Middle aged European here. I still regularly go to parties (dinner and otherwise) and I notice that there are two kinds of people: people who throw parties, and people who don't. This sounds like a truism, but what I mean is: there are people who regularly throw a party and people who never do it.
I am solidly in the first category. I throw dinner parties, birthday parties, drinking parties, dance parties, midsummer parties, midwinter parties, game parties, etc. Yes, it costs time and money and is a lot of work. But what people (probably the ones that never bother) tend to forget is how unbelievably gratifying it is to get a bunch of people together, to feed them and to make them talk, laugh, dance, etc. Afterwards you are tired but also grateful and socially energized in a way that feels fundamental to my existence.
It varies a lot depending on people and personality type. What's energizing to you is very exhausting and unfun to others. Extraversion / introversion basically. I don't like having many people over. 3 or 4 people who I know well is optimal for me.
Making a large party could be "type 2 fun" sometimes, ie exhausting and not very fun at the time, but satisfying to look back on as a kind of hard challenge I managed to accomplish, like climbing a cold mountain or so. But few are enough of those.
I wonder if the cultural existence of the 'introvert vs extrovert' idea has reinforced this to a degree. I'm too young to know, but I doubt this was a discussion in the 80s. I'm also not too sure it's a good thing. I've seen introversion used as an excuse to hermit; extroversion as the sole reason to use drugs.
We put limits on ourselves psychologically in all sorts of ways, and we follow the ones we believe. There's a study that showed people who believe willpower is finite have finite willpower. I thought "well obviously, if you had finite willpower you'd know because you'd run out". Maybe we do just think too much?
If I don't feel like running and I go running, about two thirds of the time I feel like running after a few K. It's the same socially. The goal of introspection shouldn't be to freeze in a minute now.
Once I realized my introversion was psychological and mutable, not some fixed aspect of my personality, it changed my life.
We tend to anchor ourselves to labels. Lots of introverts I meet limit themselves in life needlessly because "I'm an introvert!" I see my old self in them.
I am both autistic and introverted. I'm not really capable of socializing in a group larger than 3-4 people. I just stop talking when the group reaches a certain size. If I don't, I may lose hours of my life (and sleep) to an anxious analysis of what things I shouldn't have said.
I am in a small minority. My autistic colleagues do not struggle with this in the same way I do. While I may be a bit of an extreme outlier, I do exist. If I could be otherwise, I would. Throughout my life I have wanted nothing more than an accepting group of friends, and I have worked hard at trying to achieve that. I have never succeeded. At age 41 I have lost hope that I can be as you describe.
I do have wonderful experiences socializing with others 1:1. My group socialization is limited to that with my wife and two children (aged 4 and 2). I love people. I admire them. But there are some aspects of my nature which are so intractable that they cannot be changed no matter the effort expended or identity adopted.
For context, the first 40 years of my life, I did not identify as autistic, nor did it occur to me as a possibility. I knew I had difficulty making friends, but I did not intentionally form an identity around that fact; to the contrary, I actively worked to change it (to deleterious effect).
I offer this in the hopes that it will loosen the "rules" around which your viewpoint is formed. It is not always as simple as your comment makes it out to be.
kieckerjan · · focus · HN ↗
I am solidly in the first category. I throw dinner parties, birthday parties, drinking parties, dance parties, midsummer parties, midwinter parties, game parties, etc. Yes, it costs time and money and is a lot of work. But what people (probably the ones that never bother) tend to forget is how unbelievably gratifying it is to get a bunch of people together, to feed them and to make them talk, laugh, dance, etc. Afterwards you are tired but also grateful and socially energized in a way that feels fundamental to my existence.
bonoboTP · · focus · HN ↗
Making a large party could be "type 2 fun" sometimes, ie exhausting and not very fun at the time, but satisfying to look back on as a kind of hard challenge I managed to accomplish, like climbing a cold mountain or so. But few are enough of those.
ddek · · focus · HN ↗
We put limits on ourselves psychologically in all sorts of ways, and we follow the ones we believe. There's a study that showed people who believe willpower is finite have finite willpower. I thought "well obviously, if you had finite willpower you'd know because you'd run out". Maybe we do just think too much?
If I don't feel like running and I go running, about two thirds of the time I feel like running after a few K. It's the same socially. The goal of introspection shouldn't be to freeze in a minute now.
solenoid0937 · · focus · HN ↗
We tend to anchor ourselves to labels. Lots of introverts I meet limit themselves in life needlessly because "I'm an introvert!" I see my old self in them.
fugalfervor · · focus · HN ↗
I am in a small minority. My autistic colleagues do not struggle with this in the same way I do. While I may be a bit of an extreme outlier, I do exist. If I could be otherwise, I would. Throughout my life I have wanted nothing more than an accepting group of friends, and I have worked hard at trying to achieve that. I have never succeeded. At age 41 I have lost hope that I can be as you describe.
I do have wonderful experiences socializing with others 1:1. My group socialization is limited to that with my wife and two children (aged 4 and 2). I love people. I admire them. But there are some aspects of my nature which are so intractable that they cannot be changed no matter the effort expended or identity adopted.
For context, the first 40 years of my life, I did not identify as autistic, nor did it occur to me as a possibility. I knew I had difficulty making friends, but I did not intentionally form an identity around that fact; to the contrary, I actively worked to change it (to deleterious effect).
I offer this in the hopes that it will loosen the "rules" around which your viewpoint is formed. It is not always as simple as your comment makes it out to be.