Socializing for introverts, or Other People, Part 2

Depending on who you ask, 25-33% of the population are introverts, which means they have less friends but more tight knit friendships, socialize less and generally are not the center of attention.  However, introverts are described as higher IQs than extroverts.  My therapist tried to tell me this as positive point.  “This means that one in every four people you see in a room are just like you!”

Leave it to be to spoil his attempt.  “Three out of every four people have no idea what I go through, and statistically, I’d have a higher chance of running into them.”

I thought about this last Thursday when I was at a cafe.  I received a promotional code for this new social networking site, and they have this thing called Connecting Circles, which every girl must go through.  I got to the place first, partially because I wanted a good seat, and to make sure I had enough lag time in case I got lost (I am horrible with directions).  I was supposed to meet four other girls for some introductory bonding time.  I found them more by instinct than what they looked like.  I had been nervous about this for the past week.  For some reason, the idea of potentially meeting people makes me run through the Rolodex of disasters I’ve engaged in whenever it comes to embarking on a new whatever. 

Anyway, the other girls were unimpressed with the quiet cafe we were supposed to go to, and they suggested going to a bar, which I was uncomfortable with, which I announced and immediately regretted it.  I was in the majority of going someplace loud to get to know someone (lots of activitity and noise bothers me, aren’t I so introverted) and they acquiesced, even though they looked forward to getting away from the cafe.  I noticed during the Q &A session several things happening.

1. I answered all of the questions by the book.  My answers were short and didn’t meander anywhere.

2.  I did not talk about anything that was baggage related.

3.  In fact, I didn’t talk much at all compared to the other four.

That weird thing that I was worrying about happening did happen.  Whenever I get nervous I tend to withdraw and become quiet.  It’s a defense mechanism I’ve developed from the years.  If no one knows my secrets they can’t criticize me, right?  But it’s also a part of being so introverted.  There was another girl there, who was more outgoing than I am, and she was nervous as well.  I know that because she repeated it, several times, along with telling us about her family, her upbringing in gross detail, her romantic career and the series of jobs she had.  Whenever there was a pause in the conversation I tried to join in, but this girl would say something, probably because she was so nervous about the silence.  During one of my failed attempts to join the conversation she told us about her crazy single aunt who she didn’t want to be around, because if someone doesn’t have their first romantic relationship by the time they’re 21 they have poor relational skills and who wants to be around someone like that?  The others nodded in response and I totally disconnected from the group.  I’m the Crazy Single Cat Lady in training right now, and I doubt they’d want to be around me if they knew that about me. 

From my observation, when extroverted people become nervous, they become more gregarious, social, lay it on thick, and take up more space in a social situation, perhaps to assert their awesome communicative abilities.  When introverts become nervous they withdrawal.  And when you have both in a circle, it becomes a very cruel space to be in on either side.

I’ve never particularly enjoyed socializing with extroverted people.  There I said it.  I beat myself up about this often because they are preferred by so many people.  If you read most singles ads, or ask people what they look for in a mate or friend, they’ll usually answer with words like, “fun” “exciting” “sexy” “daring” or “outgoing.”  The aggressive sports type of the man’s man for most ladies.  And at my yoga studio, the super athletic folks who are always vying for the instructors attention and rushing to get their mats to the front of the room are ones who receive the most attention from anyone.  It’s like there’s a need or rush to take up space, to let people know, hey I have every right to be here that takes precedence over other things, like if this person would be a compatible partner long term.

But that’s probably because extroverts are the majority.  Of course it’s going to seem like everything is made for them.  But if you have all those people hollering and elbowing each other for space and air time, who’s going to listen to them?  They all care about what they have to say as opposed to listening to others.  On the other hand, it’s difficult hanging with people who are extreme introverts and have a tight knit group of friends.  I have one friend like that.  She’s had the same friends for  the last six years and they spend most of their time together.  I’ve tried to befriend them, but every attempt I make feels like I’m invading their space that they’ve worked so hard to make communal, appreciative and relaxing — for them.  It’s not like I’m a part of this.  And I know those things take time, but do I really want to invest all that time getting into an exclusive group to just find out that they would exclude me based on some values I can’t change about myself?  I’m not sure.

