₦airaland Forum

Lovecars501:
Oh really? What is it? Also is there an introvert WhatsApp group I can join?

I don't know what it is. That's the problem.

Sorry, I don't know of any WhatsApp group.

Babe1994:
hi can I email you??

Sure. I have replied your mail

Babe1994:
How do you deal with your partner and his family thinking you’re weird/have mental problems because you’re reserved.

I don’t really have a lot of friends
I don’t really like greeting people
I don’t like calling or being around people.

The more I try the more i fall back. I think it’s affecting my son too. Even to the point my partner called me autistic.

My personality is really hurting me.

I want to say that your partner should be aware and used to the kind of person you are by now but I sometimes surprise myself with my new levels of introversion.

Here is what you can do. Accept that you are weird. There is no such thing as normal only majority. You are different from the majority, therefore you are weird. Accept that.

Then try to work on yourself. For example, I can go weeks without calling my immediate family and they are used to that but people I just met and are still trying to create friendship with expect me to call or chat them up regularly. It is against my nature. So what I do is this. If I know it is important to you that I call or we chat, I create a timetable for it. More like a schedule and I try to stick with it. That way, everyone is happy.

As for friends, many of us don't have many, some only have one and others don't have any. My view is that the maximum number of friends I can have and sustain at a time is one. Right now, I don't have any but you have your partner. Your partner needs to do more because you can't do it by yourself.

I hate randomly greeting people especially via calls or chats. Even physically, I can only greet you once per day. Unless we have something to discuss, why should I message you good morning. But as you know there are people who need that to feel important or even alive. You can make it one of the chores you have to do for peace to rain or you can choose vawulence.

Apart from going out, the only other thing that drains my energy faster than the speed of light is calls. Especially from unknown persons or unscheduled calls. Even planned calls give me anxiety. I don't know the remedy to this one. What I do know though is that there are some people whose calls actually recharge my battery. These are the ones I can initiate the call. Unfortunately they are scarce and they rarely call too.

Same applies to being around people. It is a waste of time, 90 percent of the time. But I can assure you that when you find your people, you may even like being around them more than you like being by yourself. I know that seems like crazy talk considering how we introverts like being by ourselves. Unfortunately, many of us never find our people because we haven't found ourselves yet. Anyways for the sake of your relationship, you have to try. In Africa, you don't marry a person but the entire family.

The only thing harder than being an introvert is being a child and an introvert at the same time. You aren't quite sure what is wrong with you but you know paracetamol won't cure it. It is a lonely feeling. You and your partner need to work together for your son's sake. You two are most likely his only friends. Help him understand that there is nothing wrong with him. He doesn't have to be like every other child. Also I need to point out that it is possible you are actually autistic. It was much later in life I realized that some of the things I attributed to being an introvert is actually something else entirely. Like Selective Mutism (SM), Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD), Autism and so on. I had severe selective mutism as I child but I thought it was shyness because that was what the adults and my mates called it. My point is, even if you are autistic it is not something that should make you love yourself any less. Like I said before, your partner needs to do better.

In summary, you dedicate one day of the week to be like everybody else, do what is expected of you, following you schedule. Have it at the back of your mind that it is just once a week. Let your partner in on the plan also. He should be able to cover for you the rest of the week.

The purpose of knowing your personality is not for you to live your entire life inside that box. You don't say this is how I'm supposed to behave in this situation as an introvert. The purpose of knowing your personality is to understand why you act the way you do. You don't get to choose your personality but you can make the decision every once in a while, to live life outside the box. In the end, it is not your personality that determines who you are, it is your choices. Obviously it will be hard going against your nature, maybe even impossible. So what you can do instead is to pick one day of the week to live outside the box. This will be the day you call all those that you need to call and visit all that you need to visit and greet all that needs greeting. The rest of the week you get to be your true self and don't let anybody make you feel less for it. Especially your partner. Remember you are not alone.

A lot of people claim to be introverted but I've never met anyone as introverted as me. The best I've seen is like 60% compared to me.

All my life, I've always known that I'm different, very different from everyone else. There is something that everyone else have in common that I don't seem to have.