INTROVERT: So I Married an Extravert

  Whilst I mostly laugh and joke about the difficulties of spending my life with an Extravert, there's no-one else I would choose to live with, for the rest of my life.  He is an incredibly caring human being, and there are many things about my Extravert that make my life much better than it would be if I was on my own, or even with another Introvert.  It's very important to remember these, and write them down, so I can read them at times when I am feeling overwhelmed by his noise and presence!     It wasn't until we had been together for a few years that I really started to appreciate these things.  And you also have to bear in mind that we were together for 14 years before I even knew that we were energy opposites! I unbelievably didn't discover I was an Introvert until I was 41 years old. Not sure how I survived in the world being as introverted as I now accept that I am - although I am fully aware that alcohol played a huge part there, which thankf...

Sometimes sitting in silence is a really lovely thing.  Finally getting my Extravert 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 ...

  I love flowers.  I love how they brighten up a room just by existing. And wallflowers are particularly beautiful, being so determined to shine subtly from amongst the blandness of the grey rock or rust-coloured bricks they are so often surrounded by…  Ok so that’s not quite how others see them, but it’s how I see them. 😉 Then you have the idiom ‘wallflower’, as described on Wikipedia.. "A wallflower is someone with an introverted personality type (or in more extreme cases, social anxiety) who will attend parties and social gatherings, but will usually distance themselves from the crowd and actively avoid being in the limelight. The name itself derives from the eponymous plant's unusual growth pattern against a wall as a stake or in cracks and gaps in stone walls. 'Wallflowers' might literally stand against a wall and simply observe others at a social gathering, rather than mingle. This could be due to anxiety, shyness, lack of social skills or self-esteem." Sig...

  When will the bubble burst? Do I want it to burst? Is the bubble good, or bad? I have felt in a state of turmoil almost consistently for the past 15 months. I run my own consultancy business, and from January 2015 up until September of 2020, I also ran a small coworking space in my community. A strange choice for an introvert you might think, but I love to help people achieve their potential, and creating a space for like-minded people to run their small businesses from, seemed like the perfect way to meet the people I wanted to work with. (I also previously ran networking events - but let's not go down the rabbit-hole of psychoanalysing that at the moment..🤭) During the last 15 months, I had to decide whether to continue the business I had passionately fought to build ( "it won't work, you're mad, you're wasting your time, why don't you just get a real job". .), and when I decided not to (running a coworking space during lockdowns turned out to not be...