Lonely in middle age but finding that I don't like many people

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I feel like a few people have mentioned that their kids are in private school. No wonder you're meeting awful people. My community in DC (built largely from my kids DCPS school) is full of interesting and chill people. Sure, a lot of nonprofit idealist types, but there are worse things to be.

Honestly this is one of my #1 concerns with going private. If you don't like the parents, imagine your kid learning alongside their kids all day. Sounds awful.

This. I was going to say maybe this is neighborhood and school related. We live in a great dc neighborhood with a great public school community - people are super down to earth and not pretentious at all. There are only a very small handful of people I would say I really don’t like and most have left for the private schools by upper ES.

[Anonymous]

Affluent peoples concerns really. Whe you are poor like us, we are thankful just to be healthy and be able to survive. No issues with people or making friends. Enjoy what you have. It's all in your head,

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There's a lot of DC bashing in this thread. I get it--people move to DC for a job and it can be hard to create a community. But please know that there are lots of people who are actual natives of DC who have decades-long friendship that span generations. And guess how these people became friends? Through school and work and being neigbhors. Maybe take a look at your attitude--adjusting it might make things more pleasant for you.

I think what you might not understand as someone who lives in the place where you grew up is that DC transplants often do not have access to the same network you do and the networks we DO have access to are by nature more transient and harder to turn into community.

You are fortunate to have grown up and have family in a largish city with a good economy which allows you to live here as an adult and still have those connections to childhood and college-era friends as well as your family's network dating back generations. I am one of the many DC transplants who wound up here in part because I don't have anywhere like that I could go. I am from a very remote small town with no job prospects and the nearest city is 5 hours away. And my family doesn't even go back generations in that town -- my parents were transplants there after moving to the US from overseas. So it's not like I moved to DC from Chicago and am like "ugh DC sucks." I came here for school and work and sought to put down roots and build community. I've been here for 25 years.

I do have friends in this area who are natives but because they are natives they will likely never be particularly close friends -- they have family and a million contacts here and I'm just one of many people they know. I also wind up making friends with other transplants. And that's where the transient nature of DC's transplant population becomes a problem -- I have had dozens of friends who have moved away for work or school or family within a few years of me knowing them.

It's not "DC bashing" to say this city can be a very hard place to create your own community if you didn't grow up here. In fact I have heard similar things about a lot of other cities. You just don't get it because you are fairly fortunate in your background and had options some of us didn't have. And likely if I met you there would be little incentive for you to really invest in a friendship with me because while it's a need for me it's just a nice-to-have for you. So rather than lecturing me on how I need to adjust my attitude perhaps you should take a second to realize that you just don't really understand what people in this thread are talking about because you have never had to do what they are trying to do.

Very well said, thank you.