People are a sum of their life experiences. People who are older, have more that goes into that equation. More often equates to complexity and intricacy, like a complicated key, that becomes harder and harder to find a lock for.
In my early 20's, I was more open to hanging around people I know I didn't like, or wasn't compatible with, because I didn't want to be alone or without friends, craved attention, and saw every social encounter as a stepping stone and potentially valuable.
Now, I know better. When you get older you realize you don't need to surround yourself with people whom you don't like, no longer crave as much attention, and already stepped along many of life's stones. You also put on less of a pretense to others and care less about being liked. It's more important to be authentic and true, even if that means having less friends, than a phony with a lot of fake friends. All this has the result of making it more difficult to randomly find real friends.
It's common I'll meet many new people but the ones who I stay in contact with are few and far between, and that's okay. People come into your life and go out of it, it's just the way things work. I'm thankful for everyone I've had in my life and know that there are many more great people who I have yet to meet.
At 47 it is a bit of the explore/exploit paradox for me - an optimal stopping problem.
As an introvert social interaction drains my mental energy so at some point you start investing more energy into enjoying your best friends than into making new friends.
1. I only ever heard of this as a dilemma and not a paradox
2. There is this recruiting problem where you have to decide which secretary to hire before having seen all of them. The optimal solution is to see the first 37% (1/e) and then hire the first that is better than the previously seen best.
Putting that into lifespan of ~75 ys and assuming we don't really start sampling until we are 15, we end up with an optimal stopping (= exploitation) age of 32.07.
It's the optimal solution if you wan to optimize the probability of hiring the one best secretary out of all the candidates. When hiring you usually care more about maximizing the expected "goodness", hiring someone in the top X%, or anyone who meets a certain bar.
As an extrovert, social interaction still drains my mental energy. If anything I find myself even more obligated than you do to hold up my end of the conversation because that's the social expectation. This can be horribly exhausting when I'm simply not in the mood.
The extroverts I’ve known all thrive and get energy in social situations. I use this now as my deciding factor for introversion and extroversion. Are you sure you aren’t an introvert with extrovert skills. That’s what I am. I can talk to anyone easily but it drains me.
Yeah, I had some leadership training last year that involved multiple personality tests. I'm absolutely an extrovert. It wasn't even an "on the fence" kind of result.
I'm not an expert on psychological motivations, so I can't speak to the feelings or motivations of others, just myself.
Most of the time these results are things I find during introspection after social events are over. I can spend 4 hours in a social situation and be one of the drivers that keeps things going. It's later, when I'm alone and meditating, that I discover just how exhausted I was.
As an extrovert, my experience is that I pick up on another people's emotions and that colors my mood. If everyone is sort of uncomfortable and struggling through and eyeing the door, then I pick up on that and it saps my energy. If I find myself talking to a half dozen people who are in great moods and having an exciting conversation, I can get so carried away that I will feel a sort of buzzing high. Whether I go home tired or go home buzzing with energy very much depends on the event.
My wife is an introvert and is highly skilled at chit chat. She can work a room better than anyone but the most gregarious salesman types. She will remember the names of people that she met 10 years ago, details about their careers, their children's names and what their children studied in college. Doesn't matter if it's a professional event, a wedding, or a funeral, she is always on her game. BUT, she always goes home exhausted.
People take me by an extrovert all the time. I learned to look less nerdy by mimicking my extrovert twin brother. I was the weirdest guy of the school and he was the most popular.
Have you ever wondered if deep inside you are an introvert that just got very good at pretending to be an extrovert at early age due to social pressure? Western society rewards extroverts.
I was simply pointing out that what you had typed in the comment that I replied to, is exactly what the dude who came up with those 'types' wrote down as definitions.
If this were the case, it would be harder to find a romantic relationship as we age. Adjusting for life circumtance and type of relationship sought, I don't see evidence of this. What do you think?
Older man dating a younger woman is still culturally accepted but not vice versa. Statistically, this means that the dating pool for older men just keeps increasing.
For older women, the situation is the exact opposite. Their dating pool, which consists of (say) all older men keeps decreasing with age.
That might explain why your older female friends find relationships harder as they age, rather than a decrease in their physical attractiveness. The latter is what many women attribute their situation to, but IMO its just statistics and preferences.
But what's also true is women tend to want to settle down in their early-mid 30s (at least in large American cities, among professional types) and now they become simultaneously more selective. In a sense, women are always the 'choosers' with rare exceptions. Men tend to have wider nets, on average.
>It's more important to be authentic and true, even if that means having less friends, than a phony with a lot of fake friends. All this has the result of making it more difficult to randomly find real friends.
And this is where Facebook tries to seduce you. I'm going to go ahead and say that 90% of your Facebook friends aren't friends but rather they are acquaintances. Being friends means actually doing something together. Rather than liking your Facebook friends' vacation pictures, why not go on a vacation with them?
In my early 20's, I was more open to hanging around people I know I didn't like, or wasn't compatible with, because I didn't want to be alone or without friends, craved attention, and saw every social encounter as a stepping stone and potentially valuable.
Now, I know better. When you get older you realize you don't need to surround yourself with people whom you don't like, no longer crave as much attention, and already stepped along many of life's stones. You also put on less of a pretense to others and care less about being liked. It's more important to be authentic and true, even if that means having less friends, than a phony with a lot of fake friends. All this has the result of making it more difficult to randomly find real friends.
It's common I'll meet many new people but the ones who I stay in contact with are few and far between, and that's okay. People come into your life and go out of it, it's just the way things work. I'm thankful for everyone I've had in my life and know that there are many more great people who I have yet to meet.