I remember when I was in grade school hearing all of these things about peer pressure, and that as you get older you have to deal with it more and more, learn to cope, resist it etc, but as I went through my teenage/young adult years, I really never had to deal with it at all. I know that all peer pressure is not just the "in your face" you have to do/try/be like this stuff, but can just be a pressure to conform and be like the popular or "in" crowd, or whichever one you're striving to fit in with, but I can't recall even feeling pressured or pushed like that at all. I never really "fit in," of course I wanted to, but had no clue how or was too anxious to even try. I guess from a very early age I adopted avoidant tendencies, and was always on the outside fringes, barely even able to observe how friendships and relationships in general worked, so I never had a peer group that exposed me to things that maybe I shouldn't be doing, and I was too scared to push myself into any groups or socializing. I was never around people who were smoking or drinking, nobody ever pressured me into or towards sex or anything close to it (I didn't even have my first kiss until I was 19), and to this day I have no clue what any illegal drugs look like, although I'm sure I could google it if I cared.
So, I was wondering what everyone else's experiences have been like. Am I weird for having avoided (or maybe it avoided me) peer pressures, and is it a positive or a negative, since it means that I have practically zero life experience, and haven't yet learned to handle adversity/confrontations/etc?
So, I was wondering what everyone else's experiences have been like. Am I weird for having avoided (or maybe it avoided me) peer pressures, and is it a positive or a negative, since it means that I have practically zero life experience, and haven't yet learned to handle adversity/confrontations/etc?