Being "assertive", then second guessing myself

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I'm usually more for giving advice than receiving it but here goes. I've been going to my church a few years now and have never really clicked with the young people. I know I'm not socially an A+ student and can be kind of awkward with small talk and such, but it's hard seeing other people come in and be accepted by this group of 18-30s or so.

In terms of social stuff I try to be friendly and warm and such without annoying people. I try hard not to go on about my interests too much but when a lot of my interests are Christianity related it shouldn't be quite so hard when they are supposedly pretty interested in that stuff too. I am also quite good at listening to people and find that conversations are often likely to be one sided, but in the direction of the other person doing a lot of the talking. Only one knows about my dX, and they didn't believe me.

Anyway, to the issue, sometimes after church the "young people" informally go have pizza at someone's house or similar. I'm rarely invited and neither is my boyfriend. The girl who was having people at her house for pizza yesterday, invited everyone but us to come. She talked to us - well she said one word actually "Bye". Then another girl offered us a lift home, and asked if we wanted to go to the pizza night. It was a bit awkward cause she's kind of new and didn't really realize that we tend to get excluded from these things and weren't technically invited. She said she was happy to do whatever and didn't want us to feel uncomfortable either way. Then another guy, who is kind of the leader of the young people, invited us to come. So we decided to go, even though we weren't sure we were really welcome. But we brought our own food to try and smooth things over if we were ruffling anyone's feathers.

I don't currently drive and my boyfriend doesn't have a car at the moment, so this may be part of the issue - people not wanting to give us lifts and such. Which is cool, but it would be nice to be invited every now and again.

When I got home after the evening which went kind of so-so. I was kind of in two minds as to whether I should have gone or not. So yeah, should I continue to be assertive with this kind of thing, or do you think I should just shut up and respect the fact that "young people" seems to mean everyone in my age bracket except me and my boyfriend? And do you think it's purely the not driving thing or that there's some massive "pink elephant" in the room that I'm missing.

BTW: If Christianity isn't your thing that's cool, I'm approaching this as a social situation not a belief based situation, so please orient any advice you offer accordingly.

I don't think I would worry too much about having said yes. A lot of times NT's won't invite someone to something because they think that person isn't interested in socializing with them, and they usually get this impression because the person doesn't make an effort to socialize with them and show an interest in them.

I bet if you started talking to this group of people who frequently meet for pizza, or invite them all to an event then they will approach you more often.

I've just realized I think that may be the only valid usage of the phrase "them all" in the English language.

It's a colloquialism. Technically it should be "all of them", but "them all" is an accepted variation in this sort of sentence. English is weird.

As for the OP - us aspies are known for our insular mindset and difficulty in empathising with how others feel. We sometimes forget that the NTs often work the same. It's probably not a deliberate exclusion from their pizza nights - you're a different age and not part of their peer group, so it's simply never occurred to them to ask. If they ever think about it at all they probably think you're doing your own thing. After all, you've never been before...

If someone's invited you, go with it. Before long, if it all goes well, you'll be a regular.

I am the same age as a lot of the people, and have been going to these kinds of nights when I can for the last year or two. They just stopped inviting me. I also went to a weekly night every week for at least six months with them before that and was coming from over an hour away to do so. I've been a regular in terms of being present but not in terms of being welcome, except for with one or two people who are older and used to be some of the leaders of the group before it stopped being official. I try to talk to people but it can be tricky when there are 3 or 4 conversations going on around the table and you can't help but hear everything - makes it kind of hard to participate some times but I do try. Part of the problem is that most of the interaction is talking, I appear less strange when there's a common activity of some kind for part of the night.

I've been to coffee or the movies with a couple of the girls before, but nothing with the whole group as that it's a little too confronting.