Understanding Humour

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Often I can understand humour/jokes used on TV but may not laugh at them (I do laugh sometimes). Or occasionally I may misunderstand, take them literally or analyze them.
Also often in real life the same thing may happen, others would laugh and I wouldn't for pretty much the same reason.
Is this similar for anybody else?

I often find myself looking to others to make sure it's okay to laugh.

Yes!

I spent a while as a kid reading joke books to learn humor; so I usually "get the joke". My own sense of humor is usually odd and sometimes niche humor that people don't get, but I've got one.

I don't always laugh at jokes. Or sometimes I laugh because I know I'm supposed to, and then stop rather abruptly when I'm done laughing. I think that must look too forced to seem real.

Nope.

I find that often when I don't get a joke but am with a group of people I "half-laugh" or if i'm passing someone and they say something I don't hear fully ill laugh if I think it was a joke.

I did that as a kid, and still do often to this day. I laugh more now at jokes than I did as a kid, but even then, I'll usually only truely laugh when I'm alone.

I think this stems from when I was a kid, I'd laugh if I found something funny, but the kids in school would say things like "she laughs at everything!" and when I tried not to laugh too much they'd say "God! You never laugh!", so I became unsure when laughing was appropriate. So, to be on the safe side, I only laughed when everyone else did, whether I found it funny or not :/. This led me to not really knowing what's funny and what's not when I'm around others.

I have a semi-unusual sense of humour in that I don't like the humour that most people my age like, such as Little Britain or films that rely heavily on crude, silly humour. I don't really know what type of humour I do like, only what type I don't.

I sometimes get jokes, what I find hard to pick up on is sarcasm.