I also, am not wired to relate to groups of people or cliques. I can relate to one person, one at a time, one-on-one. This helped me do well in job interviews, but not in the actual workplace when it was time to relate to groups of people. I always wound up an outcast. It does not bother me anymore, as I work from home these days.

My husband's brother is in his late 40s and has never had friends or a girlfriend in his life. He just works a lot, and apparently, is happy that way. He says he sometimes misses not having a girlfriend, but that's about it. I think he's embraced the life that he has, and says "it is what it is".

There will probably be people telling you to change and work on yourself. There isn't much we can change about our personalities. Unfortunately, our society judges people by how many friends they have. Quantity of friends is virtually meaningless, though. Its quality that is important. My sister used to make me feel horrible that she had lots of friends and I didn't. To this day, she has a very active social life with about 800 "friends" on her facebook list and has a big birthday party every year without about 100 people showing up. She judges others who don't have this same kind of social life. I used to try very hard to make lots of friends and join cliques, but I found that most cliques are very hard to get into and it wasn't worth the work anymore. I also firmly believe many people (not all, but many) are fairly nasty if you get to know them. Again, not worth the effort.

Many people in social cliques are miserable because they are always worried about being cast out of those cliques, and many times this happens to them! Then they are even more miserable.

I am a member of a book club and also some parent groups. When I see or sense things going wrong, I take a step back from the social atmosphere.

Recently, I was friends with two women in a mom's group, then they started becoming "best buddies" with each other, I saw this happening early on, and I distanced myself from them. Two's company, three's a crowd, and I have never seen this work out where three people could all be friends in the same way with each other. Two will always get together and eventually exclude the third person. I've seen this time after time after time. I am often disappointed but just learn to let it go.