Something I found out about myself during the Enneagram Training week was how much of an Introvert I truly am. I have always figured I was about half Introvert, half Extrovert with leanings more toward Extrovert. But I never truly saw the part of me that was an Introvert, just acknowledge that it must be there and moved along.

Lately, I have noticed the I am pulling away from new people. I have this concept that I like to be touched, hugged, kissed but really get uncomfortable
when some people would approach me. I would have massive barriers up creating space. I couldn’t understand why I would have these walls when I wanted the contact. Then I realized that the amount of contact I want is directly relational to how I feel about the other person. I thought I was a very open and friendly person and hadn’t noticed that it actually takes a long time to warm up to people. I hide it well by being bubbly and full of energy. I had observed the reserved behavior but had put it in a different bucket. Mixing these concepts together, I came up with the following formula.

I have a regular amount of personal space (x distance) I feel comfortable with. As I get to know people, they get their own distance level depending on where they end up in my life. Most new people are welcome to come x close and that is fine. When I am attracted to someone (either as in a crush or just because I think they are a really cool person and I want to get to know them better), that space gets cut in half (0.5x). This hypothetical attractive person is welcome to come in much closer and in fact I really want them to. If there is someone I find creepy, then the distance becomes double (2x). If a normal person insists on coming closer than x, then they get the creepy label and regulated out to 2x. If they come in closer than that, it keeps increasing to a point where I wont have anything to do with them at all. This model explains why at a party, I feel like I want attention but keep moving away from someone who wants to give me attention. They are pushing beyond their allowed limit and others are coming near theirs. I am thinking this is a model that could work for most people (I wont assume it does because I am not everyone and I don’t have enough information on how others perceive things).

Funny thing is that I don’t deal with most of the people in the world. The people I am around are a very select subgroup. My kind of people, my peeps. These are people that think a lot like me, care for things I care for, pretty much accept me for what I really am, etc… Basically Fandom in its various forms (scifi, pagan, dance, poly, etc.) I don’t really deal with Mundanes. Even at my job, I have worked very hard at how to find places that fit me, where the people are more like my kind of people than typical Mundanes. I work in a little sea of weirdness in a world of Corporate. I have managed to find a way to make my life interact with only my kind of people and avoid all those others out there.

This means all of my concepts of x are based on a heavy pre-screening of people.

As we live our lives, we meet people, get to know them, find out if they are safe to our way of thinking about things, if we can trust them and then let them into our lives. We learn that it is safe to be ourselves with them over time and getting to know each other. With my pre-screening, most of the people I am surrounded with are relatively safe to begin with. The changed in amount of x is more of a fine tuning thing.

Now to add another idea:
When doing spiritual workshops, you know the people you meet are safe, even if they are complete strangers. They will listen to you, not judge you, hold your pain, see the real you. That is why you all are there. But these people are from a large range of sub-groups and not necessarily from my safe sub-group. In fact, I haven’t been able to determine if anyone I have met at these things has been one of my peeps. So here I am, in a nice safe environment, able to be vulnerable and I am closed off like a fortress. I am safe enough to observe what is going on inside me and am surprised that I feel like I need distance. My type is known for their extroversion. Not that there aren’t any introverted 7s, just that on average, 7s are more extroverted than other types. Someone asked me what my Meyer’s-Briggs rating was and I told him I couldn’t remember, it has been so many years ago. Then he asked me if I was an Introvert or Extrovert. I told him my 45-55 theory and he nodded and said yes, he could see that.
It made me stop and think about how much Introvert there was in me. I am use to only showing the Extroverted side and the Introvert is what I am at home, alone. For someone to see my Introvert side in public was odd. A very different perspective than the one I normally hold. This got me thinking. My God, I really am an Introvert with Extrovert tendencies. Wow. Not that I lost my Extrovert side, I think I just switched the numbers around, 55-45. I still need people. It is not healthy for me to be alone as much as I will set myself up for given the chance.

Putting the idea of being more of an introvert together with my personal space distance, I came up with the idea that x is much larger for Mundanes than for Fans. I just haven’t experienced the true level of my Introvert-ness because I have surrounded myself with friends I just haven’t met yet, not strangers. When around Mundanes, I am generally very closed off and even quiet. If I am noisy, it is to cover how uncomfortable I am. I am relatively comfortable around my type of people. I am very comfortable around my friends. The more comfortable I am, the less energy it costs me to be with people. So as I get more comfortable, I get more Extroverted. Eventually, I will need time to myself to recharge. As I am getting older, I feel like I need more of the alone time than in the past. But my relationships are much deeper now than they have been and that might explain the energy drain.

While all these theories don’t change anything, they do give me a different way of looking at things, judging my actions/reactions and talking about the ideas.