough, would you believe? So I've developed a complex about this, and the only time I do get irrationally frustrated is when someone demands that I talk to them about how I feel. My heart starts pounding, palms get sweaty, mouth gets dry, the whole nine yards. I frantically search for something, anything, to throw out and appease the questioner. I've learned that it doesn't even matter if what I say makes sense, and in fact the less sensible the better! By hearing something neurotic and unjustified, people feel as if they've been given insight into the core of my being. They go away satisfied, I go away relieved.

The problem is my current boyfriend. I love him, I really do (yes yes, ceeb calayk nayaa). And I know he loves me in return. But there's already this tension that arises when he asks me to tell him what I'm really feeling. Or he says that I get lost in my own head, or that my responses are a little cooler or slower than his. So I feel a little tense, unable to be fake with him because he makes me want to be myself, and yet worried that I lack depth of feeling and my shallowness is off-puting. What I like about him is that occasionally he'll take a step back and admit that maybe, just maybe, he's not being entirely reasonable. We haven't known each other that long, I'm still getting over the ex, and we don't even see enough of each other anyway. But we don't see enough of each other. Surely I could be a little more open and honest to make the best of the time we are together. I try, I really do, but there's this niggling feeling that I'm going to lose him because I'm self-absorbed and uncaring.