"Loner"

[firemonkey]

I guess "loner" describes me quite well. Even as a child I was very much into solitary activities. For many children games, ie sports, whether in or out of school, are a major factor for peer group bonding. If you are bad at sports you are more likely to be unfavourably judged by your peers. I was bad at sports and thus was often not included in informal games unless there was no alternative readily available. That coupled with a difficulty in knowing how to interact with others left me out on the margins.
Then when I got to public school at 13 the other boys picked up on my physical and social awkwardness. It was an excuse for a torrent of verbal abuse and ridicule. Even if I had known how to interact, or at least been more adept at it, I would have been marginalised.
The result of such bullying; long standing social anxiety and paranoia(it's hard to separate the two).
I am for all intents and purposes socially isolated. I am fine with my own company most of the time but then there are the times I feel lonely. However I am not socially skilled enough to attract company and am too paranoid/socially phobic to be proactive. The fear of rejection and ridicule(like from the bullies of yesteryear) is too strong.

[BigD]

I definitely recognise this, sadly.
I do think I am very much a loner anyway as I don't really 'get' people at all and honestly don't have much interest in them (something that extroverts really hate it seems).

My SA has very similar roots, as well as being bad at (and totally uninterested in) sports, I was a sensitive, fat loner with a funny name so I ticked lots of boxes as a target at school.. Ironically I lost all the fat at 18, and am now (at 50) the fittest I have ever been and a regular gym-goer. Damage is already done though.

Thankfully I do at least have my wife, though she suffers from SA as well so we have few friends.

We just turned down an invitation to the 50th birthday party of someone we both really like - because the invitation had the horrific words 'party games' which freaked us both out.

[firemonkey]

'Party games' would freak me out too. The last party I went to(if you could call it that) was the Christmas 2008 one at my local mental health resource centre. Outside of mental health based 'parties' it was a party my brother and sister held in late 1975/early 1976 at my parents place.
Even as a child I didn't have birthday parties or at least can remember none,certainly none after the age of 7. My birthday usually involved a family trip to the cinema or some other form of entertainment. It was because I was the proverbial Billy No Mates.

[BigD]

Originally Posted by firemonkey

Even as a child I didn't have birthday parties or at least can remember none,certainly none after the age of 7. My birthday usually involved a family trip to the cinema or some other form of entertainment. It was because I was the proverbial Billy No Mates.

Same here. My clueless parents did organise one for my 18th so they could invite their friends. I didn't go