To comfortably share an abode with a Subtle sort of person, one must extend but one basic principle to all dealings:
-Reduce social obligation and friction of association.
I must begin by explaining the difference of one’s room to the introvert and the extrovert.
For an extrovert, a room is a place to crash in between episodes of social activity. It’s just a tool required for basic rest and shelter.
For the introvert, one’s room is home, sanctuary, and all important private kingdom. One who is Subtle deals with a world that neither accepts nor understands their ways. The room is often the one place in the world where they can really feel safe and relaxed.
An extroverted roommate is one of the introverted person’s greatest fears: The fear that one who is grounded in the orthodox society brings that society with them into the room, effectively eliminating the last haven.
For an introvert, being forced to immerse in the hostile society even in their home is one of the greatest imaginable violations. I imagine that many an extrovert has found themself with an introverted roommate who was constantly surly, closed, and hostile, seemingly without reason.
Some intial steps:
-Keep your movies and music on headphones unless you’re both explicitly watching or listening to it.
-Don’t snap fingers, tap, clap, or slap your knees while listening to music/movies. These noisy antics are worse than second hand smoke.
-For phone calls, take the cell phone out in the hallway, and don’t talk loudly, especially to someone who’s not actually in the room. Extremely rude!
-Don’t make your room an entertaining center for groups of friends, especially not late at night or while all of you are drunk. If you wish for peace with an introvert, just bring in one or two friends at a time and don’t pursue any particularly loud or obtrusive activities. Asking permission, negotiating first will get you far. Actually, just showing respect by giving some form of advance notice is usually good enough.
This might seem like a lot to ask, but consider what all these situations have in common. By doing any of these things in the room, you are imposing your values and lifestyle on your roommate. You are deciding what your roommate will listen to, who they have to live with, and exactly when they have to do these things. You have decided that you are vested with the natural authority to make life decisions for your roommate! As far as an introvert is concerned, you might as well jump across the room, ransack their belongings, and piss all over their mattress.
If you persist with typical extrovert habits when you have an introverted roommate, you will needlessly make an enemy! An enemy who perceives that you have given up all rights to your personal living preferences and belongings. You will be accorded no respect because you never gave any. Your roommate will be watching for any weakness or means of forcing you out.
Your introverted roommate’s essential needs are very simple: one half of one room as their respected and safe domain. From the Subtle perspective, this is not only a reasonable demand, it seems cruel and miserly that someone who has the entire outside world on their side cannot be bothered to spare one 5×12 foot rectangle.
Other than that,
-Do not always give/expect greetings and farewells when leaving or arriving.
-Don’t impose your social expectations on your roommate.
-If in doubt whether it needs to be said, don’t say it.
-If you leave your roommate alone, your introverted roommate will happily reciprocate.
-IMPORTANT! DON’T disturb your introverted roomate if they are clearly concentrating on something unless it is very important.
Once you’ve shown basic respect, chances are, your Subtle roommate will grow comfortable and eventually actually approach you.
The key is that you cannot make control of the room into a social power struggle as extroverts naturally do. You have to respect your introvert roommate as an equal or no deal. Introverts operate according to tacit understandings and unseen contracts. What is most important does not need to be said because it is self evident from the nature of the situation.
Only when friction of association and social obligation are reduced to mutually acceptable levels are there grounds for friendly and harmonious co-existence.
6 Comments
I agree with this.I had to deal with mostly extroverted, nosey roommates in college and that wasn’t any fun. The best roommate I had was a girl who was probably introverted like me. The both of us never really brought any company into the living space and there was never any loud activity in the room. We knew how to respect each others’ space and we got along very well.
Most Western extroverted types have little understanding of extending respect through one’s actions.
They only understand giving of respect verbally.
Furthermore, they understand most of the world in terms of competition. It seems natural to them that even in their living space their ought to be establishment of hierarchy.
Most of them are flabbergasted when stuck with a roommate who won’t play their game. They quite simply have difficulty imagining things being done any other way.
If insecure, they might actually see an introvert’s countermeasures as a counterattack in the struggle for social dominance.
Ironically, it is introverts in such situations who are the ‘team players.’
I totally agree with you. You hit the nail on the head when you stated that a lot of extroverts only know how to give verbal respect. I had to deal with such a person at a former job. She was an extreme extrovert who I think prided herself on the fact that she knew how to respect people in a verbal sense. But she wasn’t very respectful when it came to respecting other people’s conversations and keeping her voice down so that other employees could feel comfortable within the work space. I became highly annoyed by her “loud” behavior and imposing behavior. And she seemed to have no awareness of why I might have an issue with her. After a while, I really could not stand to look at her.
Most extroverts are entirely focused on appearances and it makes them rather socially inept.
They don’t seem to understand that there’s a problem if their actions don’t match with their words.
Almost like small children, they don’t seem to understand that talking over someone else and doing it loudly is not very ingratiating.
This is the sort of attention getting behavior required to be successful, but it is also invasive, annoying, and abrasive!
That such people are rewarded by society for their poor behavior and that they don’t even seem to be aware of how annoying they truly are is doubly frustrating!
I am an extavert and I feel like you are liking us to jerks more than to our actual selves.
You might also want to consider that for us some of your behaviors come off as rude as well.
For the most part, I’ve ascribed difficulties with extroverts to their lack of ability to understand introverts. Because they do not understand, introverts have to stumble all over themselves to keep up appearances and not appear to be rude. Introverts understand that we will be misunderstood and appear rude to extroverts even if it is not our intention.
Is the extrovert being a jerk? Not really, but their expectations force the introvert to behave very unnaturally and spend a lot of time and effort just avoiding social catastrophe. It’s very draining and stressful and there’s no one to go to for help. The world sides with the extrovert’s point of view.
An introvert who gets an extrovert room mate has been cornered in their last refuge. Some sort of place an introvert has mastery over, even a 5X10 rectangle is the only thing that makes living in an extrovert society tolerable!