I'm an outgoing introvert.
It's a phrase that contradicts itself, and a Myers-Briggs test can't diagnose it. But, from personal experience, I think it's a real thing. It explains why my personality challenges itself. I easily get along with others and I enjoy socializing, but I also like keeping my circle of friends tight and I need occasional isolation to keep myself stable.
I bet plenty of people out there either A. think I'm crazy, or B. just had an epiphany realizing that they might be outgoing introverts as well, finally uncovering logic behind the discrepancy in their social patterns. So that's why I wrote this. For those who relate or for those who are confused, here's what you should know about outgoing introverts.
We're kind of picky about our friends. Finding a new friend that we totally click with and don't get tired of spending time with is probably one of the most rewarding accomplishments for us. We're picky about friendships because we have to be. Spending time with lots of different people can spread us too thin, making us tired or overwhelmed, so we can be pretty selective sometimes. We don't have trouble getting along with people--we just value quality over quantity in friendships. We're totally OK with the fact that we may not have a ton of friends as a result. So if you're one of our friends, we think you're really, really, really cool. We'd much rather be a loner than settle for ho-hum friendships.
We can be hard to understand. Not in that punk rock "Mom this isn't a phase" type of way. The type of way where we may be a total party animal one night, but seclude ourselves entirely the day after. Since we're friendly by nature, we love hanging out with fun people. But because we're still introverts at our core, we need to balance the socializing with alone time. This ambiguity may seem weird to full-on extroverts or shy introverts. We're not moody, two-faced, or "bipolar." We just need balance.
We probably used to think we were extroverts. Although I can have some trouble starting conversations with strangers, I was never one to call myself shy. I thought that meant I was definitely extroverted. It wasn't until recently I discovered I fell into the gray area; I wasn't energized by spending time with people, but I got antsy and bored with too much alone time.
We frustrate ourselves sometimes. Again, with introversion at our core, mingling can be less than appealing every now and then. But choosing to stay in contradicts the little outgoing voice in our head. There's nothing much worse than getting invited out on a night when we had our hearts set on a "Parks & Rec" binge in our sweatpants. We probably get FOMO worse than most people because we want to be actively social — we really do — but there are days when we just gotta maintain our sanity first.
So if we're ignoring you seemingly out of nowhere, it's not you. For real. We hate for people to get the wrong impression that we don't like them, when actually, we just need to be a hermit for a little while before we lose our minds. We know that we're weird. But we're also introspective, genuine and sympathetic.
So as long as you can get past the weirdness, we're kinda the best of both worlds, right?
