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Your description of drifting apart from friends resonates with me. I've felt the same thing, where it's increasingly forced to care about people I no longer ca
by shaftoe 10y ago
Your description of drifting apart from friends resonates with me. I've felt the same thing, where it's increasingly forced to care about people I no longer can connect with.
I'm married and my wife has gone through a similar transformation. We're also fairly introverted, in the sense that social situations leave us feeling tired afterwards. The funny thing is that time together is like being alone: it isn't exhausting.
- cylinder 10y agoWhat's wrong with being tired though? You go out for a bit and socialize and then crashing on the couch with Netflix until you fall asleep feels more satisfying.
- foobarbecue 10y agoFor us introverts, socializing is exhausting in a way that's very different from being physically tired or just sleepy. For me, it's a similar sort of exhaustion that comes from doing a tedious task for a long time. The kind of exhaustion you might experience if you had to write the same sentence out on a piece of paper by hand a thousand times. Wouldn't you think twice before signing up for such an experience? I often endure it because occasionally there are really fulfilling interactions and transfers of information that happen, but most of the time I find people in social situations don't want to engage their intellect at all and so the interaction is pure tedium.
- hiou 10y agoIntrovert is total bs. All those introverts are spending tons of time socializing online and then are burnt out once it comes to additional socializing outside of their phone.
- ShIxtan 10y agoNope. I'm an introvert, I spend the vast majority of my time with my wife. I rarely talk to others at work, and I almost never comment or interact with anyone on social media. Talking to people in any medium is exhausting.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- danielrhodes 10y agoOut of curiosity, what is exhausting about it?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- foobarbecue 10y agoOn further reflection I think the biggest problem may just be complete incompatibility of interest. Most people I know want to talk about things like tv shows, sports, hunting, taxes, the latest animal video they saw, getting drunk, etc. I try to change the subject to space exploration or information theory but nobody is interested. I have to be constantly careful not to come off as nerdy or patronizing. I'm about to move from a small town in New Mexico to a postdoc at NASA JPL so I suspect I may find myself less of an introvert there :-)
- oh_sigh 10y agoWhy isn't spending time with your wife exhausting? Is it because you can "be yourself" around your wife? If so, maybe you should try just being yourself around other people too.
- baddox 10y agoMy guess would be that the exhaustion the commenter describes comes from the (perceived, and probably accurately so) need to follow certain social norms when in certain social situations. Such social norms wouldn't exist while spending time with one's wife.
- oh_sigh 10y agoWhat kind of commonly activated social norms are we talking about where you can get away without them around your spouse but not other people?
- drivingmenuts 10y agoSocializing online is easier for me, since I can end it under my control. walking away from an online conversation is much less jarring to the other party because it's expected that real life will intrude on the other end. The downside is that deeper friendships take longer to form, but for this introvert, that's fine.