To ask if you feel like you ‘fit in’

[Grainofsandy]

In my early 40s and I’ve never fitted in anywhere…
Not at school, university, with my family, at work. It’s really lonely.
Is that just how everyone feels - like they don’t fit in anywhere and life is a party they aren’t invited to?

I've never felt that I fitted in, not even as a small child, although I'm fairly sure I'm autistic so I guess it comes with the territory.

I could have written this!

I very rarely did as a child but I found my tribe at uni and have been lucky to feel I fit in at work and with different circles of friends since. I’m usually the youngest in any group and have found I feel comfy with older people. The exception is other school parents, I’m one of the older ones but our ages don’t seem relevant as our DC are obviously at the same age/stage.

I've never fitted in anywhere
Never even had a relationship
Not sure what reason is, I think I'm reasonably polite, pleasant, have interests etc

Named changed for this answer, but it’s an honest one!

Outside of my family I don’t fit in with people if I’m myself. I can’t talk about the things that interest me, or make jokes or have a conversation that excites me. I don’t fit in with most people in my orbit because they’re just not very clever, or very curious.
It’s not that I’m an academic or work in a challenging role but sometimes I could scream at how stupid and dull a lot people are.
Obviously that’s not socially acceptable and it’s not their fault, so I just keep to myself mostly.

This idea that there’s a ‘fit’ to fit in is wrong. We are all just individuals going through life with our own quirks and insecurities. No one is special. Once you realise that, and that no one is holding up score cards or particularly gives a shit, you can be free to just be your own weirdo self and be happy in your own skin. That’s the very moment you ‘fit in’ because ‘fitting in’ all comes back to you and your perception of the world.

Not really. Not the real me anyway.

So if no one feels like they fit in, we all fit in, yes? 😊

I think it’s easy to look in and see groups of women out together, but how many of them are conforming to fit into that group?

I encourage DD to play with lots of children rather than being fixated on having a best friend. I had a BF from the age of 4. She dropped me when her husband came on the scene and as a result I have no friends from school that I see or socialise with. I do feel very lonely at times and try to avoid social media when I feel like that.

I felt like I fitted in till the last couple of years

I think tech and Covid have changed things to the point that my mild and moderate personality almost seems OTT now. Just posting that info to see if anyone else can relate. (Or maybe it's a coincidence).

I think society goes through stages and I was probably lucky to be a good fit for a long time - school, work, anywhere really.

I've never fitted in, not since I was a teenager and the aim was to be homogeneous lump with one person indistinguishable from the others. Instead I fit in my own skin and I spend time with different people who enjoy my company and whose company I enjoy. A group of weirdos, each happy in themselves, is my ideal.

I disagree with this because you might like yourself perfectly well but if no one else likes your weirdo self then you just don't fit in do you?

OP I grew up desperately wanting to have a group of friends like the characters off Friends. I really wanted to fit in and drank a lot of alcohol to try to make it happen. But I was always on the edge of any group. Now I'm much older and wiser, I realise I'm probably ND and that actually although I love the idea of a lovely group of friends that I do loads with, I actually find people quite exhausting.

I have a local friend that I see once a week and work with some wonderful people who all happen to have ND kids like me - and I've finally found a group of people who I get and who get me. But I realise seeing them at work and for the odd meal is enough for me. It took me 45 years to start to understand myself and meet these people though and I've had many lengthy periods where I've had no friends.

Being lonely or friendless for long stetches definitely doesn't mean that you'll be lonely or friendless forever.

I am myself in life. However I feel like I've always lived in no man's land, in between groups. Used to it now, I can't see things changing now I'm in my late 40s.

Yes. I recently found out ai am autistic.

Gah! I mean no, I don't fit in.

I like this too.

I feel like I fit in, very lucky to have made a very sold friendship group at primary school that has lasted almost 40 years. I was the fat kid at school but never got bullied because I had a lot of friends across different groups. I was very conscious of my weight though.

I lost the weight by the time I was at uni so that was a different experience.

I was then lucky to get a job with an amazing team, I have worked there for 17 years and they feel like family. Some of my best friends are my work friends.

Having kids at school has been a different experience. I’m still finding my feet with the mum groups as I am rarely there at pick ups and drop offs due to work. I feel a bit alien in those groups but it’s one of those things and there is a nice group of nursery mums that I do meet up with. I’m hopeful some friendships may develop there over time. I do speak to them but not very often due to circumstances.

Definitely not. Being 39, single and childless is one of the reasons. I know nobody in my position in my day to day life.

I have friends, and a lovely family, but I’m very much ‘me’. I used to worry about that, but now I’m glad.

@Probablyshouldntsay :

"I can’t talk about the things that interest me, or make jokes or have a conversation that excites me. "

Thats strange. What things interest you that you can't talk to people about? Surely whatever you are into, be in the most obscure poetry of an ancient Japanese poet, there must be some people who love talking about your interest.

Ive never fitted in anywhere so i started to stand out and and be more me i love it took me years.
Now people like me for me because i couldnt care what others think.
The moment i stopped trying to blend /fit in was the moment i got noticed.

I could have written this .
I have differing groups of friends some since primary school , some from a previous job and following a concerted effort some new friends . I find I engage with everyone but I'm not ever their go to person and I can see stronger friendships forming within the group .

The whole idea of ‘fitting in’ (when applied generally rather than in the context of being a distinct minority in a particular environment) seems to imply that all of humanity is some big homogenous blob, rather than billions of individuals who all experience things quite differently from one another, have different tastes and opinions and thoughts and feelings and histories and physical and mental and emotional capabilities.

So to me it always sounds kind of dismissive when people claim not fitting in as a kind of identity - like they are a one-off custom design and ‘everyone else’ is just off the peg mass produced crap.

Once you stop telling yourself that ‘everyone else’ is privy to some magical universal secret of belonging from which you are excluded, life feels a lot easier.

I used to feel like I didn’t fit in, but when I looked more closely at what was actually going on I realised that (a) I just didn’t enjoy the same things as many of my peers (b) there were plenty of people with whom I did share interests and values and perspectives, I just had to find them (c) even when you look from the outside like you ‘fit in’ you’ll still feel awkward or gauche or rejected or left out or pissed off or alienated on a regular basis, and you’ll still annoy people or bore people or be bored / annoyed by others - because that’s just what it’s like being in the world with other people in all our variation and diversity. Part of it is a matter of developing a thicker skin and understanding that we can’t all always like one another unreservedly, and there will be conflict, and friendships and attachments will come and go, and there will be things we don’t understand about how others behave just as they won’t understand things about us.

There is no secret or set of rules or secret code - we are all just winging it.

Bravo!

Of course there are! Just not at my work, or in circles I used to mix in.
I genuinely don’t mean to sound unkind, a lot of the time I feel lonely. I think it’s why I enjoy Mumsnet and hanging out with my family, a lot of the women on here are whip smart and funny, but I just can’t seem to find them in real life.