When we deal with our own individual issues, it is sometimes easy to loose sight of the fact that we live unusual times. Our consumer society tends to make people think in terms of their preferences. One might even think of a mixed marriage as one person who likes Chevy and one who like Ford.
One effect of this societal trend is that people have a preference for people like themselves. 100 years ago people who had what Reader's Digest called "Interesting character" were sometimes endearing or even held with regard.
Today one of the greatest social sins one can commit is to make someone feel uncomfortable. Those of us lacking what might be called social compliance may come to stick out like a sore thumb and be seen as an unwelcome intruder in contemporary social circles.
Social rejection can come suddenly like a person during WWI whose friends discovered that he was of German extraction.
One solution to this is to search out for individuals and groups that have a broader tolerance for acceptance. If you are looking for people who exist in a small distribution is society, you have to churn through a lot who will dismiss you first. In the movie "The Big Short" one character is described as meeting his wife on a dating web site. He described himself as a medical student who was $90,000 in debt, had one eye, and was socially awkward. The woman who was to become his wife replied that he was exactley what she was looking for, honest.
