INTROVERT: So I Married an Extravert

  I often wonder who I write this for.  It is for me? Is it for the other Introverts out there who happen to find themselves confused and married to an Extravert, and frantically started googling looking for help? Most likely it was for myself, initially, to have a place to put my thoughts. It's become my journal I suppose. I've loved writing for so many years, but not been able to dedicate any real time to it. whether it was writing stories at school (my poor mum, the times she had to go into my primary school and explain to the teacher that the stories I wrote were completely made up and I hadn't actually for example, been viciously attacked by a dog in my pram as a baby..) , writing letters to friends and family as I grew up and left home, and then when social media and the internet took over, I gravitated there and began finding my way around the new shorter forms of communication.  Some were more formal - I had to do lots of writing through work, sales and marketing...

Ha ha, laughed the Cheshire Cat, at the irony of the situation Alice found herself in. I've been lucky enough over the last couple of years, to live somewhere that has not been highly affected by multiple, long lock-downs due to Covid 19. Not to say there's been none, but in comparison to many others I know of, we've been pretty lucky where I am.  But I cannot deny that I often had little wistful moments of thinking how blissful it would be to have to work from home, the way many people were all over the world. Ah, the introverts dream -  having nowhere to go,  staying at home,  doing whatever, whenever.... Except that's not the reality, right? The 'dream' doesn't have work, or children, or Extraverted husbands in it - they are a fuzzy, faint background concept that doesn't really factor in the best parts of the dream (sorry, beautiful family - I DO love you!)  I've been a passionate and vocal advocate for flexible working for a number of years now....

Recently, I've been trying to make time to respond and comment online, about issues I really care about.  It's not something that comes naturally to me.  Actually, that's not completely true - it comes naturally to me to have a strong opinion about things, to have something to say. But actually saying it - well, that is not so easy. I got to the point where I was so fed up of  spending ten minutes carving out the perfect response, the right words, not too much or too little, so as not to bore people,  then another oh - anywhere between 30 minutes, to a week or so - reading it, re-reading it, checking six times for mistakes,  thinking about who might read it, and how it might offend them, and whether I was prepared for any backlash or misunderstanding that might come from my intended response,  and whether I had considered my comments from all possible angles.  Sometimes I'd even go off down the rabbit hole doing research, to be open-minded about my opi...

I find holidays to be such a conflict for me, as an introvert. On the one hand, I am in desperate need of a break from the everyday 'stuff', but on the other hand, having no routine is quite stressful for me! If I had no-one else to think about, I'd likely be ok, but having a family to keep entertained and, well - alive, makes it a constant barrage of decisions to be made 🤪🤯. I wouldn't change my family for anything, but I do need to get better at giving myself the breaks that I need. Maybe I need to take time off during school terms, while Mr Extravert is at work - take a week off and just zone out staring out at my garden, until I actually get bored and then I can get on with my favourite pastimes - reading and writing. You can see from how infrequent this blog is, how often I manage to sit down and write. Not that the notion doesn't cross my mind, often. I'm also writing two books at the moment - started one of them in 2016, and could probably count on both...

  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...

We are in a really difficult, uncomfortable, strange time at the moment. Everything is unprecedented ... Apparently there's a virus flying around - it's both invisible and can be deadly. It's keeping us at home. Which doesn't sound like it should be too difficult for us introverts, does it? Except if you are kept at home with extraverts of course. 🤨 My extravert & I celebrated our 18th wedding anniversary last month, in the most unromantic way you can imagine. He went out for a run - since all of this started and we've not been socialising, I've been sending him out to run when I can see his energy is needing to be expended. Just before he got back, I ordered takeaway fish & chips, and then went to do my weekly Zumba class online from our downstairs living area. So I did my class, then came back upstairs and ate cold fish and chips, on my own, at the dinner table! 😂🤣 #loveknowsnobounds We've been together long enough that the actual dat...

  So I've started writing this on 31st December 2018. I might finish it by the end of January knowing my life, but I knew I needed to get some of this out before the end of this year.* Exactly one year ago, I attended a fantastic New Year (Hogmanay) party.  It was here, where I live, in Australia, but it was an entirely Scottish contingent, due to friends and family of friends all being here at the time, and it was a really great night. I don't often enjoy New Year. It's the classic over-rated event of the year for me, as it always seems like a great idea to go somewhere there will be hundreds of people, and then about a week out, I'm praying for storms and hailstones and lightning, so I can choose to stay home instead - why do we do this to ourselves, my fellow Energator? (aside - I am not actually a fan of the word Introvert - I am currently testing out alternatives to see which one I think describes us better... We 'grow' energy, to either use oursel...

So why did it take 40 years to figure it out? I consider myself to be pretty intelligent, extremely observant, and a fairly good judge of character - how did I miss this about myself? With hindsight, I can look back and see all the obvious things that make sense now, but I haven't yet figured out whether it would have been a good or a bad thing to know when I was younger - I am mostly glad I think, that I pushed myself waaaaay out of my comfort zone, 'cos it just seemed like a thing that had to be done to keep up with everyone else. If I'd had all the knowledge then that I have now, I think I would have become a(n even more) melancholy musician who couldn't 'conform' in any way. I'm still not a sheep, but I live in conformity and harmony to a degree that works for me, and keeps me sane.. (and allows me to spend my life with an Extravert!) Reality is, until I came across Susan Cain's book 'Quiet' , I'd genuinely never considered even va...

Oh..... hi.....✋😊 You probably found me via a search for either 'Introvert' or 'Extravert', right? (Or maybe Extrovert, as it's sometimes spelled - see the really long footnote*) Yeah, I'm a little bit obsessed with both concepts since discovering I was an Introvert at the tender age of Forty-three... (I'll get to that story later) If you're an Introvert living with an Extravert, read on to discover how it's not you, it's everyone. - If you're an Extravert living with an Introvert, stop rolling your eyes ( I saw you!), and read on, cos you're about to get the best insight into how to better understand your OH and discover that what you consider to be 'wrong with them', is actually just different to you, but applicable to about half of the world, so maybe you should listen up - chances are half the people you interact or work with are also Introverts, and it might just be the learning experience that helps you get that next ...