An introvert needs an extravert

Have you seen the film “Amélie”? The one about the two oddballs in Montmartre. It was also supposed to reveal the formula of love and to be incredibly romantic. At the end, a strange young man who is trying to unravel a conspiracy theory in torn-up photographs from under photo booths and an equally strange girl who perceived the world as a set of details and small things, and then decided to do good with those small things, decide that they care about each other and ride off into the distance on a moped. Learn the terrible secret about the future of Amélie and Nino. And a test awaits you at the end. About your future)

Amélie and Nino never had a future.

They simply could not have had one. Almost every introvert will find this film romantic, because the film is for them and about them. But few people know the terrible secret that I did not know when I watched it, and that the makers of the picture did not know either. Amélie and Nino never had a future. They simply could not have had one. And the reason is simple: they are both very pronounced introverts, and passive ones at that.

There is no end of utterly contradictory information about who introverts and extraverts are, and even more clichés and myths. Introversion is confused with a passive life position, with being unsociable and even with misanthropy. I am not going to savour all the clichés and memes here, I cannot be bothered. Let me rather tell you what their one and only difference is.

An introvert always knows what they feel and how they come across. They can look at themselves from the outside easily and self-critically. With sincere and at times childlike interest an introvert studies the world around them, storing up impressions and experience so as at some point to withdraw into their burrow and there digest the accumulated impressions at leisure, using them to adapt and refine the idea and the picture of the world they carry in their head.

Introverts are geared towards getting to know the world around them, which is why they often, and quite without ulterior motive, speak about themselves in the second or third person. And this infuriates extraverts, because they immediately decide that the talk is about them personally. Extraverts, on the whole, say “I” a great deal and turn the conversation back to themselves even more, and all because they spend their whole lives getting to know themselves, using the answers and reactions of the world around them as mirrors. To make a decision, an extravert will need to discuss it in confidence with the whole world; though it can be done without the confidence, the point is to discuss it. And it is only from extraverts that you can hear that dazzling line (dazzling from an introvert’s point of view): “I’d never even have thought that of myself, but people say I’m ..., ... and ...!!! Well, how about that, how brilliant I am!” An introvert, for instance, already knows whether they are brilliant, so in their version it will be a cautious “people say I’m such-and-such...”, with a private addition: “but I know how it really is...”.
Extraverts need conversation as they need air. Introverts can converse easily, but they can also live without it. And both kinds can burn up the dance floor, hold forth for hours on a subject that interests them and dress loudly. The differences are subtler and finer than that.

So why do Nino and Amélie have no future? Because they have nothing to give each other in terms of character and temperament. Because for a good relationship an introvert needs an extravert, and an extravert needs an introvert. That is what completes, develops and stabilises each of them.

How will the relationship between Amélie and Nino develop?

In fact nobody knows, but let us try to model it.

At first they will be delighted that in this wild world, geared towards active extraverts, they have found “kindred spirits”. Then riding the moped will lose its charm. There will be silent wanderings around the house and no expression of feeling, a sense that nobody is developing, and in the end each of them will escape into their favourite solitary occupation: Nino will find another conspiracy theory to swallow him up and carry him away, and Amélie another sweet little quirk. It will be loneliness for two, with no ability to convey it to the partner. Perhaps it will even suit them. The only question is: for how long?

Is it any easier for two extraverts? I will be honest, I have never met such a couple. Friends, yes; partners, no. I would guess that it is quite hard to wander through the maze of reflections that their surroundings are for an extravert together with somebody who is also looking for reflections. Two extraverts, like two introverts, can count on good sex and shared interests, but will they be able to feel a true kinship of souls?

Though, coming back to the film about Amélie, I would venture that the two extraverts there were Amélie’s colleague, the ailing and melancholic Georgette, and that explosive, permanently aggrieved, hyper-caring and demanding Joseph, with their passionate but short-lived romance right there in the café. Watch the film again and judge for yourself.

What can such opposites as an extravert and an introvert give each other? Everything they might need. They will both complement and balance each other. An extravert gives an introvert ways out into the world, a new understanding of their surroundings and a new vision. An introvert gives an extravert a new understanding of themselves and the very footing that deep down the extravert needs. And that is far from all.

Again and again I meet couples who complain that they are completely different. One partner “talks too much”, the other “doesn’t have fun at a party with two hundred people”, and so on. Extraverts and introverts do have grievances against each other, I do not deny it. But only a union like that, reinforced by compatibility of character, can be genuinely strong and lasting. And it is not only I who say so, but years of research in psychology as well.

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