With age, did you ever realize why you never had any friends/ never fit in?

[leintdav000]

I'm 19 and it seems like I've been destined to be alone wolf. What drives me nuts is having the self-awareness to fully take heed of this predicament. I go through phases where I'm cool with it; then I go through other phases where I hyper introspective and frantically try to "find the reason" why I don't have any real friends... It drives me nuts because I'm so not a victim. These last three years I've done my best to take full responsibility for my situation and change it! Yet, I'm still here...

I'm not ugly, I'm not dumb, and I think I have pretty good social skills... I broke records in my sales job; teachers and bosses always seem to take extra liking me; in fact, almost everyone job I've had I was blindly offered it... I get along great with classmates, and coworkers. In fact, I "used" to know a whole bunch of people! The weird thing is, people actually tell me that they would consider me popular! I've seriously had girls and guys tell me this... yet I'm confined to social ostracization.

I'll give you an example that's happening right now. My next door neighbors, the kids I grew up with and have been good friends with all throughout high school, are having a big bonfire but didn't invite me... they've blown me off for the past year. I just can't ever remember having a falling out, fight, or anything... last time we hung out we all had a good time and hung out until like 3 am--so I thought--they shook my hand and closed with "we'll have to do this again!"

I made a whole bunch of friends in my freshman year and gradually became really good buddies with a guy named Ben. The first semester was awesome! We hung out every day, did our homework together; wrote our goals down; gamed girls; had an entire arsenal of inside jokes, etc. Then I noticed the same recurring pattern throughout my whole life: I'm initiating things... I did an experiment and stopped hitting him up first; bam, just like that. The dude didn't hit me up once all semester; here I am in summer, and not one college friend has been like, "what's up".

In the past 6 months, I've kind of turned into an asshole: you grow tired of trying to fit in for so long and it goes nowhere. maybe there's just something off around me and I do something subliminally that red flags people without me noticing: yet they always greet me with a huge smile and come running up to me when we bump into each other!

--I grew up with abusive parents and a classic dysfunctional household: screaming, punches, etc. I lived with a friend my entire jr.year of high school. Maybe that did something to me.

I guess this is the last important detail to make... Since 6th grade, I've felt about two years older than my peer group: abusive households make you grow up fast. Freshman year of high school all my friends were juniors and seniors, and my girlfriend was a junior; once they graduated, I haven't had friends since. Anytime I have any sexual polarity between a girl she's 21+: I guess you attract what you are.

It's become almost like a parasite in my brain: there must be something wrong with me.

I guess I'm curious if you've experienced this same "lone wolf destiny", if something clicked in time where you could look back and see why/ what you were doing that ostracized you to this role.

[Gili Trawangan]

@leintdav000 I'm 37 and I still have the lone wolf syndrome 

And I definitely wasn't as aware as you seem to be. Only recently have I discovered that it is a combination of childhood trauma and natural introversion. I have three older brothers that wouldn't include me in their group when I was young. The family was dysfunctional and I naturally isolated. It became a pattern. 

However, just like you, I also have good social skills when I wish to use them. I developed them when I was in university, and I became a popular guy. I wanted to change and saw that I could do it. You can too. I was your age when I made that shift. 

You are very young, you can work on it. If you're like me, it just takes effort. You're not doomed, that's just a limiting belief. Let go of your ego and of pre-conceived notions. Get interested in other people, everybody responds well to that. And don't let specific situations strengthen those limiting beliefs. You can be whoever you want to be!

If you're like me, you will always need alone time to recharge. There's nothing wrong with that.