I said something to Mary Ann the other day without really thinking about it first, which is usually how the truest things manage to escape. We were having one of our random conversations about art, life, and connecting with others when I heard myself say, “I guess I’m different than most because I’m not looking for community.” The moment it came out of my mouth, I knew it was true. Not edgy-true. Not lonely-guy-on-the-internet true. Just plain, embarrassingly honest true. The kind of truth that has apparently been living in the basement for decades, eating crackers in the dark, waiting for an opening.
Mary Ann immediately agreed, which was both validating and a little rude in the way only a loving spouse can be. Not rude, exactly. More like: “Yes, obviously. We have all seen this.” And she was right. This has been my observable position for a very long time. I love my friends. I love that I’ve even made new friends recently whom I genuinely care about. I am not over here in a cave hissing at villagers who bring bread. But what I do not feel, and apparently never have, is the need for a group or community to give shape to my identity or purpose.
That distinction matters. I am not against connection. I am against the idea that connection must become collective in order to be meaningful. I do not resist friendship, affection, or shared experience. I resist the subtle pressure to merge. The thing that makes me cringe is not people gathered together. It is the strange assumption that a person should want to derive some essential part of themselves from the group itself. That one’s meaning should be deepened by membership. That being part of something larger should feel inherently more real than being a person with a mind, a few beloved people, and a deeply overactive inner life.
To be clear, I do not think this makes me better than anyone. If anything, it probably makes me less practical in certain social situations and more likely to stand awkwardly near the snacks wondering how long I need to stay before leaving becomes spiritually acceptable. Group belonging seems to be one of the most normal and probably evolutionarily beneficial human traits we have. It makes perfect sense. Tribes kept us alive. Shared identity creates cohesion. Communities provide support, regulation, purpose, belonging, and maybe someone to help you move a couch without asking too many questions. There is obvious power in that. Most people are probably healthier because of it.
It’s just not my wiring.
And interestingly, this has nothing to do with whether I agree with the group. I feel this same inner recoil toward groups I admire as much as groups I do not. A church group built around beliefs I reject does not appeal to me, but neither does a local art community full of people I actually like and respect. That was useful for me to realize, because it clarified that this is not ideological. I am not rejecting certain groups because they are wrong and imagining I would feel different if the “right” people showed up with paintbrushes and good taste. No. Apparently my discomfort is more structural than political. I do not want my individuality absorbed into any collective identity, even one I find charming.
I think that is the heart of it: I rebel against the need for a group to provide identity or purpose. I do not want my selfhood outsourced to a banner, a scene, a doctrine, or even a lovely little gathering of aesthetically pleasing weirdos in a renovated warehouse. I want relationships, not membership. I want affinity without absorption. I want to meet people as people, not as fellow participants in a shared identity machine.
And that sounds harsher than I mean it to. I am not accusing people in communities of being weak, false, or unexamined. Many are probably wiser than I am. Many are happier. Many have discovered something beautiful about shared life that I can admire without wanting to inhabit. But I do think there is a quiet cultural assumption that community is always the answer, always the cure, always the mature destination for a healthy human life. If you do not crave it, it can sound like a flaw. Like you are withholding, avoiding, or secretly damaged. But some of us are not starving for the village. Some of us genuinely do feel whole with a few real people and our own thoughts.
That may sound romantic, but in my case it is less “solitary mystic on the hill” and more “middle-aged man who feels a mild existential claustrophobia when a group starts having a shared slogan.” I do not hear the word community and feel warmth rising in my chest. I hear obligation, identity performance, subtle sameness, and the vague possibility that at some point I will be expected to join a group text.
The truth is, I love specific people deeply. I value friendship. I value loyalty. I value conversation, mutual care, humor, and the kind of connection that survives change. I just do not seem to have the instinct that turns those things into a desire for collective belonging. I do not need to become part of a larger “we” in order to know who I am. In fact, the harder a group leans into that “we,” the more some contrary little daemon in me starts backing toward the exit.
Maybe that is a deficit. Maybe it is a temperament. Maybe it is just one more weird little setting on the control panel. But it feels true, and truth is usually more useful than aspiration. I am not looking for community. I am looking for realness. Sometimes that appears in a friendship. Sometimes in a marriage. Sometimes in a conversation. Sometimes alone in a room with my thoughts, which, despite all available evidence, I continue to find excellent company.