Auntie SparkNotes: I Have Nothing in Common with My Peers
Dear Auntie,
Well, I have a problem. I’m different. (Dramatic music in the background) In all seriousness, I’m have almost nothing in common with my high school peers. I don’t have that much social media, I focus and care a lot about my education, and most importantly, have no interest in sex, or anything close to it. I just don’t understand why it seems so important, but it is. As a result, people often call me innocent, and ask stupid questions like, “Do you know what sex is?” That doesn’t bother me too much. What really bothered me was when my boyfriend asked me if my innocence was a ruse. He didn’t completely believe me when I said it wasn’t, and asked again later to see if I had a different answer. I didn’t. Many people think I’m lying, and stop talking to me. Over the years, I’ve found friends that are like me, but that’s changed. They all moved on, and I just don’t know what to talk about with them anymore, so I am frequently being ignored as they all talk on Snapchat or something. I am running out of options. I’m being left in the dust. What am I supposed to do? Am I going to spend the last two years of high school nearly alone?
That’s an interesting question, Sparkler. Because if we take your letter totally at face value, it seems like the answer has to be yes, doesn’t it? You’ve painted such a bleak picture: You, standing alone on one side of an ever-widening chasm that separates you from everyone else you know, watching in a state of increasingly mystified horror as they snap-sext on their chat-phones with their pants down. It’s hard to imagine, under those circumstances, that you’ll ever have enough in common with these slavering troglodytes to actually enjoy meaningful relationships with them—or that you’d want to. They sound disgusting!
But then again, that’s the problem with your letter: We kind of can’t take it totally at face value. Unless you’ve accidentally slipped through a wormhole and into the world of a bad, stereotype-ridden teen movie, everyone in this scenario (including you!) is much more complicated than you’re giving them credit for. Human beings contain multitudes, you know? And because we contain multitudes, it’s just profoundly silly to suggest that because you’re serious about your education and not particularly interested in sex, you therefore have no common ground with anyone on which you might build a friendship or two. Not only is it entirely possible for people to be friends despite having different interests and life experience levels, it happens all the freakin’ time.
… That is, if you allow it to. Which brings us to this: By any chance, are you the one who’s making such an issue of your “innocence” as compared with the rest of your peers? Do you squirm, pull faces, or mime elaborate vomiting every time someone makes a dirty joke? Do you make a big eye-rolling show of how bored you are when the subject of sex or social media comes up? Do you routinely say things like “I just don’t understand why you guys all care so much about [thing your friends care about]” out loud? Do you rarely miss an opportunity to remind your peers that you’re different in this particular way, to the point where it’s hard for anyone to recognize the things you might still have in common?
To be clear, I’m not accusing you of anything. I could be totally off base here (i.e. maybe your friends and your boyfriend are all just incredibly obnoxious in the same very particular way.) But when I look at your letter, and particularly at the way you talk about the interests of the average kid your age, I do wonder if your feelings of alienation might be expressing themselves as a sort of self-serious superiority that is in turn alienating the people around you.
And if you were doing that, you certainly wouldn’t be the first! When you (a hypothetical you, not you personally) feel like you don’t fit in, it is so easy to be insecure and defensive about it, and to seek safety in the idea that you’re not just different, but better, because all that stuff you’re not a part of is totally beneath you (e.g. “I never wanted to be in your stupid Snapchat sex club anyway!”). And when you (hypothetically) do that, it can in fact make other people doubt that you really are the way you keep insisting you are—not because they have a problem with your differences, but because you’re being so in-your-face and conspicuous about them that it comes off as performative.
That’s why I want you to ask yourself whether you’ve been defining yourself too much by the experiences and interests you don’t share with your peers. What if you decided that it didn’t really matter? What if you stopped thinking of yourself as different first and foremost? And what if you stopped looking for friends who were just like you in this one, narrow, superficial regard, and came up with some new criteria for forging your relationships? What if you started spending time with people who share your taste in movies or music; who laugh at the same jokes you do; who are kind or smart or funny or interesting, irrespective of whether or not they use Snapchat?
I can’t guarantee anything, sweet pea, but I think you’ll find that approaching your friendships this way makes a big difference in the way your friends approach you. I think that the less you focus on how different you are, the more common ground you’ll find. And I think that the less you write people off as unfriendable for superficial reasons, the more you’ll find that they—and you—are more complex and more capable of genuine, rewarding connections with people of all stripes than you ever imagined.
Got something to say? Tell us in the comments! And to get advice from Auntie, email her at advice@sparknotes.com.
Want more info about how this column works? Check out the Auntie SparkNotes FAQ.