I know that as an introverted person I have some advantages.  I have a friend who is really outgoing and his wife is very quiet and shy, and he said he’s always been attracted to the type.  He said outgoing aggressive women are nice, but shy girls are most reflective in their personalities, so they know themselves well, and they try to connect with others on that level.  Because they’re not always going out for the spotlight they’re more caring about others and those are great traits for being a wife and mother.  So he says.

Maybe my question isn’t how to get over being intoverted, perhaps it’s how to get over shyness.  That’s my real quest.  Or maybe I am just rambling.  Any suggestions for how to get over it?

 

PS– Happy holidays everyone.  I’m going home, and I’m actually excited about it.

Other People

August 2007 was probably the best month of my adult life for many reasons (I was moving someplace new, I was so sure I’d be on the way to my calling, and sleeping with three different people in such a small time span probably gave me a boost of confidence) and during this time I attended the Pre Service Orientation for VISTA.  I met up with my roommate, and we sent notes back and forth to the other room, where we played spin the bottle, read from parts of “The Ethical Slut” in humor and philosophical wonder, pondered our future, hiked to the Y where I subsequently fell off, ate lots of gellato which I dedicated a rap to, discussed our futures, ate lots of food, made our vow to help end poverty.  There was also a lot of drinking involved.  A few months after the wonder of VISTA slaked but the poverty pay stayed, I talked to someone who met me at the orientation.  I confessed that I was having a hard time making friends.  “But why?” she asked.  “You seemed so amiable and friendly at the orientation, and you really made an effort to bring us all together.”

The difference between that orientation and my life outside of it is that we were all on the same playing level.  We were all embarking on something new.  We were all excited and nervous.  We were all looking for new friends.  I don’t have the same advantages where I’m at now.

I tend to have a big problem when socializing in groups, mainly because it wasn’t done in my household.  For the first six years of my life someone was always at the house, and there were always people around.  After my dad died my mom and I basically fell into a comfortable solitude.  Our family isn’t close, but we’re not estranged, although I’m estranged from my extended family.  The last time our family tried to get into the same room was for my graduation, and that ended in all sorts of awful (like my older brother cutting off all contact with me for good.)

Most of the time, I am a misanthropic, bitter person but I’m not a horrible one.  I swear!  I’m great a being a student, and getting good test scores.  I’m well read and educated and love helping others.  I eat healthy and love to cook, and have lots of hobbies.  My problem is that I don’t enjoy socializing, particularly in groups, but that is a huge problem.

Ever since I was six I wished I was popular, and not in the “oh I’m in the in crowd” popular, but that I felt that people liked me, wanted to spend time with me, and felt they could add some sort of value into my life.  Even now I’d gladly trade being smart and kind for being athletic and outgoing because it would bring more people into my life.  Maybe I was hiding behind my course work all those years, maybe I was on the path to becoming a powerful career woman who was independent and didn’t need others, but now I no longer have that excuse and I’m realizing that socializing with others is really really hard.

I swear, it takes a lot of work, and my history with other people is at best, sketchy.  I was teased a lot in school.  My first year of college my entire flat staged an intervention where they said they disliked me, and felt I should move out.  I had made them uncomfortable.  I assembled a group of gay men who needed gay male friends who later asked me to leave them alone because me being a woman disrupted the energy of the group.  I’ve been told at work that whenever I attempt to be friendly the action isn’t desired.  Out of the 36 roommates I’ve had over the past six years, I’m only on speaking terms with one.  Most recently I regularly attended a Bi Women’s Support group, but was told two months later that I had made someone uncomfortable by stating I don’t want to marry.  They felt like it didn’t follow the guidelines (although it being an I statement, it totally did), and I quickly deciphered that my comment upset the dynamic of the group.  Whenever I’m around people, they reminiscence on the memories they shared with the rest of the group instead of being open to creating one with me.  I usually feel like they have a common bond that I don’t share.  Or that my input isn’t needed or desired, and my only role in a group is to be a listener, an observer, or give positive reinforcement.  I often feel like I operate as a seperate entity from the rest of the group, or there are no other people who also in the same predicament.

