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Introverts unite!
A nifty article I came across today on Caring For Your Introvert neatly expresses a concept that I've always had trouble getting across to people -- that social interaction drains me. I sometimes have a hard time figuring out how to explain, without sounding like a total weenie, that it's not that I don't enjoy spending time with my friends; it's just that I need a lot of charging/recharging in order to prepare for or recover from an evening of social interaction, or even a phone conversation. It's fun, but it's also a bit like running a marathon uphill, especially in a social setting with a lot of people. I've learned by experience that about 2-3 hours of personal interaction (give or take a bit) or somewhere between a half-hour to an hour on the phone is about as long as I can happily enjoy before I reach the point where weariness starts to overwhelm the fun I'm having. So ... if I leave a party early, or if I politely start trying to end a conversation on the phone after an hour or so, it's not because I don't like you, it's just because I'm getting very tired and I need to stop for a rest.
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Interesting! One of the things I kept running across in the articles on introversion that I was reading today was how variable introverts actually are, and how most introverts actually *are* pretty good at doing the social thing -- we're not painfully shy, hiding in corners. We just need to go off alone on a regular basis to recharge our batteries.