How Being Less Naturally Social Can Affect Your Interpersonal Success
People differ in how naturally social they are. Lots of people with a lower need to socialize are perfectly happy with how they are and where they stand in their lives. They don't feel any particular need to improve their people skills or get along better with everyone.
Other less social types aren't as pleased with their life situation. They may realize they're naturally predisposed to be less social, but they're not crazy about it. They want to do better with people, and have all the rewards that come with it. Their naturally less social nature gets in the way of their goals.
Obviously this article is speaking the second group. Here are some ways being less naturally social can hinder the development of your people skills:
Having a relatively low drive to socialize
This is pretty much the core feature of being less social by nature. In the long term this affects your success by influencing how much social experience and practice you get. A more solitary person is going to grow up putting in a lot less hours talking to friends or getting along in groups. His or her social skills will lag behind. He'll have to struggle with things that other people don't even have to think about any more. In time a vicious circle starts as the less you socialize, the less rewarding, and more discouraging it becomes, which causes you to devote an even lower amount of time to it.
More short term, your lower social requirements may not be enough to grow or sustain relationships. A new friendship may not get off the ground because you don't see or talk to the person enough. Your established relationships may slip away due to your unintentional neglect.
Another problem is that when you recognize that you need more friends or that you need to improve your social skills, your motivation won't be as strong. Part of you feels lonely or awkward and wants to solve those problems. But another part doesn't really care, and wants to stay home and read a book. Or you'll take steps to improve your interpersonal abilities, but in a drawn-out, inconsistent, half-hearted way.
I also think you can sometimes see socializing as something to do when everything else is in order; when you're in the right mood, when you feel like it, when you have enough energy, when you have enough free time, when you have something fun enough planned, when you're not too stressed or preoccupied about other things. This is a personal characteristic that still hinders me. In contrast, I think most people are always ready to socialize and are much less likely to put conditions on it. It can help to try and see being around people as something you can always do, not just when the stars are aligned.
Having a low tolerance for socializing
The biggest cliche about less social people is that they get worn out really quickly when they have to be around people. I think this is due to a combination of inborn and learned factors. You may have a naturally less social personality, but you may also just not be as used to socializing, and therefore get more drained and irked by it. Whatever the cause, it adds up to that well-known sensation of feeling tired and wanting to go home after a few hours.
Because the cause isn't totally genetic I think you can force yourself to get used to being around people, and increase your tolerance to them, if you want to. With enough time you may even feel your baseline preferences starting to change. Like I still love my alone time, and that's never going to go away, but it's not the same as it was before. After half a day of doing my own thing I start getting antsy and want to be around someone again.
Something that's helped me a lot has been trying to make every social encounter last as long as possible. I don't mean pestering your friends to hang out when they obviously have other things they want to do though. More like you meet a buddy for lunch. Afterward both of you have nowhere you need to be, and instead of succumbing to your urge to get back home, you end up spending the rest of the day together.
People often do this when they hang out. Spending more time with people like this is helpful because it lets you see that you can feel the urge to go home, push through it, then end up having a much more fun day than if you did just leave. Your habit of, "I do one activity with someone and then I get to leave" starts to get overwritten. You learn firsthand that people were right when they kept telling you that your book or game wasn't going anywhere if you left it for half a day.
Spending too much time alone
This is a natural consequence of being less sociable. This isn't always bad of course, but it can work against. Like I've mentioned above, the more time you spend solo, the less used you are to people. And if you're alone, by definition you're not out there improving your people skills. If you care about improving in this area, that's where you need to be.
It doesn't always happen, but spending too time alone can also make you become weird and out of touch with everyone else in a hundred tiny, subtle ways. It's nothing dramatic, but you're that half a beat behind the rest of the world, and your social interactions can suffer as a result.
I find the rest of humanity as a whole serves as a check for people's weirder or more anti-social traits. Everyone develops their own odd little habits and opinions. I don't mean legitimately different, unique thoughts, more things anyone would automatically dismiss as strange and useless. When you spend too much time alone these little idiosyncrasies grow and multiply unimpeded. When you're around other people, they get regularly pruned back. You make an inappropriate joke and your friends look at you funny. You state a weird opinion and they immediately give you a reason why it's stupid. You start acting strange and they tell you to cut it out. Everyone acts as everyone else's social "polisher."
Being too much of a conformist is bad, and the mainstream is hardly perfect, but I find society as a whole has a collective, unconscious common sense about social skills that you're better off paying attention to.
Not liking the things most people like
This point is the most practical one. Less social people often have interests that differ from what most people seem to be into. You're into quiet, solitary, cerebral pursuits. Everyone else seems to like noisy, physical, group activities. When you find yourself in a group, more often than not they're doing something you aren't that good at, and which you don't particularly enjoy. Socializing with regular people obviously becomes less fun.
A solution that I've had a lot of success with is to make an effort to get into some of the things most people enjoy. I don't mean totally changing, that's not possible or something you'd want to do, but just doing little things here and there: giving that video game all your friends play a shot, getting familiar with certain topics, learning to dance, etc.
Being too picky about the people you hang around
Less social people are often more selective about who they choose to spend their time with. This is understandable because they may have somewhat unique personalities which won't gel with just anyone's. Also, they often have a "quality over quantity" mindset. They don't need to socialize for as many hours each week, and they have a lower tolerance for the little hassles of socializing, so they'd prefer to have a few really compatible friends than a ton of so-so ones.
The problem is they can become too picky and end up turning away people who would have become good friends or acquaintances if given a chance. If they turn away too many potential friends then they'll end up with no social life. Especially when you're first forming a social life, you're not totally sure what you like and want in other people, so you have to give them some time to prove themselves.
Coming across as anti-social or that you don't like people
Even though someone may just be reserved, keep to themselves, or enjoy solitary pursuits, if they give the impression that they don't like other people, and that they don't want to spend time with them, they can be viewed quite negatively. People don't like the idea that someone dislikes them. To many, someone just wanting to do their own thing translates into a personal rejection. Not everyone has an easy time wrapping their heads around the fact that some people just don't want to be sociable all the time due to their basic nature.
Even I, who should definitely know better, will find myself feeling a knee-jerk annoyed reaction when a quiet coworker doesn't want to have lunch with the group, or when someone is being reserved at party. I can't help it, my first thought is, "Man, what's their problem?" Logically I should be understanding, because I was that quiet person many, many times, but another part of me takes it personally.
Though it's not fair, more outgoing people also have a tendency to see someone who displays less social tendencies as being weird, antisocial, and even potentially dangerous. Think of the stereotype of the quiet ticking time bomb who one day comes into the office and mows down all his coworkers. I can't be the only person who's had people make 'serial killer' type comments to them. The archetype of the brooding, unhinged loner is a strong one in many people's minds, regardless of how inaccurate it is.
Being defensive about having certain labels applies to you
The biggest label being 'introvert'. This isn't a huge point, but being overly sensitive and defensive can lose you points every now and then. I used to hate being called an introvert. In my own mind, I could spin the term into a positive identity, but I knew that when other people used it, it was shorthand for, "Uptight and socially awkward." Whenever people said something like, "Oh, I know you don't like the party. You're introverted! It'll all be over soon!", I immediately got annoyed. But being touchy just made it worse.