A few months ago a friend asked me to play a card game with her and a declined.  I wasn’t sure why besides I don’t like them.  I also dislike sports, dancing and most forms of physical affection.  In essecne, I don’t do activities where another person would be needed to complete it.

This is for several reasons.  The main one is that people tend to flake.  I had a friend from VISTA who always suggested we go to yoga together.  FIve minutes before class (and she’d done this several times) she’d call and cancel.  People also tend to be very late, they get sick, they fall in love, etc.  There are a lot of reasons why they don’t show up.  The second is that it’s very hard to gauge if they even have the space for a new friend in their lives.  I’ve asked people to hang out, and they freak out.  I’ve met with people through various social groups, but I don’t feel like the chemistry is there, and it just stays in this casual contact.  When I was in school I could tolerate this because I’d most likely run into the person within six weeks.  But Oakland is a big city and people may spread to other places.  So I walk around with my fingers crossed, hoping I’m going to see that girl in yoga class, or my friend who goes to grad school at Cal, or that the people I salsa dance with might for once, go out to a club and they’ll invite me.  Pretty soon the hope turns defensive and I let it go entirely, secretly wondering, “Am I going to have to wait another year to run into so and so?”  That’s no way to build a budding friendship.

I like to think that friendship, or any relationship involves chemistry, common interests and a committment to making it work.  My problem is that I can’t find anyone whom I share those three, and while I search for those, I experience a loss of control.  Instead of doing what I want to do, I’m waiting on people.  I’m hoping they email me or return my phone calls.  I’m hoping I’ll get to see them more than four times a year.  I’m spending money and time traveling to see them.  I’m hunting for them at farmers markets, searching for someone to make eye contact, waiting for them in the rain for up to 40 minutes at a time.  And I’m exhausted.  Besides, no one is worth that much effort.

I can’t trust that someone will return my phone call or they won’t scare off if I mention being around each other, so I no longer trust them.  If someone says they want to hang out, I still bring my yoga clothes in case they flake.  I’d rather blow $60 on a driving instructor than ask a friend for help.  And if a friend does say let’s hang out, I take it with a grain of salt.  A grain of salt the size of a softball.

Maybe it’s because I’m in my mid twenties.  Most people my age still have their college friends and college romances to cling to.  They don’t have the space available for new people.  An old friend told me there’s light at the end of that tunnel — that’d my luck would change in ten years.  Once I hit my mid thirties I’ll get all my friends back because they’ll all be enduring their first divorce.  I’m somewhat lonely and I’d like friends, but I really don’t want to wait ten years for them or wish divorce on anybody.

I no longer have school or work to hide behind, and I realize my distrust in people is robbing me of a lot rich experiences.  But where the hell am I going to work on these?  I don’t think a peer support group would be the best place, so I’m thinking of taking up group therapy.  At least that way I’d be able to confront this fear in a safe environment and understand or accept the way intimacy works in adult relationships.  Last year I made the resolution to be more social, and now I”m recognizing all the problems that entail in my interactions with others.  As great as the road to self discovery is, it’s stagnating without anyone else around.  This year has been all about me me me.  I’d like next year to be about other people.

Intimacy

As an agnostic, I like believe that the path in life is equal doses of fate and self improvement.  That not everything is left up to Omnipotent being whoever that may be;  if it were, then the right person, the right everything would just knock on your door and everything would be in your grasp.  And if not, then it’s just your fate to go around life, bumping into things.  However, I’d like to not think that everything in life can be achieved simply if you want it enough, work at it enough, desire it enough that everything is left up to us.  After all, other people are involved, and if other people leave, then there’s this assumption that it’s always us who’s at fault, when it could be them.  It’s a useful approach especially if you don’t achieve everything when you want it to at the moment you want it.

