These posts confirm something I’ve suspected about the Dope: the aliens are here and they are us.
I do feel like I belong here. Pretty clear why.
I generally feel like I fit in, but there are a few places that I kind of laugh at in terms of not fitting in. One is the place I get my hair cut. It’s an old-timey “barber shop” and I’ve known the guy who owns it for at least 20 years. But he has his clique of buddies, many of whom just show up there to gossip. I often feel like I’m at a club where I’m not a member. But in reality, I don’t think I want to be a member of that club. 
Mmm, I still feel like a little kid listening to the grownups talk.
Don’t interrupt.
You want to know why?
It was the fudge. You had us when you offered the home made fudge. If you had offered home made bacon fudge, you’d be the most popular Doper ever. Live and learn.
Must work on my cashew-bacon fudge.
shuts up because it is well past my bedtime
I too have been an introverted outsider all my life and get along better with small groups. I’d much rather have a conversation with three to four interesting people than be at a party with a dozen to or two. Oddly enough, I find when a group gets really large, it tends to coalesce into smaller sub-groups anyway, and I just pick one I like
Like your lack of enthusiasm about kids and childbirth stories, Thelma, I find little connection with your typical guy’s guy, only it’s endless blather about sports that does it for me. Luckily, I have found other groups that can feel like family, fandom most of my life and more recently, burners (participants of Burning Man).
I am introverted and, I am told, anti-social. I was not always this way - when I was younger I was much more extroverted and enjoyed meeting people and doing small-talk. I went thru some sort of transformation when my parents died that turned me into a curmudgeon. Small talk and social interactions with acquaintances in our social circle are painful for me - I feel like I am being judged all the time for being so quiet. Even with family (my wife’s, my own extended family on the other coast), I feel like an interloper.
However, what is interesting, if I am in a situation where I know almost no one, such as a brew-pub, a small town, on a train, etc., I am perfectly fine striking up conversation with total strangers and being myself, as long as I am on my own or with one other person I trust. I need to be with people I trust to be comfortable. It’s that large grey area in the middle where I am most out of sorts - where I kinda know the people, but not close enough to trust, and not strangers. Weird.
At work I am the only fish like me in the aquarium - my “team” consists of people who do various different things and don’t interact much - the only thing we really have in common is our boss. I don’t feel like I belong there, either, but the boss keeps pushing the whole “team interactions” bit.
As a result of all the above I take most comfort in solitude, or doing things (skiing, cycling, hiking, etc.) with people I know well and trust, and working on projects mostly by myself. I learned long ago if I wanted to do something, I need to be willing and able to do it alone, and not depend on the presence of others.
I won’t say I always feel like an outsider, but quite often. Often it’s just a wistful, almost familiar lack of connection and understanding, on very rare occasions it’s been almost debilitating.
Who knew there were so many of us?
Sounds nice; I’m looking forward to it.
Outsider.
My family was always moving, as a kids.
Average in any one house–2.5 years.
But that’s an average.
Once in a blue moon at work this happens to me and I feel like a valuable member of the team. Then the next day someone will, out of the blue (to me anyway), jump on me for some reason or other and it’s back to business as usual with me outside the group, looking in like a kid outside a candy store - I can see it but I can’t have it.
I don’t fit in with family all that well either. Also not here, not really.
I fit in okay with my family, but usually feel like an outsider elsewhere.
This really resonates. Except I’m often do fit in with the geeks, and I’m way too clumsy for the jocks. Going to college and having a whole school full of geeks was life-altering, I discovered that I can fit in.
I’ve become more gregarious as I age. Maybe my social skills have improved? Maybe I don’t care as much? Maybe I’ve done a better job of finding niches where I fit, so I have more confidence elsewhere.
Everywhere and in most situations. At work I am the boss so I close the door and deal with as few people as necessary. I read the Dope a lot and post more now so I don’t feel too much like an outsider here. I am happiest at home alone with my pets and since my husband is a workaholic he is not here much so win win for me.
The only place I feel comfortable and accepted is a horse barn. Everywhere else, I’m on the outside looking in and wondering why it is I feel so alienated from the world.
I constantly feel like an outsider, always have, I presume always will. I’ve always been an introverted, weird type and have never had many friends. The few I have been really close to have been getting fewer as the years go by and my friends have partnered up and gotten busy with their own lives so we’ve just kind of drifted apart gradually. I am not close to my family and I have never felt I belonged there. Even though I’ve worked at the same place for nearly a decade, it’s just a job to me and I’ve never really gotten close to any co-workers. I don’t get any sense of belonging or mission from working, it is just an annoying hindrance to spending my life enjoying it.
