I don't like sharing

I am an introvert. Social situations exhaust me like you wouldn't believe. 

For me to perform well socially, the conditions have to be just right. I have to be well-rested, I have to be in a good mood, feeling confident, perhaps excited about something. I have to be prepared. Otherwise my mind develops this membrane, like cling-film, that comes between me and the outside world. When this happens, I can't think of the right things to say, I pause in the wrong places and I panic intensely about whether I'm using the right tone, looking in the right eye, or doing the right thing with my face. 

'Banter' with strangers is torture. An intense fear of saying the wrong thing means I can't be quippy and witty with my retorts, so I tend not to retort at all.

Of course I'm not the only one. There are billions of introverts in the world. I heard it's a scale, like autism. 

It's not that I don't like other people. Actually quite the opposite - I like knowing about people, watching them, trying to understand them. Not in a Patrick Bateman sort of way. Just normal human curiosity. But I prefer to be an observer.

Obviously you can't get through life just watching things happen without someone noticing you and trying to get you involved, so savvy introverts develop a persona – an image of themselves they portray to other people. It keeps things ticking along. But personas are difficult things to keep up and after a long day of being around other people, it starts to get thin and raggedy. Just as ectothermic animals like snakes and lizards need heat to re-energise, introverts need time alone. 

So how do introverts handle relationships? 

I'm getting married in the summer. I hate sharing, and now I'm promising to share everything forever. My future, my living space, my bed, my thoughts, my ambitions, my time, my food, my lacy underwear. 

For introverts, the very idea of being constantly with someone FOREVER is enough to make you want to fake your own death and disappear to another country. 

I have never withheld the fact that I could happily live man-less in a cottage with a dog for the rest of my life. When he asked me to marry him, I was still drunk from the night before and everything felt surreal even before he got down on one knee and presented me with a box with a ring in it. But I said yes and that monosyllabic response has, as trite as it may sound, changed my life. 

But it's ok. When introverts stumble upon a kindred soul they feel at ease with, they unleash the person within, imparting – whether the recipient likes it or not, a cacophony of pent up thoughts and feelings. It's a relief. As icy and independent and aloof as we like to think we are, even introverts need to feel a connection with another human being sometimes. Even if just to confirm that we still exist. 

The trick to being an introvert in a relationship, is respecting each other's space. Buy a king size bed. Buy headphones. Go for runs alone. Go on holiday alone. Make it clear if you bought that cheesecake JUST for you. Understand that life can be that little more exhausting when you're constantly wondering whether your expression, pitch and body language is appropriate for the current social situation. 

Kahlil Gibran put it a bit more romantically. He said: 

"Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping. 
 For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. 
 And stand together, yet not too near together: 
 For the pillars of the temple stand apart, 
 And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow."