Dear IntrovertZone,

This website gave me good advice in the past but now I have approached another bridge in my life that I need to get across but I don’t know what to do. I am 38 and I have no friends. I am an unhappy introvert who wants to change because I want to end my loneliness. Over the past year and a half with the help of this website, I have tried very hard to make new friends by going to many social events thanks to meetup.com which was recommended from a post. In the beginning it was very hard for me but I did gain confidence to go up to total strangers and introduce myself and start a conversation. But here is my problem. I can’t sustain the conversation and keep the attention of the other person. The conversation always ends the same way with disappointment. This happens every time for me and I have become very frustrated. What do I need to do to change this. I have read many books on how to make good conversation and I have used all the methods mentioned but none of it is helping. Thanks.

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I was dating an introvert man, he is really hard to read bc im an extrovert. He mostly reply to me and sends winkie faces as well.He and I had a fight around xmas time and took us 4 months to speak again, We saw each other once since then, He will flirt via text and phone, I do have to do all the first contact with him. Lately I have sent 3 text over 2 days and he has not replied to me. Is he mad or is this introvert personality. Last time we spoke all is well. Its like me will mostly respond to me and then does not. Can he be falling for me and backing away or does he hate me and is saying we are friends to get rid of me.?

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Hello,

I am desperate for advice. I do not know how to deal with my family. I need to wear headphones constantly because they are very loud and obnoxious. I ask them, politely and gently if they can lower their voices while on the phone, or when company is over, instead of complying, I get told that I am being rude. So that doesn’t work. The sound of my mothers voice and family for that matter makes me wince. I dislike family dinners and do my hardest to avoid them because they are very nosy, loud and it is just too much for me to handle. I can’t study for my course as well, the library closes at a specific time as well does the coffee shop..I can only study at midnight but even than my mother will wake up and talk on the phone – very loudly. I don’t attend anywhere with my family because the last time I did, I received a migraine from all the loud music, loud people and just way too much happening around that I couldn’t focus. I am 18 years old and I can’t move out either, it’s a rule that you can only move out after university/college and you’ve obtained a stable job.

Please, advice would be nice.

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Dear IntrovertZone,

My wife was out of town for work for six weeks. While she was gone, we talked on the pbone twice a day, and not for a very long time as she understands that long phone calls are exhausting for me. Having been together for 7 years, i found the time apart somewhat reenergizing. My wife is now between jobs and having not been around me for 6 weekz, it seems like she’s trying to catch up on lost talking time. One trait that she’s developed since coming back, or at least using much more often is to say things with alarm in her voice when there is no alarm. This is really starting to put me on edge, because every night I come running thinking one of our dogs is ill or inured and it’s nothing. I have tried to explain how unsettling this is for me but am not finding the right words. Any suggestions?

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Dear IntrovertZone,

I never gave my introversion any thought until a TIME article came out with it as a feature about two weeks ago. It really got me thinking about my own tendencies, especially the part about getting exhausted from being around other people.

I truly love being alone and cherish my solitary time, which I typically will spend with a coffee and a book. I would always get angry when people would try and strike up a conversation with me during this time, and for a long time I had assumed that I was just a jerk, particularly because I am not in any way shy. The fact that I am not shy would explain why I have long been an “undiagnosed” introvert.

For the past two years since my son was born, I would get extraordinarily tired right around dinner time. So much that I normally can’t even keep my eyes open and end up taking a cat nap while sitting straight up. I thought it was some kind of health problem until recently. Now I just realize that it is because everyone is in the house and constantly needing attention. That everyone includes my son, my wildly extroverted daughter, and my shy wife who is quite gabby at home.

In the title, I mentioned how I feel like I am going to explode, and that is necessarily an exaggeration. I need to maintain my energy in order to get work done (I work at home, which actually sucks), but find that I can’t muster any energy until everyone heads off to bed, but at that point I am usually so drained that nothing gets done. My wife is constantly trying to draw me into conversations when I just want silence and that makes me irritable. Following that up with the question of “what’s wrong” only makes it worse.

My question, and I am sure it is a common one on here is: how can I tell her about my need for silence without hurting her feelings? With a young child, I literally can’t get away from everyone for any meaningful time. The only time this is possible is during the day when I should be working, which leads to less money and financial instability. I just don’t know what to do…

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Dear IntrovertZone,

My best friend of the last year and a half recently tried explaining to me that he was an introvert. I had briefly studied this is psychology, but was not expecting to hear that from him. We both had a really HARD situation that popped up last summer, and we helped each other through the turmoils of the issue. Now that the turmoil is over, we do not hang as much, and at times, it feels strained or one sided? I am a extrovert, but am trying to understand his viewpoints better. So, I have offered hanging at my place, his place, and even those encounters seem strained. We have good talks, but they are limited, and they are brief. Am I simply thinking too hard about this friendship?

