Published on 12, July, 2020
The older I get the more I notice a difference between me and my peers regarding my social skills, and the more they notice a difference in me too.
I feel like as everyone is getting older and maturing i'm just frozen in time. Forever trapped as a younger person stuck in the body of an adult, no matter what I do. `No matter how hard I mask.
I felt the first big jump when I was transitioning into my teenage years. I just wanted to mess about, play classical playground games, do what we used to do. But girls my age just wanted to sit around talking about boys. Everything was changing and it was nerve wracking.
I'm now turning 23 and I'm noticing the big jump again, except this time it's worse, harder. I don't know what to do to emulate my peers at all. They can just tell that I'm different.
I don't want to get pushed out, I want friends. A romantic relationship. I've been craving more structure relationship wise because of this, a relationship with rules. I've returned to religion, not because I'm necessarily a believer but because religious people tend to have well defined social rules that I can learn, follow, and as long as I stick to those rules I'm less likely to be socially ostracised.
I'm in a lot of distress. I don't know what to do. Everything is changing so fast, faster than I can keep up with.
I agree with what other posters have said. I didn't go on a date until I was 27 and thought I would never have a real relationship; now at 39 I'm engaged. It can happen, it might just take you some time. I don't think I could have got married ten or fifteen years ago, realistically. I also think you're more likely to find a "relationship with rules" as you get older anyway.
I'm religious (Jewish) and the social rules help in some ways, but in other ways I find them confusing and hard to live up to. I feel like I don't fit in my religious community any better than I fit in anywhere else, just for different reasons.