Do other people describe you or treat you as "weird"? Come on in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This area is stultifying. People are practically dead inside, unless they're mad or feeling mean. I would move somewhere else, where there is an artists' community or a college or literally anywhere but here. I bet you will be considered normal somewhere else.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Im white and married an Asian man. I’ve come to realize that we will never have couples friends because most white men do not want to be friends with an Asian man. I think it’s because Asian men are not seen as traditionally masculine, which is what white men gravitate toward. It’s very odd because I’ve noticed white women have no problem being friends with Asian women. We’ve been married 25 years and I’ve come to accept this. People shy away from anyone even slightly different than themselves.

This is an insane theory.

I'm a white female married to an asian immigrant. My husband isn't interested in being friends with white men. I've never really thought of it and I don't think he's racist. He doesn't have much in common with them, so I'm unsure how they would be friends, where they would meet. He doesn't have a lot of hobbies, doesn't watch football, or drink alcohol. I have a lot of Asian friends because of him. He works with a lot of Asians too. The easiest way to meet couples is through religious communities. I think with international couples, it's pretty typical one spouse ends up adapting themselves more to the other culture. Women tend to be more accommodating.

Interesting. As a white woman married to an asian guy do you have mostly white and asian friends or friends of other races?

[Anonymous]

Agree with the poster wondering if you’re autistic, OP. Not because anything I’m your post suggests autism specifically but because many of my late diagnosed autistic friends lived all their lives feeling weird and like they didn’t fit in and lonely until they realized that their brains were just different.

[Anonymous]

This is PP. I’m also autistic, as is my daughter. In case that matters? Somehow it feels less like I’m “accusing” folks of being autistic if I reveal that I am!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Im white and married an Asian man. I’ve come to realize that we will never have couples friends because most white men do not want to be friends with an Asian man. I think it’s because Asian men are not seen as traditionally masculine, which is what white men gravitate toward. It’s very odd because I’ve noticed white women have no problem being friends with Asian women. We’ve been married 25 years and I’ve come to accept this. People shy away from anyone even slightly different than themselves.

This is an insane theory.

I'm a white female married to an asian immigrant. My husband isn't interested in being friends with white men. I've never really thought of it and I don't think he's racist. He doesn't have much in common with them, so I'm unsure how they would be friends, where they would meet. He doesn't have a lot of hobbies, doesn't watch football, or drink alcohol. I have a lot of Asian friends because of him. He works with a lot of Asians too. The easiest way to meet couples is through religious communities. I think with international couples, it's pretty typical one spouse ends up adapting themselves more to the other culture. Women tend to be more accommodating.

Yeah, all white men drink alcohol and watch football. Jeez, I can't believe how racist these posts are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, I feel you about the lack of real weird around here! I remember joining a hobby that I very much enjoyed and making friends (I have some normal friends -- I'm very very good at pretending to be normal) who kept talking about how this hobby was full of wonderful people who let them really embrace because weird and unusual and how it was so nice and welcoming... when they were all people I would absolutely classify as "normal." I miss being the comparatively normal one sometimes, honestly. I'm planning to move soon and I really hope my new area has some genuine nutters (affectionate).

YES. I had an off-beat hobby for a while thinking it would help me find people who are a little more off-beat like I am. Instead it was full of lawyers, consultants, and other professionals who turned the hobby into just another thing to be ultra-competitive and intense about. I still always felt like the "weird one" because I didn't work for some big name firm or company, I had not recently bought a condo or SFH in a nice neighborhood, and I didn't take regular vacations to the Caribbean, skiing out west, or European capitals. They were all super conformist and it was like this one off-beat hobby was another way of conforming -- I'm a corporate lawyer but in my free time I box/roller derby/circus/pole dance/etc.

People in DC work very hard to meet the expectations other people set for them, even when doing things considered "alternative" or "indie", and if you truly walk to the beat of your own drum, it's hard to find kindred spirits here.

You are impossible. Your experience could easily have taught you a completely different lesson -- like, "you can't judge a book by its cover, and next time I see a lawyer, consultant or other professional, I'm not going to make shallow assumptions about who they are on the inside."

You are missing the point. It's not about judging someone, it's about the fact that doing one off-beat hobby doesn't make you non-conformist if in every other way you are a conformist. And when you get a bunch of pretty conformist people together doing something unusual, they will make that unusual activity conformist. So if you are someone who is neuro-divergent or just struggle to fit in, you might join that hobby think you will find people like you, people who who feel like outsiders, only to find that everyone else there is really similar to one another in very socially-approved ways.

The lawyers and consultants I met in this hobby were what they appeared to be -- competitive and fairly traditional. Their choice of hobby did not actually reflect a more unusual way of viewing the world or a refusal to engage in cultural norms for their own sake. Which is great for them! They seemed nice. But I still didn't fit in with them.

Maybe they chose the hobby because they liked it. Maybe you have more in common with people than you think.

I'm sure they did choose it because they liked it. I did not feel welcome or like a part of their group because the only thing I had in common with them was this hobby, and people could not relate to my background or the way I arrange or prioritize my life. They were relatively narrow in that regard.

Look, I get my comment seems to have triggered you (I'm guessing your a lawyer type with an off-beat hobby) but it's not actually about you. I'm talking about MY experience, which is that I joined an unusual hobby thinking I'd find people like me because I sometimes struggle to fine people I have things in common with. And instead I found that most of the people there had a lot in common with each other but not with me, and I continued to feel like an outsider. Conversations at the hobby tended to gravitate toward the same topics that a lot of UMC urban professionals tend to discuss at work or at happy hours or at parties. The fact that we were doing a somewhat unusual hobby didn't seem to factor much into it.

That is my experience and even if you feel personally insulted by it, that doesn't change the fact that it was my experience.

Np. I totally get what you're saying and it makes sense. I don't know why people are hounding you about this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I recently got into a hobby that people always said was full of quirky very accepting people — knitting and crocheting. I took a local class and saw the same women. Yes they welcomed me. They were older, but fine. However, I realized like any other group setting, I don’t really belong. Most of the class time was spent gossiping and bragging about their grown children, talking about hair, medical conditions. I guess on the one hand what else would people talk about, right? But I personally found it hard to sit for 2-3 hours each week just sitting and listening to gossip.

That's a shame. I learned to knit from a "weird" acquaintance who became a friend during the knitting lessons.

[Anonymous]

I am an oddball, creative and unusual looking. I think that in order to make social interaction more comfortable I have had to 'normalize' my appearance - hair and dress like most people and also learn to talk about things other than myself. Neutralize yourself.

Some people can't handle people that are unusual, it makes them feel weird and so it makes socializing awkward because the common ground is not there.