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Dear IntrovertZone,

I’m Holly, a 18 year old student in New Mexico. (I just found this website and I was completely shocked at how helpful everything is!)

I just read your “The Introvert in High School” article and you had a lot of very good points. I have two main questions that I really NEED answered.

“I remember feeling an almost physical pain in the warm sunshine of springtime, almost as if I’d suffered a loss, when really the issue was just that I felt as if I were missing life, missing out on everything.” This sentence perfectly describes what I’m feeling. How in the world did you resolve it? I know the next sentence, “This sort of feeling definitely got resolved over time, as I learned to relax and let people who liked and appreciated me into my life.”, sort of describes how to resolve the feeling but I need more of a step-by-step plan and advice. I’ve had the same boyfriend for three years now and I still haven’t let him in. It’s really starting to bug him and that worries me. The issue is that I really don’t know how to let people in! Please, help me. I really don’t want mess up my relationship with him because of this.

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Dear IntrovertZone,

I’ve always been an introvert and this was all well and fine till I came of the age where romantic relationships get more serious.

My problem is that I start to get anxious and irritable if I’m around my boyfriend for more than five hours at a time. I begin to pick out tiny faults or physically withdraw from him basically, I’ll do whatever I can to get him to leave with out saying it. The poor guy has to drive an hour to see me so, I find it hard to say the words, “Please just leave me alone”.

It is very “jekyll and hyde-esque”; I’ll be bubbly and happy when he first arrives and suddenly it’s like a switch has been turned and I just want him to get out. Believe me, this is not an issue of him doing something to irritate me that sets me off.

All of my relationships have been like this. In my last relationship living with my ex wrecked the relationship. At one point he said something that is still haunting me, “how can you ever expect to be married or have kids if you don’t even like sharing a bedroom and being around the one you love?”. And I wonder to myself, “how can I?”.

My lovely extrovert takes me with a grain of salt but I can see that it’s hurting him. I feel so guilty about not being the standard “I-want-to-spend-every-minute-with-you” girlfriend. When I googled phrases like “why do I need time away from my boyfriend” all that came up was posts about girls being upset about their boyfriends wanting time away….yeah not a great feeling.

And before you ask; yes I have had (and am on) medication for my anxiety and yes I have had a therapist. There’s no history of abuse in my life, I had a normal childhood…I’m just stupidly introverted(

Signed,
An introverted girl in her midtwenties

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Dear IntrovertZone,

So the situtation is I have been friends with this guy for about two years and only just recently realized he’s an introvert. At first I thought he was just shy and awkward but he can have really genuine conversations with brand new people and really enjoys hosting people. That said, he often likes to be by himself, is totally content to pursue his hobbies/work of photography and painting alone, and discerning his thoughts or feelings is really hard unless he chooses to share them. So during our friendship I got confused on signals if he was into me and I’m not sure if his interest waned as he started pursuing a mutual friend of ours a few months ago. However that didn’t last very long as they both agreed they were better as friends.

I guess my question is – how after this do I tell if he sees me more than a friend/attracted to me. I’m definintely an extrovert but I also recharge being by myself. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has this type of situtation. I see him about 2x a week through church events so it’s usually in larger groups and getting alone together is not so easy all the time. But yes we are pretty good friends just I don’t want to text him or email him to scare off our friendship. Any ideas?

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Dear IntrovertZone,

I am probably the most extreme as far as an introvert. I will go out of my way to not have to initiate a conversation. I feel that the biggest reason for me being an introvert is because I have been shunned by people and have been hurt too many times. An example: At work people around me would talk about an evening out. They would ask me if I would like to join then and I would say “sure”. They would then promise to give me more info. later and that info would never come and I would later find out that the event had already taken place. They would then appologize for forgetting about me.

My other problem is that my husband is the complete opposite. He loves to initiate conversation, he loves being around people and being the centre of attention. We are together all the time and I tend to just let him do all the talking since people enjoy listening to him. Beside him I seem very boring. I only have a handfull of friends. They are people that I have met when I was younger. I haven’t met any new friends since being married (22 yrs). My husband on the other hand knows people everywhere he goes. I just find I don’t know what to say or what to ask. I don’t want to be like my husband. I would like to just feel more comfortable in having a normal conversation and not feel like a geek. I seem like a geek to others because I am nervous and clumsy around large groups.

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