To the OP,
You are not alone. For whatever reason, if you're not in one of the cliques, then chances are you will have nothing but shallow, superficial relationships with the other people at the hall. The only reason they even recognize your existence and feign a loving desire to see you is because you are one of them, and they are told that they MUST love their brothers and sisters. But you can't make anybody love another person. Genuine love arises from a close bond, a strong relationship built on mutual interests and personal attraction between both parties. If you share nothing in common with them other than your association with the organization, then you will not form a close relationship with them, and they will be nothing more than acquaintences. It's that simple.
In the org, members have to pretend to sincerely and profoundly love everyone. They have to put up with 100 - 130 people multiple times per week, many of whom they privately cannot stand, and their potential friends are limited to this small group of people, who may or may not have similar interests, circumstances, tastes, etc. as yourself. Some will cultivate a genuine interest in your well being, and they will be giving of themselves and compassionate. In my experience, these were usually the older ones. Yet, as a youth, the thought of passing my time playing cards with old people never seemed like a worthwhile existence. The young people operate on a clique system. You're either in a certain social circle, or you're alone, very similar to High School life. I moved a lot, and whenever I joined a new congregation, the youth cliques were already well established and virtually impermeable, which meant that I was always on the outside looking in, begging to be invited to events and outings, and always given the brush off.
My circumstances also set me apart and prevented me from being admitted into one of the groups. I have a chronic pain disease which prevented me from playing sports. This is what about 99% of JW male youth and young men do in their free time, because they're too broke to engage in any form of entertainment that actually costs money. So, whatever they were doing for fun was almost always something I couldn't participate in. This left the girls, but there were always barriers to communication and association with them because of the Medieval attitude among JWs concerning teenage dating.
Secondly, I was very different from most JWs in that I am actually intelligent, and well read. I never truly believed that the Big A was necessarily right around the corner, and always had the idea that I would prepare myself for a full life in this system of things, just in case it didn't come. That meant that I chose to satisfy my thirst for knowledge and pursue a university degree that would afford me the opportunity to choose the right career path for me that would be both enjoyable and lucrative, rather than settling for whatever low-paying lackluster job I could find at the bottom of the social ladder just so I could say that I "put the kingdom first". This put me at odds with other youth who were skeptical of my decision and even downright critical at times. The other youth who instead chose to pioneer right out of high school were held in high esteem and often found friends amongst their fellow pioneers. Other youth also skipped on education, but instead went to work full time, meaning they had more money than I did, and they also had a lot more free time compared to me (I work part time and go to school full time). Many other ones started dating relatively quick after high school because they figured since they weren't going to college, and they had no ambitions about moving up in their careers (content to be a bottom-feeder in some manual labor job) there was nothing holding them back from getting married at such an early age. So a lot of the youth started pairing off into couples, and couples' groups, and I was once more, left on the outside looking in because I myself could not date since I was not in a position to support a household.
I met one girl at a DC who I hit it off with really well. We started writing letters to each other, and that progressed to phone conversations, and hundreds of text messages per day..etc. We really liked each other, and she was my cloesest and only friend. We seldom saw each other in person because we lived far apart, but her parents hated me because I was going to college. I wasn't good enough for their daughter, because I must have somehow been spiritually deficient. Her mom always tried to push her in the direction of Bethelites, and MTS graduates. Her mom would literally try to hook her up with brothers who held special privelleges as early as age 17. But because I wasn't a pioneer, I didn't make the cut, even though I was a ministerial servant since the age of 18. So her parents would severely curtail her communication with me. She had to cut back on how much we talked, and she could only talk to me in secret. Even after reducing how much we talked on the phone and drastically reducing the number of text messages we sent to one another, her parents still chastised her for speaking with me.
When I confided in her about my doubts about the Org, she shunned me. She did this even though she was a hypocritical pioneer, who would routinely binge drink to the point of vomiting. Apparently she felt it was okay to keep that a secret and continue pioneering and giving interview parts at District Conventions, so long as she didn't jeaporadize her family's reputation, or her daddy's special position as one of the elite elders in the district.
That was the last straw for me. I never had true friends who were JWs, and even if they are friends, your friendship comes with strings attached. You leave the org, or even show the slighest hint of deviating from the herd of other JWs, and it's as if you never even existed.
