Finding Your Place: The Difference Between Fitting in and Belonging

“Fitting in is about assessing a situation and becoming who you need to be to be accepted. Belonging, on the other hand, doesn’t require us to change who we are; it requires us to be who we are.” Brene Brown

As a gay man in his early 40’s acceptance and ‘fitting in’ has played a big part of my life. As I am sure many other queer people can relate, I have lived with the fear of not being accepted for who I am for a big chunk of my life. The fear of rejection is real and has played out in all aspects of my existence, fear of being rejected by my parents, friends, colleagues, my own community and society as a whole and it still affects me today even though I have been living out and proud for 25 years.

But this isn’t a meant to be a story about the struggles of coming out or the difficulties of growing up in a world that see you as other, its much more universal than that… Its about the very real difference between ‘fitting in’ and ‘belonging’.

Humans are social creatures, it's in our DNA. We are genetically hard wired to crave being part of a tribe so it's no wonder we spend so much time and energy trying to find the places that we belong.

I have always been somewhat of a social chameleon. I can generally get on with most people and easy strike rapport. I can be a bit loud and over the top on occasions, I can also be quiet and contemplative. I can be quite sassy when I want to be but also naturally caring and compassionate. I can be the instigator of mischief at times and also naturally cautious and sensible. All off these modes exist in me and I can switch between them seamlessly, sometimes during a single conversation. This all depends on who I am with, how comfortable I am feeling and the situation I find myself in.

Why am I like this? I think it’s a combination of factors.

I never really felt like I fitted in as a child, I was (and still am to a certain extent) shy and self-conscious. On one hand I loved singing and dancing and was naturally drawn to the company of girls, on the other, I played rugby which I enjoyed to an extent but always felt like an outsider. I had small groups of close friends throughout my childhood and was probably 2 rungs down on the popularity ladder than the other sporty boys at school. Not unpopular, just somewhere in the middle. I found myself moulding my personality and behaviour depending on who I was with. Butching it up when I was with the rugby team and pretending to enjoy the rough and tumble, when I really did not and then dialling up the sassy when I was with the girls. I was never really sure which version of me was the real one.

I started coming out as gay when I was about 16, first to a selected few friends and was later outed to the rest of the world by one of them (that’s a story for another day). Once the cat was out of the bag I went through a phase of playing up my camp side and adopting that as my standard operating mode. I think this was partly a rejection of all the time I had hidden that part of myself through fear of being discovered and partly because just seemed to be expected of me. I was no longer playing rugby and there was no need for me to keep up any pretence, so I just leaned into this new version of me and let it rip.

I embrace my campness now and love turning up the sass for fun but at the time this did not feel authentic.

After leaving school I spent the early part of my working life as a children’s entertainer, holiday park singer and holiday rep and as anyone that has worked in these fields will tell you, you need to be able to think on your feet. The situations you find yourself facing are so varied and can change in the blink of an eye. I remember being in the middle of hosting the children’s entertainment when a fight broke out between some lovely guests that had hit the all-inclusive bar too hard (I worked in all the classy places) and having to jump off the stage and physically break up the fight. Thankfully that situation resolved quickly so within 60 seconds I was back on the stage entertaining the little darlings again. This is just one of many examples where rolling with the situation and switching gears in an instant was a very valuable skill.

Later in my life when I entered the corporate world, I had to learn and adapt to a completely new environment and set of expectations. In the early days of working in a call centre, the bubbly entertainer side of my personality was welcome and served me well but as I progressed in my career and my roles got more, shall we say, ‘serious’, I felt the pressure to build a work persona that I perceived to be more reliable and responsible. I worked hard to control the urge to crack jokes and appear as a serious professional but always felt like I was holding back a part of myself that I felt very connected with.

As time went on and I gained more confidence in myself within my professional and personal life I come to realise that all of the facets of my personality can be present and valid in no matter where I find myself. Yes there are times when certain aspects need to be dialled up and others reined in but I feel like I have arrived at a place in my life where I can be authentically myself and no longer have to adopt a mask. I understand myself now in a way that I never have and have come to accept and love all the different parts of myself, even the messy and uncomfortable ones. I no longer seek to change myself to fit in and I no longer crave the validation of others to accept myself.

Don’t get me wrong, it takes work to love myself and it takes continued self-reflection and awareness to navigate life without slipping into the habits of changing myself to fit, especially as new situations arise and life moves on but it's worth the effort.

So, coming full circle back to the quote from Brene Brown that I opened with and the difference between ‘fitting in’ and ‘belonging’; I think that to truly feel like we belong, we first must accept ourselves completely, in technicolour and high definition. We need to identify who we truly are and strip away the masks and personas we have created for ourselves over the years.

The more energy we spend trying to change ourselves to fit in with others, the less time we spend figuring out who we are. Once you can accept and belong to yourself it becomes far easier to work out the other places you truly belong.