Once a upon a time I had this friend who’s smart and kind, hard working and good looking who desired love.  He worked hard at developing tactics from pick up artists to find a the Right Girl, who was sweet, beautiful, patient and wanted things to work with him.  But it did not.  It turns out that he’s too emotionally scared to let anyone get close to him, although he’s told himself all this time he doesn’t need anyone else’s help with this problem.  While I commend him for being honest about his inability to open up to her at this early stage of their relationship, it still sucks that he didn’t take care of this before this girl became his emotional casualty.

And I have another friend who would never hurt anyone intentionally.  He has a great job and a comfortable life, but he hates people.  He believes that love will find him when it’s ready, and he doesn’t need anyone because people are capricious at best and untrustworthy and boring at their worst.  He likes his freedom but wants someone to cook for him and greet him when he comes home from business trips, but since he dislikes most people it’s unlikely he’ll find it anytime soon.  Last weekend I asked him when was the last time he had a deep relationship since he’s adopted this neutral approach:  “Eight years,” he said after counting.

I told my first friend this when he debated consulting a therapist.  “Don’t be like my other friend,” I told him.  Both involve the same premise:  People are imperfect, and in their imperfections people can hurt each other.  Imperfect potentially harmful people can get into deep spaces of your heart where they shouldn’t be, annd hurt you.  My first friend broke up with his girlfriend because he grew to care about her, which means she had the potential to hurt him, and since he couldn’t manage that possibility he hurt her before she could hurt him.  My second friend however, is so comfortable in his malaise and isolation that he nurses his fantasy of the perfect woman coming to him, has not experienced anything true in years, and if he did meet a woman, I think he’d just wind up hurting her with his need for space and distance anyway. 

Outside the world is filled with lovers who don’t seem to have this problem.  Last Sunday seemed to be dedicated to them.  On my way to yoga, I saw scores of people outside in long lines for brunch, holding hands and each other despite the sunny yet day.  When I got to the studio, the instructor was there early, because she had spent her first night at her boyfriend’s apartment and she basking in the warm glow of their love despite the frost of the studio.  She hadn’t been in love in a long time and it felt great to experience it again.  When I went to the shelter, I assisted the quintessential twentysomething hipsters who’d just bought a flat in west bekerley/ghostown/emeryville and there looking for a scruffy kitten to comemorate their process of building a life  together.  Spring is advertised for lovers, but it’s fall, with its mellow warmth, windy weather, leaves that are different colors and early violet evenings that really call for togetherness, for love.

I thought of all of this after talking to my sister.  My mother had said I need to mourn my second love for more time.  “Maybe you need two or three years to wait out the pain,” she had said, but I can’t see dong that.  Sure, it seems romantic, noble and dramatic, but very silly.  I’ve spent a lifetime of waiting on people, for them to get over their need for space, freedom and other people and I’ve just become very bored with it.  It wasn’t even like it was a breakthrough with a therapist, or I started loving myself more or I saw some great clip of Dr. Phil.  I just got bored with it.  The waiting.  You should wait on restaraunts because you’ll get a seat. People are not that reliable.

I told my sister all of this while I did laundry.  “Don’t listen to your mom,” she said.  “She’s just saying that because that’s what she would do.”  I confessed that it hurts that my ex moved on so quickly and successfully from me.  However, I’m not sure if I’m ready to jump into another relationship with that level of intensity.  “So what do I do in this weird in between time?”  I asked her, although I know the answer.  Don’t indulge in self pity, because it just wastes time and it’s for no reason.  Work on myself.  Work on the idea that I want to be with someone, accept that and embrace it.  I enjoy my alone time a lot, because it’s safe.  But I know that safe people who don’t take risks often end up very lonely.

