Riolis, you remind me a lot of me. I too have been overweight for the great majority of my life, and suffered for it in the usual ways all while growing up. I'm also in my mid-late 30s. Even your starting weight is the same as I was at my peak (although I didn't start LCing until I got back to 291 through exercise alone).

I've also never had much of a social life, but in my case I feel it's more because I'm just a naturally introverted person who wouldn't feel comfortable in a crowd even if I wasn't overweight. I also don't drink, so bar crowds feel especially foreign to me.

I can also relate to the whole friends getting married thing; in many cases they're now having children. But in a few cases they've also since split up; getting together with someone is no guarantee these days that it will last. I personally accepted long ago that I would remain single, and learned to embrace the freedom that single life brings. Who doesn't like wandering the house on a hot day wearing... not enough?

To answer your main point, I can't promise you that life will be better once you've reached goal, since I haven't got there yet myself, and like you I have little idea of what it's like to actually not be fat. But what I can confirm is that being at your/our starting weight was not much fun, and certainly not sustainable. For you and I both this is a journey into the unknown, but to me that still beats the known path that awaited us where we used to be. And I'll take "a chance" over "no chance" any day.

Finally if you're at your computer and struggling for sleep, I can suggest a couple of other things that have also helped me:

* justgetflux.com - Flux is a program that "warms" the light of your computer screen at night, so it's not so harsh on the eyes in the off-hours.
* sleepradio.co.nz - this is the homepage of Sleep Radio, an online radio station that streams ambient music 24/7. No announcers, no ads, no jingles, just music designed to send you to sleep.

All the best, mate.