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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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. [/quote]

NP here. I think you've unwittingly demonstrated some things about DC culture that bug me here. I am also a DCPS parent and we'll never be able to afford to go private in DC. But a lot of what you say here demonstrates this very specific kind of competitiveness and anti-social behavior I encounter constantly in DC and really struggle with. You're making all these assumptions and saying all these disparaging things about people you don't even know. It's pretty obvious that the main reason you have for doing this is to make yourself feel good about your own choices. And again I say this as a fellow DCPS parent so I am not judging your choices at all -- I made the same ones.

[b]But this passive aggressive one-upsmanship and the need to put down others just to prove to yourself that you are doing it right sucks. And people are like this all over here. Including among the idealist nonprofit types (who can be every bit as competitive and judgmental and cut throat as the consultants and corporate lawyers and media people just about different stuff). I find it exhausting. People act like you have to prove that you are the right kind of person -- their kind of person.[/b] I increasingly don't feel like I'm anyone's kind of person here. And I don't like having to perform for others just to be part of a community or feel welcome -- I don't like feeling like my belonging is that tenuous.

Like others we are exploring moving out of this area and kind of hoping this is specific to DC. But maybe it's everywhere. I don't know. I didn't really start feeling this way until my late 30s. I still have friends in DC that I made in my 20s and those are still rock solid friendships. But we're scattered and some people have moved away and as much as I love those friends it doesn't feel like a cohesive community which is definitely what I crave at this stage in life.[/quote]

+100

I don't generally like this term, because it's been co-opted by a certain kind of far-right and chronically online male, but "virtue signaling" is the only way to describe it. I just want to have a pleasant conversation, not constantly prove my progressive cred to you. It's just as exhausting as the opposite group that the first PP described.[/quote]

PP and YES. Like on some level do I think it's better to be competitive or engage in one-upsmanship about commuting via e-bike and composting instead of the "prestige" of your private school or whether you have the right luxury brand SUV? Sure. But I honestly feel equally annoyed by someone who is going to judge me over something like composting as someone who is going to judge me because we didn't travel abroad this year. Especially because 99% of the time the thing I'm being judged over isn't even a reflection of who I am as a person. I don't compost because I'm tired and overwhelmed and it just feels like one more thing to do -- I think composting is a good thing to do it's just not accessible to me right now. Likewise I'd love to have taken a trip to Toyko or Buenos Aires this year but I cannot afford it. So people who judge me for this stuff aren't even judging my values or decisions -- they are just judging me for not having the resources to keep up with them on this thing they have decided is the dividing line between good people and bad people.

I just do not want to play.[/quote]

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