“Am I Too Much of a Loner for My Social Butterfly Girlfriend?”
I prefer to spend most of our time one-on-one and not spend the majority of our time double-dating or with her family. As the relationship progresses, I’ll be in a position where I have to potentially attend weddings, funerals, parties, and dinners. I also like to spend time on my own so I can recharge my batteries. I know I sound selfish, but I am what I am.
Am I too set in my ways after being out of a relationship for such a long time? I doubt it. I think I’m just a loner. I want to change… but can I change? If so, how? — Too Set In My Ways?
Well, first of all, you’re making a lot of assumptions based on three months with this woman and what sounds like maybe no conversations about your concerns. Have you talked to Sylvia about her lifestyle, about her expectations of a partner, and about your ideal long-term relationship? Maybe her lifestyle doesn’t include as much socializing as you think it does, or maybe she’s perfectly fine — happy, even — attending some family and friend events on her own, without a partner in tow. But, yes, if you’re in a long-term relationship with someone who has family and friends (which is pretty much everyone) and is even a little bit social, you will be expected to meet said loved ones eventually and will probably be expected to show up at events, like weddings and the occasional get-together. But the frequency of this is really up for discussion and negotiation, and you can have those discussions and negotiations in time, and on an ongoing basis.
Maybe having a long-term partner will prove to ask too much from you. Or, maybe this specific partner and her social needs will not mesh with your lifestyle and personal needs. But you don’t know until you experiment. Talk to Sylvia, meet her family and friends, give this relationship a shot, and see if you can find a compromise that works for you both. That’s what dating is all about. You figure out what sacrifices you’re willing to make and whether the benefits offered to you in return are worth it. If you decide they aren’t, you move on. But it would definitely be premature to move on now before you even see what compromises might be asked of you and what benefits would be gained.
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LW:
You are an introvert. She is an extrovert. That can be really difficult and won’t change.
My husband and I are extreme introverts and THANK GOODNESS we both are or it wouldn’t work.
It can work, though. My sister is a huge extrovert and her husband is an introvert, and they are very happy together. She goes out with her buddies and he has a chance to regroup.
I’m an introvert. Too many social obligations too close together are overwhelming/exhausting for me, especially if it involves large numbers of people I don’t know well or at all. My husband is an extrovert and needs more social interaction to thrive. We’ve been married for 44 years and we’ve been fine, but we both know who we and each other are. We have overlapping sets of friends but we also spend a lot of our time with just each other. Sometimes he flits away for an evening with friends and I stay home alone or meet with my friends who share my hobby (tabletop board gaming). Sometimes he joins us. Sometimes I join him. A lot of the time we go out on our own. I think LW’s situation depends upon how willing they are to accommodate each other’s personalities. Their relationship is very new but it could go either way. Only time will tell.
@Howdywiley I am a huge introvert too, and I used to feel the same way as you. I thought my ex and I were such a great match because we were both introverts. But I got to the point where I did want to go out once in a while and he didn’t want to. He didn’t want ANYTHING to do with my friends and family. We took a trip to another city for the weekend once and all he wanted to do was stay inside the hotel and watch tennis. I realized that while I am an introvert, I do need SOME sort of social life.
When I started dating again, one of the things I was looking for was someone more outgoing than I am, someone to help get me out of the house and out of my shell. My new BF is SUCH an extrovert! He’s so social and he talks so much and he talks to everybody and he likes to get out of the house and do things. It’s nice because it feels like a good balance. It’s great because he gets me out of my comfort zone, but at the same time he respects when I just want to stay in the house in my PJs. Hopefully things continue to feel balanced 🙂
You’re just not compatible. Break up so you both can find someone who is.
LW, if you value your own personal time so much that you wouldn’t give up an afternoon to support your partner at a funeral, you might want to rethink having a partner at all. I can certainly see skipping out on some things to recharge (goodness knows I do it), but not wanting to have to be there for someone at a funeral is something entirely different.
Exactly – attending a funeral, wedding, or some other milestone family event is about supporting your partner and unless your GF has a massive extended family, it isn’t like these events would even happen every month (or even every year).
Yeah, LW, you DO sound pretty selfish. Your view of yourself is bang-on. You’ve proactively decided that the people your “partner” loves and wants to spend time with are boring jerks. You don’t even know these people, and you want nothing to do with them.
“Lone wolves” are single. Just a thought.
Eh, who cares. But yes — you probably are too much of a loner for a social butterfly. Nothing is more exciting than somebody who wants to sit home all the time… yawn.
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Also — good fucking grief — you’ve been dating, what? ALL OF THREE MONTHS?! Who the heck even knows if you’ll even STILL be together come September. NEWSFLASH: Sometimes it’s best to cross bridges when you come upon them. No need to plan a strategy to do so months and months ahead.
LW: There’s a difference between being a “loner”and needing time to recharge. I am an introvert, but it doesn’t mean I hate interacting with other humans. Sure, talk to her, but I think that you’re going to have to be very particular in finding a partner in the future who doesn’t like their family and has no friends, which usually implies other negative things about them, unfortunately. I know I couldn’t be with someone who wanted to be alone with me all the time. I’d feel like I was in one of those suffocating high school relationships.
I get it. I’m a grumpy introvert and my husband is a social butterfly. But early dating interactions with his friends and family showed my how much i loved him because your partner is the product of their family and friends. They all have little things about them that remind me of my husband, the person I love the most. Yes, if he was an introvert, we probably would spend our lives together with nobody else around.
But because he’s an extrovert that loves his family and has lifelong friends I also have real friends and a second family. If it weren’t for our extrovert mates, many ultra introverts like you and I would be hermits especially since the pandemic which made it so easy for us to isolate