I was crazy extroverted as a young man and then later in life I worked myself into a state where I was called a hermit and a loner.
I think I would call the loner phase more frustrated extroversion than true lonerism. So while I would be alone most of the time, I would always be fantasizing that I was around people. I would fantasize that I had friends, not just one or two, but dozens, scores or hundreds. Pure loners simply do not do that. Nor do Avoidants or Schizoids.
I was avoiding people due to an anxiety disorder. When I got around people, symptoms would come out, so that made me afraid to go socialize. I would think, “What if my symptoms came out?” You might think that is dumb, but when my symptoms came out, it would be very bad and people would often get quite rejecting very quickly. They seemed to be able to tell that I was getting some symptoms and they did not like it one bit.
For a long time, I would just go socialize with strangers anyway, but then symptoms would usually come out, and they would often get sort of weird or rejecting. They were not always cruel. Sometimes they were rather “kind and rejecting,” if you can imagine such a thing. Others simply looked utterly baffled, shocked or stunned. After this happened maybe 10,000 times, I started thinking that going over there and talking to those new people maybe wasn’t such a hot idea after all. I assumed that the same rejecting bullshit would come out, and my attitude was like, “Why walk into the fire? Forget it.”
It’s doubtful that any pure loner ever had an extroverted phase much less a wildly extroverted one.
In the frustrated extrovert type, if you can fix whatever it is that is frustrating the extroversion, they might revert quite quickly. In my case, if you could find me a nice drug that cleared up the anxiety disorder quite well, I would probably go right back to my extroverted ways as I don’t have any serious hangups about other human beings. I don’t think they are a mass of menacing enemies and cruel, mean people as Avoidants do. I don’t feel about them however Schizoids to.
I don’t mind making small talk, although of course it’s moronic. I still have excellent social skills that I accumulated in my people phase. But I do like break social rules, mostly because “social skills” pretty much boils down to “The 100 billion things you can never talk about.” Those restrictive rules make me angry, and a lot of times I just deliberately break rules just to poke my finger in society’s eye. I hate society anyway, so this is pretty fun to do.
Also I can still get women, even hot ones, even being a rather loner type now. And I can go off and stay with women for weeks at a time. And I have women come stay with me for a while too. During those times, I am usually with the woman more or less 24-7. The only time we are apart is when someone is in the pooping, pissing or showering!
We would run around society and run errands all day long or go shopping. At night we would always go out to eat in restaurants and after that, we would go to bars and nightclubs to drink. Sometimes we would take road trips or day trips. Back at the woman’s place, there were often people around all the time along with visitors popping in and out all day and night. None of this bothered me in the slightest.
It doesn’t bother me at all to be a cling-on appendage to another human like that as I used to do that all the time when I was younger. As long as they are not acting rejecting, it’s fine, and usually they are not. If someone is being rejecting, they usually will not allow you to become a human appendage for weeks at a time. It is too uncomfortable to have someone you reject because they make you feel uncomfortable stuck onto for weeks at a time.
I talked to some people and they told me that no pure loner could ever be a human cling-on for weeks at a time. It would drive them crazy and they would need to get away from time to time to get some space on their own. Also they would very much dislike running errands all day and the visitors popping in and out all the time. And they would not want to go out to eat every night and especially they would not want to go to bars every night.
I think a lot of so-called loners may well be these frustrated extrovert types. And I think the frustrated extrovert loner is different in many ways from what I would call the “pure loner.”
