The Sound of Silence
Sometimes sitting in silence is a really lovely thing.
Finally getting my Extrovert husband to enjoy sitting in a room with me, with no TV on, just reading our books, was the day I knew it was a forever relationship. 🥰📚
But sometimes silence is not a thing of beauty.
When it is an uncomfortable silence, and one or both of you are sitting second-guessing what the other is thinking, things can get out of hand quickly.
Being able to really understand the different ways you each think, and the opposite feelings you might have about doing certain activities, is so important, so that you can both find simple moments when maybe a compromise would not feel so hard.
Understanding both my personality type, and my husbands as well, has made life so much easier for us all (including our children!). Sometimes I have had an overwhelming week at work or with kids, and I just can't do anything at the weekend except read, sleep-in, and generally recharge. If I've had a week like this, I can explain this to my husband, and he will often do his own thing over the weekend, or just work on the garden (so he is still 'achieving goals' - that's his thing!) while I sit on our deck and read (MY goal).
Or other times, he has had a difficult week, and I know that he would love nothing more than to meet up with our friends for a meal and drinks over the weekend, or go out to the local markets for a wander - that the social interaction will renew his energy and get him ready to positively manage whatever is going on at work for him. So I will often organise this for us, and watch his face light up when he realises I've noticed what he needed.
This is mostly just concentrating on the introvert/extrovert energy differences.
There are so many other nuances within each of our personalities, that it can be helpful to have more understanding of. I regularly read a fantastic website that I found early on in my introvert discovery period, called Psychology Junkie, written by the wonderfully insightful Susan Storm, and the newsletter that comes through a few times a month, will often give me something else to discover or think or even laugh about. (see my footnote!)
A recent one in particular, gave me a new insight into why my husband was potentially behaving in a certain way about my reluctance to make a change. This change would clearly improve my life, but I was just not quite ready for it, and needed to think it through and prepare myself (he would say 'procrastinate', I would say 'consider' ðŸ¤).
After reading the article, I was able to see why it was frustrating him so much, so I made a point of explaining to him how I was feeling about it, confirmed that I was definitely going to make the change, just not immediately. He was still a bit confused, but a lot more understanding!
It's a bit of fun to get more insight into why we are all different and unique in our own way.
And they are also extremely valuable tips on how to navigate some of the issues we can have in our relationships - not just from an energy perspective for Introverts and Extroverts, but all of the different parts of our personalities, and then also how our values play into these interactions (but I'll save that for another blog!)
So if your batteries are depleted because you are trying to keep up with the extrovert in your life, it might be worthwhile reading up on ways to explain to each other how you are feeling, and finding ways to resolve these mismatching scenarios by agreeing to sometimes compromise a little to help you each recharge, in your own unique ways.
Note - I was not sponsored by Duracell, Panasonic or
Energizer for the photo above, but I'm happy to talk if they're
interested 😉
And enable you both to return to enjoying some comfortable silences, instead of awkward ones...😊
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