Have you been through a period in your life where you feel like you don’t “belong” to a certain type of group?

30 comments

1. I’m that way now. I don’t feel as though I fit into any group per day, and that’s ok. We’re all individuals so it makes sense that we won’t always conform to all of the ideals within certain groups.

2. I had children at a relatively young age, and many of the other Mothers of students at my kids schools were older than me. I often got the sense that they didn’t really take me seriously and/or were constantly judging me 😑

3. Yes, very much so. Ironically, that experience of feeling that you don’t fit in our belong anywhere is probably universal and something that links us together.

4. Still do! I’m just a floater friend, always on the outside of the group. It’s given me a rich life, with a lot of individually great and interesting people that I hang out with 1 on 1.

   I’m just not “into” a lot of things enough to bond with people over them, and I can never find more people who are just “kinda” into things to share interests. I watch anime, but I’m not like, into anime, I just like good fantasy and sci fi and the big budgets for those are often in animation. I weightlift and run, but I’m slow and I can’t talk to people when I’m lifting or I lose focus and want to go home. I love going to rock and metal shows, but I’m no metalhead, I just like what I like.

5. Yes. When I was the only one in my friends group that had children.

6. Sure. I always thought it was a near-universal experience in high school.

7. I kind of feel like this, I have several group of friends, but I don’t identify with any really…

   I am 34, have a toddler, am a urban mom, have zero desire to ever move to the suburbs, work full time, exercise, and like to spend time with my family but also with my friends, and I like a cocktail once in a while, and eating at nice places. I like to travel to different places… I don’t have a mom friend that is similar to me, so when we are with our friends that have kids, we are too different, but that’s ok… when I am with my friends that don’t have children, they sometimes don’t understand a few restrictions I have, or when I am with my younger friends in their late/mid 20s we are so different as well… idk… I am still their friend, we have fun, but I don’t have anyone that is similar to me

8. You know how everyone in high school/college is partying & doing stupid things with their friends & experiencing all these new things? I’m not fitting in to that at all. I feel stupid.

9. I don’t have a group. I have lots of friends who don’t really know each other. I like smaller gatherings over big ones.

   I have friends from childhood, friends from secondary school, college friends, mom friends in two states, friends from jobs I no longer work, friends I currently work with, friends I met through social media.

   I’m actually going to a show next week. I really wanted to go but thought it would be a long shot that anyone else would so I invited a bunch of people I know, thinking 0-1 would accept. Turns out three did and one has never met the other two, and the other two have only met each other maybe once or twice. Will be interesting and fun!

   Sometimes I wish I had a group, like a village I belong to, but then I realize I probably wouldn’t be good as a villager, anyway.

10. I’m not straight. Just about everyone is very good at making it clear that gay women don’t belong. It’s not all bad, because straight women get a lot of nonsense dumped on them. No one tries that with me.

11. I’m pretty damn sure that I don’t fit anywhere. I’m a stay at home wife because my husband does not pick up the slack when I work outside the home(his version of feminism is “you work outside *and* do all the other stuff too). I needlepoint, weave, cross stitch, putter in my garden. I gwt told “I don’t have time for that” from other women. I don’t fit.

12. I’ve pretty much always felt that way. I do have friends and my husband is my partner in the truest sense, but I don’t really have anyone in my life who is *like* me. Like I don’t have anyone to share my hobbies with. It does get lonely sometimes, but it’s hard to bond with people my age because of the way my parents handled raising my sisters and me.

    Part of it is definitely that most of my hobbies are single person activities, like knitting, but part of it is also that I’m just not interested in video games or really any of the things that were popular when I was growing up. I simply don’t have the nostalgia for things like Pokemon because I wasn’t allowed to watch the show or play the game. I wasn’t allowed to watch TV much or play video games at all, movies were super limited, music was monitored to an extreme degree, and really all I was allowed to do was dance class and read. So there’s just this gigantic cultural gap in my brain for my demographic.

    Making friends with older people is hard because they don’t take you seriously. Younger people are not in the same place in life so it’s hard to relate.

    Parents, don’t do this stuff to your kids. It makes things rough later.

