Gilda

So I've always been a fairly shy person. I have difficulty connecting with other adults in real life, to the point that colleagues, most often the other women, tend to think of me as cold and distant. I am distant, there's no denying that, but I'm definitely not cold, just afraid of saying or doing something stupid, foolish, embarrasseing, or offensive. Sometimes after a conversation, I'll go back and replay it in my head to figure out exactly what it is that might have done or said wrong, that others might have been put off by.

This does have an upside to it. It keeps me from saying or doing things that are stupid, foolish, offensive, and thus being embarrassed.

And I think that most of the time, that's how it works. There's a downside, in that I tend not to have many friends, countered by an upside, which is that I don't tend to offend people and thus make enemies.

Being too shy to actually approach a girl I found attractive may have left me alone and dateless for months at a time, but at the same time it had the advantage of never having been embarrassed at propositioning a girl who was straight, or who didn't find me attractive, or was involved, etc. Being shy saved me from a lot of negative stuff.

Being an introvert in a public place works the same way. While driving cross country recently, I stopped at a Denny's and was promptly ignored for half an hour. I left without comment and ate at the MacDonald's next door. Downside: I wasted half an hour waiting to be served. Upside: I didn't give my business to a restaurant where, for whatever reason, I wasn't wanted. Another upside: I didn't have to confront them and find out why they didn't want me there, thus being embarrassed at being told directly why I was unacceptable. Was it the way I was dressed, or how I acted, what? On the one hand, it would be nice to know so that I could avoid doing whatever it was that made me unwanted th enext time I was in a restaurant and get good service, but on the other hand, it would be embarrassing to be told directly why I was unacceptable. So just leaving and not returning without confrontation has a bigger upside than the alternative.

Sissy doesn't understand how I can wrangle 25 12-year-olds or give a presentation to 200 colleagues, yet be afraid of telling the waitress I haven't been served yet. It seems obvious to me. In those situations, I'm the authority figure; it's my turf so to speak. I'm granted an automatic measure of respect as a result of my position. The same isn't true of a restaurant, or store, or any other public place. I have no power, no authority granted there to build on save whatever the particular people working there choose to grant me. There's no way to transfer from my professiion to personal life.

If I were with Grace, or with Sissy for that matter, she'd have taken care of the problem, which would have only an upside to it. We'd get served, but I wouldn't have to be the one to be embarrassed by having to confront the people over why they didn't want me there.

This is where Sissy has a different interpretation. She thinks I'm missing out on life, that being afraid of confrontation and embarrassment, that avoiding conflict are bad things. This is, I think, because the downside that I list for those things above isn't a downside for her, or is such a minor obstacle that the scales balance differently. She fails to see that for me, and others who avoid conflict, the stress that comes with it takes a big effort to overcome, and lingers long afterwards. The scales balance the other way. I'm a different person. For me, avoiding confrontation is beneficial because the conflict itself is harmful, regardless of the outcome.

We were watching the wonderful movie Awakenings sometime last year. There's a scene near the beginning of the movie when Dr. Sayer first arrives at the hospital. After speaking with the receptionist and being told to wait, Dr. Sayer stands in the middle of the waiting room to wait to be called.

Sissy wondered aloud, "Why doesn't he sit down?"
I answered, "There's no place to sit."
"There are empty seats all over the place."
"Yeah, but he'd have to sit next to somebody."
"Yeah?"
"That's why he's not sitting down."
"I don't get it."

It's a matter of perception. Sissy would have picked an interesting person and struck up a conversation. By the time five minutes had passed, she'd know their name and have a brief life story, and she'd be genuinely interested in it. Grace describes it as Sissy "collecting people" To her, sitting next to a stranger is an opportunity. To me, it would be a chance to say or do something embarrassing or offensive.

Being more assertive would lead me to be able to sit down, and thus be uncomfortable while hoping the person next to me wouldn't start talking to me. Being more assertive would lead to my being worse off in that situation, not better off.

After writing all that, I'm not really sure what my point is. People refer to being shy and passive as if it's a disease. It's not, and it's not, I think, really harmful most of the time. Unless I'm missing something in how I'm looking at this, the benefits nicely balance the costs in most situations.

And yet, somehow I find myself in assertiveness training, or did, with my therapist, even though I'm not sure I want to be more assertive. It takes an enormous amount of effort, and brings as much bad as good. In some ways, probably more. Suppose I'd been assertive enough to ask out those girls I found attractive. I'd most likely have been turned down most of the time. Let's assume that 3 out of 4 would have said no, probably a very generous estimate. I base this on the ratio of guys I accepted dates from when I dated guys. That means that I'd have been turned down 3 times for every time I got a date. Three times as many failures as successes. The negatives outweigh the positives 3 to 1.

So logically, being shy and introverted saves me from more trouble than it causes, by a wide margin. So why do I end up unhappy with situations like the one in Denny's, when I know I'm better off the way I did things? Being too shy to ask out attractive women on a date had a huge benefit: I ended up with Grace.

All of this goes out the window when I'm with her, of course. She takes care of the confrontation, and it doesn't seem to phase her.

So I'm at this place where I'm not even sure I want to be less shy, more assertive. I don't really see the upside to it, but still have this nagging feeling that Sissy and Grace get something out of life that I'm missing.

I hope this makes some kind of sense. I've been avoiding finding a new therapist here, and this is the kind of thing I usually talked to with him.

Gilda

__________________
I'm against ending blackness. I believe that everyone has a right to be black, it's a choice, and I support that.

~Steven Colbert