Oddly, I am quite ok with being alone though. Most people (I presume, anyway) feel lonely when they are by themselves. I only get lonely when I am around other people. I feel like I could pretty much be a cave hermit living in the woods somewhere and not lack for human company. I think this is actually a very positive thing, that I have learned to entertain and value myself. Most people seem to avoid being alone in any way possible and try to fill the void in their lives with other people and constant social interaction. The only person who will really truly understand you is yourself so I feel it’s better to invest in myself than in trying put those expectations on somebody who can’t fulfil them.
The only time I really get a feeling of belonging to something is when I have a Big Cosmic Mystic Moment and contemplate all of human history and time and evolution and the universe and how we all sprang from the same Thing and will all return to the same Thing, whatever the Thing is. As Sagan said, we are literally the universe trying to understand itself. Somehow this is very comforting to me. All the alienation and wars and pain that happens here on Earth is but a momentary speck of dust. But we do belong to each other after all because we are all pieces of the universe.
I have never felt as if I fit in. In my thirties and forties I compensated by drinking heavily; In my fifties and sixties I became addicted to prescription pain pills. Now, in my seventies I simply avoid any and all social situations. I live alone and read a lot. I don’t drink and I don’t use drugs. I’m simply waiting to die and get it over with.
I’ve been slowly discovering this, too. I wonder if it’s a cognitive thing, in that as we age, we naturally drift toward gregariousness as an evolutionary hedge against dying alone? I know, for me, finding my tribe IRL now takes more precedence than nurturing what I have online.
I have a dear once online-only friend who did just this a few years ago. She now hardly goes online anymore. As a result, her confidence soared and whatever social awkwardness she’d had is either gone or she’s learned to compartmentalize it quite well – I honestly don’t know which it is. I know her finding a FT job that she adores was/is part of it.
I’m more like ThelmaLou in that I’m older, have never had children. I married late, relatively speaking. My husband’s interests do not mirror most men’s. We’ve both noticed that most people IRL, don’t know how to deal with us because neither of us can be pigeonholed.
When I was a kid I was always the odd one out for various reasons. I wanted nothing more to be just like everyone else. It did a number on my psyche. I think it started dissipating maybe after grad school when something in me clicked and I finally felt comfortable enough with myself and who I was in the world?
I don’t feel like I’ve ever truly fit in anywhere. I grew up with an alcoholic father and a raging, narcissistic mother, so I have always felt different. I’m the only one in my family to go to college or move away from home. When I was 8, my father moved us from Long Island to NC and culture shock doesn’t begin to cover it (it was 1967). I was bullied in school for being different and smart. I have never felt comfortable in NC. If I didn’t have family here, I might have moved out of state. I love my family to pieces, but they’re rednecks, complete with deer heads on the wall and camouflage furniture. I want to go to museums. They want to go to amusement parks.
At work, I’m surrounded by religious people, Republicans, or religious Republicans. One other person reads some of the books I do, but that’s all I have in common with any coworkers.
I probably fit in best with friends from college, but not completely. Most are married (I’m not-briefly in my 20’s, now 59) with grown kids (and I can never remember all their names) (I have never wanted children), they’re working in their chosen fields and they all make more money and travel more than I do. None of them suffer from depression or anxiety so sometimes I’m a “problem child.”
On a positive note, I try to fit in when possible. If a friend recommends a TV show or book, I watch or read it because it gives us something else to talk about and bond over. My two nieces are teenagers now and will watch some of the stuff I recommend to them or read books I like and we now have that in common.
I’ve always felt like an outsider, but I’ve never minded being one. In my observation as a child, being an insider usually meant a willingness to do something stupid or mean, just to hang out with people that by definition weren’t too bright or particularly nice. Peer pressure was never “Hey, we’re going down to the local old folks home to volunteer to read to the elderly - if you don’t come, you can’t hang with us anymore.” It was always “Hey, we’re going down to the tracks to see if we can hop on a moving train- you in?” “Didn’t I hear about some kid losing an arm doing that a while back?” “I told ya - he’s chicken!” “YUmm, yeah… you guys have fun.” The teen years, with drugs, booze, sex, vandalism, all seemed like more chances to do something stupid, with even higher stakes.
As an adult, it’s not really an issue. I don’t worry about being an insider at work (almost always a lousy place to look for friends, imo), and my friends were picked because we have shared interests and/or similar views, so we’re all “in.”