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...

Been having to say to family and friends - I know I look ok, but I just need you to know, I’m not. I've never been a very openly emotional person I suppose.  I’m more likely to crack a joke than a tear.  Sadly that’s partly because I learned that crying was a weakness - my anger will often spill out of my eyes as tears, rather than from my mouth as words. A very common occurrence, particularly for women I believe. Maybe also the empath and the introvert in me, as I can’t bear the thought of blurting something out in anger that I then can’t ever take back. I didn’t learn it at home - it was learned at work. As a senior manager in very male-dominated environments, when I was close to losing my s*%t with anyone, I’d end up walking away from the situation, as the tears would well up, and I would see the smirks of assumed victory, and have to take an even deeper breath, to stop me going back and saying ALL OF THE THINGS😤! And it’s also partly because I don’t like to put my emotion...

  We are almost halfway through the holidays that I've been looking forward to for weeks now.  And once again, I find myself looking forward to the end of them, so I can have a break!  When will I learn? I wrote in my blog last year about this , but I seem to have a delete memory button every time the holidays are over about it, and I'm like Dory - 'Ooh look another holiday, yeay, I'll get a break!' I've got a reminder in my calendar every year, four weeks before the kids finish school in December, to remind me to tell all my colleagues (we are a group of small business owners, working in a shared office space, and we all have kids still at school) to get the last appointments booked and then clear their schedules, as the last two weeks of term are going to be a whirlwind of  end of year events,  Christmas card writing,  deciding on teacher gifts, and school celebrations   And then suddenly - the kids are home for 6 weeks (it's our long summer holiday...

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’m trying to keep a promise to myself.  It shouldn’t be difficult, but it is.  It’s just to be myself.  How hard can it be?!! But literally decades of  -‘Fake it ‘til you make it!!’,  - trying to be an extravert,  - pushing myself to the point of exhaustion,  - keeping up with my extravert husbands socialising (historically by plying myself substantially with alcohol) has left me overwhelmed and almost devoid of energy most days.  So recently, when I made the nerve-wracking decision to do more writing and to (eek! 😳) share it more openly and honestly, as myself - I was surprised, after the initial flurry of gut-wrenching nerves about real people - who I might actually know! - reading my blog, that the feeling morphed into something else.  I realised I felt a huge sense of freedom.  Freedom from hiding behind the persona I’d spent over 40 years creating.  Freedom to speak out about things I’m passionate about - I’m not one for conf...

Hmm, not always true is it? I had a good friend tell me many years ago that once she turned 40, she didn't care what people thought of her any more. I found myself surprisingly then looking forward to turning 40. But my 40th came and went, and my consistent fear of what others thought of me and what I did or didn't do, stayed firmly front of mind. If anything, it got worse, for a while. I would worry about what I hadn't achieved in my life. About things in my past that I wished I could go back and change. Was I a 'good enough' wife and mum? What's the point of the work that I do? And of course, about whether I should pursue writing, which I'd wanted to do for a long, long time. I am so uncomfortable with confrontation, that the idea of saying or doing something that might offend someone actually makes me freeze, and do...nothing! Putting things off, procrastination, fear of failure. All of these were a daily part of my overthinking (covered in a previous ep...

  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...