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The Introvert's Dilemma
As any Myers-Briggs test will tell you, I am strongly introverted. Put simply, people exhaust me.
On the surface the label doesn't appear to fit. Most of the paid work in my life has involved working with others. One job involved delivering regular public presentations to groups of 60 people, twice a day. Similarly, I have spent hours on end with people I like. I am widely known for being a chattermouth; once I get started talking I won't ever shut up. And I complain of feeling empty and sad and lonely when I have nobody to talk to. Surely all that is classic extrovert behavior?
But people do exhaust me. I am very shy around strangers. I don't greet people I see on the street, thus destroying community bonds. I need my alone time; without a few hours in private each day, I get stressed and dangerously cranky. I feel uncomfortable at parties. I am notoriously bad for forgetting names and faces. I consider books and websites friendlier and less stressful than human interaction. I get along poorly with housemates, and people I care for exasperate me endlessly. So long as I have something to occupy my attention, I am perfectly content spending hours or days in isolation. The idea of going to jail and spending the rest of my life in solitary confinement scares me less than being in the general jail population.
I can't imagine spending my life with another person. The idea of meeting somebody and moving in together terrifies me. But that seems to be the expectation for monogamous long-term couples. I have read about situations where the partners maintained separate dwellings, and just got together for housecalls and social events. That sounds ideal, but I question whether it is feasible in real life, especially in the gay male culture of casual sex.
And yet introverts marry. Some even get pregnant and have baby introverts. How do they manage? Why don't they go crazy? Maybe I can imagine living with a spouse. You could have a private room and some expectation for alone time every day. It would be difficult, but maybe one could survive. I can't imagine living with small kids. All pretensions of privacy evaporate. The little vermin get into everything and hound you endlessly. If you aren't at work (interacting with co-workers) you are at home taking care of kids and giving your partner a break. Such intense human interaction goes way beyond inconvenience; it's practically torture.
But stronger introverts than me do it and survive. They even decide to have multiple children. Clearly I am failing to understand something.
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