Cant join realms on my own

I am unable to join any realm on my own. 

If I use the Minecraft software to join a realm i get a message, "unable to connect to the world. please check your connection to the internet and try again." Now I thought that my internet was the problem so I tried a list of things to help.

1) turn on airplane mode and back off 

2)reboot computer 

3) reset router 

4) uninstall Minecraft and reinstall  

 

none of these fixed my issue. I joined a public server "the Hive" and was able to connect so I came to the conclusion that it was not my internet. I also found out that I can connect to the realm if I go through my friends list while someone is already in the realm that i want to join.