The kind where if you have to be around people you feel more comfortable in a group than with just one other person?
I get nervous around “dead air” if I’m with people so if I’m the only other person I feel pressure to be interesting and it’s exhausting. If there’s a group of people it’s not so bad because it divides the responsibility of being entertaining around all of us so I don’t have to worry if I’m boring. I can just chill and let other people talk.
Plus I find I’m better at bouncing off of others than initiating conversation.
Totally, I find that physical exercise helps me deal with it, especially, weirdly, kickboxing. I feel there’s a parallel between learning to be comfortable in the tense dead air between blows, and learning to be comfortable in the tense dead air between words
Performing arts do the same thing. Silence is a part of a change in mood and conversation, nobody can effectively make a choice on stage without experiencing it. Sometimes it’s for less than a second, sometimes it lasts minutes but it always preceedes anything important. In music there is something similar where musicians will try to be loud, everything always loud all the time, but what was meant to be epic music becomes a drone of indecision.
Some people really struggle with putting their mark on a situation. There is a timidity that most people have that must be beaten out of you before entering the ring, or stepping onto a stage. It’s so helpful and freeing once you finally get it.
As a third wheel I often do a lot of negative ruminating, but it’s not all bad…definitely better than the excruciating feeling when the conversation completely dies and the other person slowly pulls out their phone. This happened to me twice on the same day recently, good times.
I think what’s so frustrating about it is that I used to be able to hold decent conversations with most people. I was never a silver-tongued devil, but I could hold down decent conversations with most people and endless conversations with closer friends and family. Now the only people I feel like I can have a good conversation with are my dad and my therapist. I remember spending hours and hours bullshitting with one friend or another…now I dread the inevitable awkward silence if we have to be in the car alone for even 5 minutes.
I think finding a place of comfortable silence is one of the nicest things about having a love affair but its also not an unreasonable expectation of your close friends, who I feel should not expect constant entertainment from you. But yeah it is a constant struggle against that dynamic in uncertain social circumstances, 1-on-1 can be a nightmare
