I’m not sure if anyone can relate to this, but I still wanted to get “my feelings out”, so to speak. I’m a psychology student from Germany who’s in a Erasmus+ year (basically an exchange year during university) in France. I think the topic of loneliness has accompanied me my whole life in one form of another, but right now I think it strikes extra hard. Generally speaking, I think I’m pretty socially competent - I have friends, a girlfriend, I’m member of a Nightline back in Germany. I know a good amount of people from uni, in Germany and France, and can have a nice smalltalk with them.
However, I don’t feel included in any specific group, here or back in Germany. I am not outright rejected, people are still nice when I e.g. sit down with them for a meal. I went to a bar with some fellow exchange students, or talked with them during lunch. But these activities drain a lot of energy from me, and I can’t go to the nice places where people bond as a group. I can’t go to parties or concerts, having lunch with other people already drains my social battery for the day. I hear them telling how they will go on a trip or a party, how they went to the city and had a nice time. Last time I was in the city I nearly had a meltdown when I got home.
It just feels really lonely, as if all the people around me have fun as a group and I stand at the edge of the party, watching them as they enjoy themselves. I could walk up to them and have a drink, but I still wouldn’t be part of the party, no matter what I really do or try, because I wouldn’t be able to get in the same “fun mood” as them. This feeling of not belonging holds on the entire day right now.
However, that doesn’t mean I’m not happy or I can’t do fun things; I absolutely can. I love it when I can sleep out and watch a nice movie, when I have a walk next to the river and listen to my podcast. I love exploring the city (with headphones!), or watching a dog play with a ball, playing PC or writing in my diary. There are nice things in my life, which I appreciate and value. However, all these things are things I do on my own or with another person. And whenever I’m in a group, I very strongly feel that I don’t really fit to the group, that they are different than me.
I already thought about joining up a group here, but my language barrier makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to do so. And with my fellow exchange students I don’t really fit in, for the reasons outlined above.
Overall, I just feel very lonely here. Like a little alien watching the others have fun, while I’m on my own somewhere different. Of course I still have fun, I do great things, but I do them on my own. I feel that I’m broken or wrong for not able to enjoy group things as much as others do, that some part of me which is supposed to function correctly doesn’t work.
I am middle aged but I know what you mean. As I got older I realized that I was creating the suffering.
Not fitting in can become a story that plays in your head. If you pay attention most the people around you don’t notice this or don’t care. For all you know they may feel they don’t fit in themselves either.
Even if it was true, would it really matter? I found that I was striving to meet societal expectations that weren’t things I even valued. Could it be that you feel left out because you feel pressured to meet these expectations but are just going through the motions?
Besides those typical reasons being an ausländer is going to be difficult regardless. Especially if you have autism. Maybe there just aren’t many people around that have your lived experience. That’s ok it’s a good time to meet different types of people. When you get back home you have the rest of your life to meet people you have more in common with.
That’s actually a thought I had myself for a long time and on which I’d love to elaborate a bit more.
In psychotherapy (and CBT especially), there is a model where our thoughts create our feelings. Epictetus wrote two thousand years ago that “not the events make us suffer, but our judgment of them”. I think that’s an interesting approach, but I also think there are strong limitations. Some example can be obvious - like when a person is hungry, it wouldn’t be a good idea to tell a person " you’re suffering because you think you shouldn’t be hungry", but some can also be a bit less obvious. E.g. I am part of the queer community and sometimes get catcalled on the street. I could argue with myself now that I “make myself upset” about it and I create unnecessary suffering in my head, but that would to some extent shift the creator of the hurt they caused onto me. Like I would try to convince myself that part of the reason why I’m hurt is because I have the belief I shouldn’t be hurt by them catcalling me, and I think that’s a very dysfunction approach.
I think what heavily matters is how much I do suffer. If someone would catcall me and I’d grab a gun and kill the person, that would hardly be proportional. In this case, I would definitely at least to some extent have cognition’s which contribute to my suffering in a way which is avoidable.
Coming back on to the topic, what I’m interested in is where “the line” of an appropriate emotional response would be for me. I feel excluded and don’t really belong; I think that’s to some extent true, and it’s also okay that I don’t feel good about it. However, how much is appropriate? Should I just feel a bit isolated? Should I be sad now and then? Should I cry myself into bed every night?
The point for me is connected with the question how I should proceed. I absolutely feel the pressure to conform to society. But how much pressure (and suffering from not abiding) is appropriate? And is the amount of pain and sadness I feel extremely high? If yes, then I probably at least have some influence on a part of the suffering. If not, I risk trying to convince myself that I shouldn’t be sad feeling excluded and lonely, and that it isn’t that bad, etc.
Tl;dr - do I create the suffering myself or do is it a normal response of my psyche, and it would be self-hurting to convince myself that I create this suffering myself?
I don’t really have an answer, man, but I swear I could have written your post myself, to the letter. At 30+yo I have had some time to reflect on this, but mostly I have accepted that I would likely always feel somewhat “emotionally external” to most social contexts, bar a few exceptional situations (very close friends with whom I can just allow myself to stop the constant questioning). I can’t relate very well to “most people” (whatever that means -neurotypicals? anyway) on a number of aspects, so my conclusion so far is that this has caused the feeling of loneliness in question. All the best,
Thank you! Relating and understanding already helps me a lot. In the end it just means that I am not really broken, because if a lot of people relate to my feeling we can’t all be broken, yk?
I find it uncomfortable not to understand. It has taken me decades to make peace with the notion that being different is not only acceptable, but good. Many people don’t get me, but the ones who do become friends for life. Many people find things interesting or enjoyable that would make me cry from boredom.
I’ve chosen to find it charming.