I would like to be in a relationship.  I wrote that down on an index card because I’m so afraid of that phrase.  It contains a lot of negative associations.  When I look at it, I feel anxious, guilty, even a little worried that I may perceived  as codependent.  But there’s something a little indescriple.  Like, I’m shifted from wanting to want it, to desiring it.  This will lead to a lot more work on my issues with other people, and trying to heal some attachment wounds, which I’ve just ignored in the past.

That’s the first step.  The next one is trying to find a solution to it, and maybe if I work on this goal I could find someone who honestly wants to be in my life.  I don’t think my desire or shadow of desire is all that uncommon.  My friends have endured this.  I like to think there are less jerks in the world, but more lonely hearts who haven’t found the right way to work on themselves, the right timing, or the right note altogether.

Free write 12: Home

I want my curfew to be when the streetlights come on.  That was ages ago, remember?  That was when I could stay out past eight o clock in the summers because the street lights when on then, and I went to the playground then, but it wasn’t to play truth or dare or to kiss boys:  it was to play shark on the slide and goof off and try to flip over fences when I was wore skirts, knowing good and well someone could see my panties if I couldn’t get over which was often.  And then I’d come home to In Living Color, some leftovers that mom made before she went to bed and watermelon for dessert. I’d kiss my dad goodnight and read a story to my sister, or my brother would read a story to me:  Cat in the hat, THE REMIX

I swear, I want to go home.  Not to a house,  but to people.  People I like. People live with me now, and I can’t stand them, and i know I need to get out, but it’s so easy and cheap to stay here. Besides me hell in paradise will end in a few months because we all have to get out.  Anyway, I want to come home to people.  That’s what mkes a home.  Since my father died no place feels like home.  Probably because we moved aorund so much after that, or we all scattered after his death like roaches with the lights turned on, too excited about our indepence, too stubborn to admit we still need each other.  I want to come to a house where people will be happy to se me.  Where someone will want to kiss me goodnight.

I miss the idea of home.  It comes in forms of people too.  Holding someone’s hand feels like.  Hugging someone who smells good feels like home.  Rereading a short story feels homey too because these are all things that are matter or comfort.  It’s a way of knowing that I ‘ll be okay no matter what.

I’d like to think that someday I’ll create the right kind of home in my world.  The right friends, the right love, the right house all along with the with the right two cats who will be all black, and the right gentle male greyhound, and a car which is paid off, and my education is paid off, and I’ll be a published writer, and Ill teach college ad hold writer’s workshops.  I’ll smell backing bread when I come home and kiss my lover, whom I can say I love to you all the time, and they’ll be happy that I said it.  I want to create a space where I can buy anything I want.  Now, I get excited when I can buy first rate shampoo and go out to eat without it breaking my bank and I’ll be on my way to paying off my credit card.

Still I want that stability. That securty.  That love that I once shared with life.  That time when I stayed away from home not to test my independence, so that I’d miss home.  I knew someone would miss me when I was gone.  Now, I think everything will be okay on some moments when I just vanish into thin air. Home is a space one can occupy, but the close density of people always feels like there isn’t enough space in the world for me to occupy the world’s space and still create a home.  Home I had something carved out for me, that was just for me, no one else.  here, I feel it’ll take forever to carve it out, recreate it someone.

So now I don’th ave a home.  I haven’t had one in over ten years. Now I pay to stay somewhere and that’s about it.  Now I long for that feeling of home that I see others take so casually, and I just want to have that feeling back.  I wonder, where is it at?  Where did my home go?  Why am I struggling so hard to be independent and depend on others and being comfortable with that?  Why don’t I….I don’t know…why can’t I experience somewhere else more easily.  As I came home tonight I wanted someone to miss me….I wanted the streetlights to come on…but they weren’t on, they were gone, the night sucked into a black hole, and the only person who cares about me is almost five hundred miles away.  I’m stranded, stuck.  I want my home back,  I miss home.  I miss the feelings having others for me, who would wait on me and alternately I could wait on them.  Now my home exists in my imagination, which is fine, but, I’d like it to be in fruition as well.  Is that even possible?