Poly Introverts?

ARRRRGHHH! I wrote this long thing about being a poly intro­vert using the LJ web inter­face. And the brows­er decid­ed it could­n’t find the serv­er (a com­mon error every evening, as I’m learn­ing), and then it was just—gone. Gone gone gone. Sam tells me this is the rea­son to use the client you down­load to your own machine. After the long thing is gone, of course. How annoying!

But I did want to know what oth­er peo­ple thought about it, so I’m going to try to repro­duce it. But now I’ve prob­a­bly thought about it too much, which sucks.

Okay. Good. Sam changed the music. Much bet­ter. It was Wil­son-Phillips. No, I’m not sure why we have one of their CDs in the house. Some things seem to just appear. He decid­ed “that’s enough, it’s like drink­ing a can of sweet­ened con­densed milk.” Now he’s back to the rit­u­al wrestling-with-Sam­ba that has become part of every evening recent­ly (we will, I swear, we will have that thing work­ing in place of an NT PDC. Soon. Really.)

So I read some­thing brian1789 men­tioned about a dis­cus­sion group for poly intro­verts. My first thought was “did an extro­vert have to get the con­ver­sa­tion start­ed?” My sec­ond thought was that I wish I could have par­tic­i­pat­ed because there are times when I real­ly won­der how oth­er intro­verts who hap­pen to be polyamorous ever meet their SOs. I cer­tain­ly was­n’t looking—and nei­ther was sam­bear—when we met. At church (okay, a UU con­gre­ga­tion), of all places. A small con­gre­ga­tion that did­n’t even have a sin­gles group, though I doubt either of us would have been involved in one if it did exist. He asked a mutu­al acquain­tance who I was, got my email address, and con­tact­ed me out of the blue (he’s an extro­vert). It took me a while — and a clue from my SO—to know that he was even inter­est­ed in me. I don’t tend to think of peo­ple being inter­est­ed in me. I just don’t con­sid­er it, so I don’t notice it with­out it being very, very obvious.

That isn’t some­thing that’s like­ly to hap­pen often. I met my pre­vi­ous long-term SO (we’re still friends, but no longer lovers) when we were both involved in Men­sa. We were involved on and off for about 10 years. We were both intro­verts and I’m still uncer­tain as to how we end­ed up togeth­er at a dance at a region­al gath­er­ing, but I think I can attribute at least some of it to “Peachtreat Punch.” He says he only went to the dance because he found out I’d be there, so I guess he’s the one who went out on a limb. I sel­dom drink any­thing stronger than water and I no longer belong to Men­sa, so that’s unlike­ly to be hap­pen­ing again either.

In the last decade or so I’ve gen­er­al­ly met SOs online or through mutu­al SOs. Since I don’t gen­er­al­ly go into any kind of chat room any­more, I don’t meet many new peo­ple online. And I was nev­er actu­al­ly look­ing to meet anyone—I’m not try­ing now, either, it’s just that I’m real­iz­ing that it’s unlike­ly to ever hap­pen. At one point it seemed like every time I turned around, some­one new just fell into my life. I was­n’t look­ing, it just hap­pened. But I was inter­act­ing with peo­ple online, at least, so I was­n’t social­ly inert. Now I large­ly inter­act only with peo­ple I already know—safe people.

Some­how it’s eas­i­er to take chances online. To talk about this whole top­ic, in fact, which I prob­a­bly would­n’t ever bring up in a face-to-face sit­u­a­tion. I can decide not to read com­ments here, or just delete the entry if I decide I should­n’t have post­ed it. If nobody replies—well, it isn’t the kind of rejec­tion it would be if I tried to start a con­ver­sa­tion with in-the-flesh peo­ple and had it flop. 

I can, for brief peri­ods of time, be “on” and use a sor­ta-extro­vert­ed ver­sion of myself. She’s the per­son who gets up and sings in front of peo­ple, who does job inter­views or pre­sen­ta­tions. I have pulled her out a few times for par­ties. She isn’t me, though, so if some­one thought he was inter­est­ed in me when he met her, it would­n’t be real—she’s a mask. Not me. Not real­ly. The real me loves talk­ing to peo­ple but prefers talk­ing to one or two peo­ple than doing that weird “mix­ing” thing or deal­ing with large groups. She was more inte­grat­ed into the rest of me when I was younger, but not now, for what­ev­er reason.

So—other than hav­ing extro­verts hunt you down and sweep you off your feet, how do oth­er intro­vert­ed poly folk do this? No, I’m not pin­ing for anoth­er SO, I’m just won­der­ing if there will ever be any­one else in our lives or if we’ll con­tin­ue being poly “in the­o­ry” forever.

(This has end­ed up hav­ing almost noth­ing at all to do with the first jour­nal entry I wrote on the top­ic which dis­ap­peared into the ether—maybe that’s a good thing.)