Introverts Don't Exist
I spent the first ~20 years of my life believing I was an "introvert". I found socialising hard and stressful, I avoided social situations and tried to spend as much time as I could at home in my bedroom. My teenager years were mostly spent playing videogames. I was diagnosed autistic at around 12 years old, I always believed that I was an "introvert".
Around the age of 18 I stopped making an effort to keep up friendships with people, I let all of my relationships lapse and spent 2 years completely by myself, friendless, alone. Really, I was acting completely logically. If I really was an introvert, and thrived when I was spending time alone, then why not optimize my life to always be in the optimal condition for myself?
The sad thing is that I'd been so mislead by society, and was so emotionally surpressed at this point in my life, that I genuinly thought I was happy living like this. Despite having constant anxious and depressed thoughts, I had convinved myself that socialising wasn't for me, and that by avoiding everyone in society I was living the happiest and most anxiety-free life possible for me.
I also convinced myself that being in a relationship wasn't for me either. Obviously I was attracted to women, but I considered that since relationships involve constant social interaction it just wasn't meant to be. I just couldn't see myself being in a relationship with any of the highly-social women I saw in my life.
Then... there was this girl (now we're at the cliche bit!!). I met a girl and we just clicked. For the first time in my life I actually met a woman I felt like I wanted to be in a relationship with, I felt like I wanted to better myself for someone - I fell in love. I finally experienced being in love, at the age of 25.
After a week of being in love non-stop, I finally found the right time and plucked up the courage to ask her out. Things didn't work out - she already had a boyfriend, that she'd never mentioned.
But regardless, things were already set in motion for me. I was now questioning my own beliefs - maybe I could have a relationship after all, maybe I wasn't destined to be a loner. And being in love felt good - actually it felt great. The idea of spending the rest of my life talking to a woman felt pretty good too, maybe I wasn't such an introvert after all.
So, for the first time in my life, I started actually thinking about how I could meet girls. I'd always thought that the only thing stopping me from meeting girls was just the fact that I had no desire to do it. It was only when I actually wanted to try that I realized how difficult it actually was, and how inadequate and stunted my current social skills and social life were for the task.
At this point I found some books on dating and masculinity by Mark Manson and Robert Glover. Before this I'd always assumed that successfully getting women revolved around how "alpha" you could appear, what pick up lines you used, how you acted and dressed. Basically, how superficial and fake you could come across. Reading the books Models and No More Mr Nice Guy completely changed my view of the world, because they argued the exact opposite.
For the first time I was introduced to the ideas that women wanted men to be vulnerable and honest with themselves, to be emotionally expressive, to have high social empathy. Hearing this resonated so much with my inner self that I just knew it was true.
I didn't realise how emotionally surpressed and withdrawn I was until I actually started making an effort to change. I started reading more about how disconnection from your inner feelings can cause strong anxiety, how you can't surpress negative emotions without also surpressing positive emotions, how self-supression comes from deeply ingrained beliefs that we are not loveable as our true selves.
Everything in my life started to make sense. I started realizing all of my disfunctional behaviour stemmed from the same causes. That my "introversion" was really just the product of feeling anxious and unloveable since birth, of feeling like I needed to hide my true self. That I never enjoyed socialising because I was too emotional surpressed and avoidant to ever experience any kind of real joy with other people or to open myself up enough to be able to form any real connections with anyone.
Since then I've been on a 2 year journey to become more vulnerable, more emotional, more connected with my inner self, to confidently express my true feelings and needs. And the difference has been incredible. I didn't tell anyone I was doing this, but people noticed. I have been told "you're like a completely different person", "you've had a glow up", "you've changed so much in the past 2 years".
I reframed my view on socialising. I stopped telling myself that social events were something to be scared of, and instead realized that the only aim of socialising is to have fun, that social events are good! Going out and socialising is how you meet new people, how you meet women, how I'm going to get the opportunity to meet my future wife.
My life is now full of so much fun and joy. I don't think I'm an extrovert or an introvert - I now just reject the two labels entirely. I am a human, and humans are social creatures. It just look me a while to face my fears and let my true self out.