You might be able to do that, too. If not now, then one day. It took me a long time.
Peace.
Not sure if its similar but I was never able to be into anything and always sorta felt like a hanger on and on the periphery because I just can’t get really into the particular group. Now I still consider many people my friends its just that I kinda barely meet the requirements to be one of them. Even in work I resist heavily being a specialist an when I look for work (like right now actually) and they ask what am looking for I say what im really looking for is an employer who is looking the critical thinking skills that are at my core and ability to learn as necessary. Then I follow it up that what matters is how the company values things and as far as skills X is my most recent thing but I have done alot of Y and way back I used to do Z. I guess what im saying is I sorta don’t want to be to in depth with anything but rather do different things and thats fine. I will see some folks regularly. Not as much as they might see others but decently enough. I do feel like the world wants me to choose a lane though.
You sound a lot like me. I figured it out for myself, maybe this insight will help you, maybe it won’t apply, but I’ll share.
I’m an introvert to start and on the spectrum. The world seems built for extroverts, and for a long time I thought the thing I was “supposed” to do was a bunch of extrovert activities that required me to mask my autism and drained me of all my energy. I felt a very similar feeling of being with people but feeling alone, I was in my head carefully running the scripts and behaviors I have learned. Not consciously (well, sometimes consciously) but it was just this extra burden I was carrying around that no one else was. It wasn’t a fun day at the beach without a care in the world, it was an assault on my senses, everything is too bright and too loud and sand is everywhere and “oh, what did that person just say, ugh, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do in this situation. I don’t want to play volleyball but are you supposed to anyways because that’s what people do at the beach?”
Over time I found people whose interests more closely aligned with mine. People I could trust to share my true self with, and not the mask of social scripts that I had learned was what I was “supposed” to do. And I realized I was not alone, but that a lot of the activities that people commonly associated with social togetherness were just not for me.
University can be a difficult time, most of the fun to be had is in those activities that I wasn’t very compatible with. I used to think that maybe I was broken too, but now I think that I am just different, and there’s nothing wrong with different. I have friends and a wife and people that I care about and who care about me, the real me, and I don’t feel so alone anymore.
I wish the same for you, if you like exploring the city with headphones, find someone that wants to do that too. If you like watching a dog play with a ball, there are people that will want to do that with you too. I found the more I opened up to people about who I really am and stopped caring about who I was “supposed” to be, the happier I became, the less lonely I felt.
I am sorry things are difficult for you now, in my experience it does get better. Early 20s are the time when people want to party and go to concerts and be quite loud. In a decade those same people will enjoy a quiet evening at home just as much as you do now.
You my Internet friend are not broken, you are just different, and different is beautiful.
Thank you a lot! I know on a rational level as right that I’m not broken, that I’m just different. My psychology knowledge also helps a lot here, because I can contextualize my personal disorder into a more “neutral” framework and know why I feel the way I do. It sucks a lot though if basically every person I know at least to some extent goes to partys and concerts and have drinks and watch series with their friends, and for me the greatest joy is to sit next to a river and read a book. This huge difference between what I like vs what a lot of my friends like is draining.
It helps me a lot to know that I’m not alone with my experiences, and that it gets better after uni + a few years of growing older. The fact that someone can relate to my feeling makes me feel less alone and somehow validated. Thank you!
I relate to this viscerally. Throughout my life, the easiest way for me to genuinely connect with others has been through a setting where we don’t have in-person body language.
In real life I’ve usually been quite bubbly, but that’s because I’m usually quite happy and enjoy spreading positive energy. It’s much better to uplift others than to break them down.
My friend groups have ebbed and flown over the years, but ultimately something drives us apart. Most of the time I’m clueless as to why. I think it’s because people don’t want to hurt my feelings because I’m polite and they have a history with me, but don’t want to continue a friendship.
I prefer to slide in social situations where we are in a small group or one-on-one. It usually feels more substantive and brings people who don’t mind info-dumping, obsessions, and more often than not, they enjoy the impact of my neurotype on my personality. It’s not like people can’t enjoy my personality… Just a specific subset. However, I’ve never felt like I’ve truly belonged in any group either. Nerdy, but not in the archetype to where I fit in with a traditional nerd. Enjoy outdoor things, but not to the point where it defines my life, as I enjoy electronics, linguistics, and musicianship. Broad range of interests that are too esoteric can put people off from a lack of relatability.
Being German American with my heritage mostly detached, I’d say this is the case in both Germany and the US. I grew up teaching myself the language, and have held a semblance of being “German” as an ethnicity, but am very clearly culturally distinct from real German people. It’s weird to observe that both cultures forego their norms and cave into their humanity when it comes to socializing. All folks follow different strokes.
It just seems like whenever you want to put yourself out there, there’s some intangible barrier that blocks a true friendship from forming. Is it ineptness? Am I perceived as selfish by talking too much about an interest? What about the questions I ask? My responses… As I’ve gotten older I’ve cared far less about the opinions of others. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t yearn for some form of involvement. Hope you feel okay. This community has made me feel far less alien than I ever have.
Just wanted to say that I find your background really interesting. I live in the US and my older relatives came from Deutschland. They have all died by now, but I have lots of memories of the language. I have been attempting to learn the language now as an adult by myself.
I have never met anyone else in the United States who had any German family history or interest in the language. Curious which area you live in? Do you have other German speakers in your area?
Also same about not being able to maintain friendships. Maybe it’s just normal cycling as time passes and you both change. I also wonder if it’s because I have never met anyone that I could relate to or discuss my interests with. It may be that I am a low maintenance friend as well, you can contact me whenever, but some people get upset if you aren’t in nearly daily conversation.