It was an article on Buzzfeed that opened my eyes. You know the ones, numbered lists with animated images, of which at least half are of Tina Fey. This particular post listed signs that someone is an introvert. Our culture–at least its digital incarnation–is in the middle of an introvert uprising. You can’t visit a website without seeing the habits and preferences of introverts cataloged and celebrated. All this media attention has made one thing apparent to me.

My wife is an introvert.

That’s not to say she’s shy or antisocial–quite the opposite. My wife loves to see her (small group of) friends. She likes to go out on (carefully planned) social outings. Too many friends at once or too many events in a row leave her tired and grumpy, and she may need a few days around the house with only me and our girls for company to recover.

I am not an introvert. Not even a little bit.

I’m an over-the-top extrovert. All my energy comes from being around people. I love to talk, I love to listen, and I love to talk again even more. I’m completely baffled every time I read an article about how introverts relate to others. I hate to be alone. I can’t stand to sit quietly for too long. I slide into a listless despondency when I don’t have people to interact with. My motivation falls to zero, and my sanguine disposition decays into something more melancholy without a crowd.

We have a mixed marriage, and it’s remarkable how often our conflicts are rooted in the differing inclinations of introverts and extroverts. I want to accept every invitation to an outing, no matter how last minute or far-flung. She’s not interested in plans made in the spur-of-the-moment. I crave new settings, new places, and new faces. She already knows who she wants to spend time with, and wonders what’s wrong with somewhere we’ve already been.

If we’ve had a fight, she wants some distance and time to think, while I want to talk about it right now, in detail so we can resolve it and move on.

How is that fair? Extrovert/Introvert match-ups are never matched. My brain is wired for immediate verbal communication–I seldom struggle for the words to articulate my thoughts. The ease of my elucidation can become a bludgeon, and what starts as my attempt to patch things up can leave her feeling frustrated, tired, and confused.

Jenny and I have been married for 13 years. I’ve learned to moderate my extroverted tendencies over that time, but it’s the Rise of the Introverts that made me realize where this dynamic comes from. My wife finds restoration via a fundamentally different means than I do.

It turns out that this is a good thing.

Jenny teaches me to slow down and to take interest in what I already have. She reminds me that my daughters flourish best when I am present–and I can’t be present if my calendar is full seven days per week. Marriage to an introvert reminds me to invest in the relationships I have now, and to appreciate the simple joys of home.

My extroversion teaches Jenny that there is an endless fount of amazing people and stories everywhere. My innate need for the new shows her that our baby birds can only learn to fly by stepping out on a branch, wings spread, and jumping with no certainty of success. It takes an extrovert’s insanity to show that sometimes the best stories come to life when you start with a blank page.

Our marriage would be more balanced and calm if we were both introverts, or a technicolor blur if we both had extroverted sensibilities. It is the pairing of opposing energies that makes our life together interesting and full of compromise.

I wouldn’t want it any other way.

Cover image sources: James Cridland and Tom Borowski