I've Got to Tune Myself Up, Not Stress My Strings!

I've played guitar since the ninth grade, and I've played hammered dulcimer since October of 2014.   When you tune an instrument with a wanton disregard for the octave, you're going to over-tighten and stress out your strings.   Eventually, if you do this enough, the strings will break outright.  As an Introvert, my strings are too tight, and I need to relax them to tune them to where they need to be. 

There are inherent social obligations that a person can't avoid, regardless of whether they are Extroverted or Introverted.   These inherent obligations are sometimes as difficult as "going out on a limb" to do the extraordinarily social stuff.   As a result of this eternal struggle, it is likely that your Introvert takes any social advice or social manual literally--sometimes too literally.  It is not unusual to have a situation where your Introvert takes the advice, goes just as far as the advice mandates, and then stops cold because implied or "common sense" expectations of follow-up activities are neither inferred nor intuited by your Introvert.

Trust me when I say that this sort of social oversight is not an intentional snub.  It is a result of going with the directions in the first communication, and then assuming that all is well unless specifically communicated to your Introvert.  This is a golden opportunity to communicate your needs as directly as possible.

A great (and positive) example of this is a recent communication.  I received positive communications about having bent over backwards to meet some relationship/visitation needs over the last two months of 2014.  Based upon this, I relaxed my stance of "When should we visit again?" and rested at home as needed for the busy months of January and February.   This left the continuing need to connect unmet.  A family member reached out to me, and instead of saying "It hurts when you don't visit" (which would have been a reasonable communication with someone who simply ignored the social cue to proactively visit), this very understanding family member reached out with a proactive invitation to visit, and an expression of the fact that they missed my presence.

I am intensely grateful that I have such forgiving and understanding family members, who are more than willing to reach out and connect with me when it is clear that I have missed the boat.  :)