13. Yeah I’m that way now. It’s probably because I have kind of a couple of friends, but no close friends, and no friend groups at all. My hobbies are kind of random and most of the things Im really into, the other people who are into them are way older, way younger, or way more experienced in the topics than me.

14. Yes. I don’t have children (by choice) so I am pretty much excluded from groups of women my age. I’m not at the school gates, I can’t talk about my kids at book club or at the park, so I very much feel like an outsider. I’m mostly very happy about that! I found my tribe in hiking groups.

15. I received a full scholarship to a very very expensive university, so almost everyone I interacted with was from deep generational wealth. I grew up pretty poor, mom on disability – real classic “small rural town to big city” vibe.

    One time in class my professor’s ice breaker was to go around the room and each of us would list how many foreign countries we’d been to. Lmao. Kids were listing 10, 12 countries and I had zero.

    Overall most of my friends just grew up and live in totally different realities. Concerns or just conversations about health insurance, medical bills, retirement, rent prices or work in general are all met with blank stares or “yeahhh, that’s rough 😕”. Nobody was ever outright classist or rude to me (aside from one weird friend), but it was just very hard to relate to people in a meaningful way.

16. Every day of my life tbh. I was diagnosed with Asperger’s (now ASD level 1) from a very young ago and I’m not ‘normal’ enough to be close with neurotypicals, but I also feel like I’m not disabled enough to belong to the neurodiverse groups as for example I’m a nurse and currently holding down two jobs. So I’m like a drifting leaf that enters and exits from social circles, unable to find a place to belong unfortunately. It’s been like that my entire life, no matter how much I try and put myself out there.

17. Yes, I’ve always struggled with fitting in with people my own age. I can’t drink and don’t particularly like partying. I also have health issues that limit how adventurous and far away outings can be.

    I’ve always preferred chatting, board games, movies, and simple outings. Gradually I’ve noticed that I have an easier time being friends with older people because our hobbies and interests tend to align better.

18. All the time. Even when I feel like I am fitting in I am made to feel that I am not good enough.

19. Definitely now… late 20’s/early 30’s —has REALLY pointed out the great socioeconomic/lifestyle/privilege divides among members of my primary friend group. We all technically went to “rich kid” elite private schools (but were more weird/artsy socially), but as adults, it’s become pretty crystal clear that half of us actually DON’T have the same opportunities/financial handouts (myself included). It makes a lot of my friends “struggles” extremely unrelatable and hard to be around sometimes. Conversely? I’m in the very high end spectrum of a technical career field (hairdressing), so I’M also an unrelatable peer to my more bohemian service industry friends…I definitely always feel like a “man without a country”—unmarried, no kids, too poor to own property, but also too rich to be a bohemian/struggling artist.

20. I’m a black girl and I grew up in a predominately white area. Growing up I never fit in with anyone, kids at school, family, girl scouts….I was always too black for the white kids, and too white for the black kids.

    I got very used to hanging out alone.

21. Well… a few hours ago, I read about some Christopher Street Day thing and I thought “I don’t belong there” because I live in a heterosexual relationship for so long

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23. My whole existence! Honestly I’ve never felt like I fit in. That’s okay.

24. I went back to school at 30 to finish my undergrad in biochem, had a baby at 32, got my first job before he turned 1. I’m in biotech in the early stages of my career as an older, mom, woman of color and a first generation graduate from immigrated parents….so yeahhhh. Imposter syndrome is something that I struggle with pretty much daily. It’s getting better and I’m working on.

25. Maybe I’m interpreting the question wrong, but I don’t feel like I fit in with the other gay women who are my age in the community.

26. Yes, all my life and all groups.

27. Yes I’ve felt it forever. I’m gay.

28. That describes most of my life with friends.

29. Admittedly, that’s my whole life. I’m lucky enough to have good friends, but more as individual relationships; when my friends are part of groups, I never really consider myself properly part of that group. I can get along with just about anyone, but finding someone who I really connect with is – if you’ll pardon the cliché – like finding a needle in a haystack.

30. Yes, the period between birth and the present 🙁