Complicated Personalities

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I guess this is kind of a strange topic but it occurred to me when I was talking to one of my brothers on the phone a little while ago.

Do you know any people who have the kind of personality that conflicts with a lot of society although you know them to be a basically good person?

I have a friend who is smart-verging on brilliant, she is very attractive, and has very good values. The problem is that she becomes extremely awkward with meeting new people and the people who meet her get very weird vibes and think there is something wrong with her. I've been her friend since grade two and I know that her problem is mostly shyness.

My brother is another person I would put in the catagory of 'complicated personality'. He is also a very smart person, good sense of humor, but alcoholic. When he gets drunk I understand the person that is underneath but I think the outside world views him differently. He acts callously sometimes but it is only to hide a very sensitive inner self.

 

Over here, over here! In RL I'm pretty stand-offish unless someone approaches me, and even then I'm rather curt with my initial answers to people I don't know. Chatting me up is a challenge, but those who take the (considerable) time get rewarded handsomely. And I don't just say that because I'm handsome.

 

I used to be very shy. But I tried my best to shrug that off when I got hired on at my 2nd job. It was a big-ish company with a lot of faces I'd only see once or twice a month, so I tried to make small talk with random people whenever I could. It was hard a first, but eventually I got used to it, and now I talk a lot with co-workers and other people I meet.

You just have to come out of your personal bubble.

 

I have this really nutty anti-socializing personality. I like being at big gatherings and parties and listening to all those people talk and stuff. Yet, I'm always by myself, even at family events, and I can't get anyone to come to any of my parties. I am shy, but not so much that it affects me meeting people.

I think it's an inferiority complex based on my uber plain physical body. I want to meet new people, but they don't want to meet me.

Hmm, would this explain my penchant for living in dark, dank caves in remote, mountainous areas far away from civilization? Naaah!

 

I hate talking with new people, younger people, older people, and people my age.


Also, sometimes I love being with my friends, but other times I hate it, and I prefer to be alone. I hate parties with people I don't know, and I only go to small parties. I also find that sometimes I am really quiet. But, around my good friends, I talk non-stop.

Some people can take this as me trying to be someone I'm not, but that isn't true. I just sometimes like being alone, or like being with people.

In fact, I think I have a semi-problem. I always change how I feel about people. Sometimes I like them, sometimes I don't like them, to simplify it. If I explained it fully, no one would understand what the hell I'm saying, so I won't really say it.


Did any of that make sense?

 

In RL I've learnt to hide my real self behind a mask of arrogance, cynicism, humour and intelligence designed to allow only the people I want through. It's then still difficult to get to know me as my whole ethos here is to try and stop me from being hurt; which I have been in the past and I choose on the whole to be alone.

EDIT: @Saber you just described the human condition particularly if you're male as a generalisation males are not a social animal but females usually are.

 

Wow... a thread to rave about your personality. Not quite sure if that was it's initial purpose

I know some people like kuemper descibed. Always go to all these big parties, yet are very very shy. The type of person you hear speak once ever fort-night at the most.
Me though? I'd place myself as completely opposite to that. No one would describe me as shy, I love to speak publically for example, yet everyone knows that I'm the last person who would ever appear in a party.

But then, once again, I'm sure that's not what Dragonfly was after. Prehaps I'll try again tomorrow.

 

I like to confuse people with strange humor involving nudity. I entertain people with butt-walking. On the other hand I'm quiet and reserved.

I know someone who is always really curt and snappy without realizing it, and it's become an ongoing joke among my friends.

 

My brother. He's 16 and already good at fighting from sheer practice. Someone always has a problem with him and it isn't always just one someone. As was with me, as was with me. Except he isn't much of a talker, while I've long forgotten anything else than sparring. I'm not sure if he has a real ADHD or some such, but he's quick to anger and has problems controlling it when it comes. Plus, he's much into the big guy stuff (after all, he's male and sixteen ), so he doesn't really have much need for a courtly manner or a mild exterior. As a result, all in all, he's difficult to deal with and extremely exhausting, but he's a good lad.

 

I belong to this "complicated personality" category.
Mostly because i have been hurt many times by people me thinks.
But surely behind that arrogant distant mask i wear in front of strangers, there is me with many good qualities. I know that this may be a problem but the choice is sentient and i can not trust someone that easy now.
I feel that if someone wants to meet me he would try to penetrate the outer defences. That penetration will show his real self too. Not that many try though and from those who try, most of them do it the wrong way.
I have to say this too. The only people i have instantly opened my heart are women. And every one of them despite the fact they loved every aspect of my personalilty and me (at least that is what they were saying), they managed only to exploit it badly later on.

 

Strange... All of the above claim to be "complicated personalities" and anti-social. Guess I have to be the first one to say "I'm normal." I come along with almost anyone and I have no problems with new people. It becomes a problem only when we have nothing in common -like same course, hobby, shop, etc, where to meet regularly. The relationship tends to be short in those cases.

 

For some reason most of my coworkers tend to beleive that I am going to snap and start killing everybody but it's just not true. I'm really a very nice guy if they would just get to know me.

 

I am unbelievably shy and I almost have "individualist" written on my forehead. I prefer just doing my own buisness by myself.

That doesen't mean I am anti-social. I am simply a very tough nut to crack. When I am cracked, and am at ease, then I get more talkative.

 

I fit this category too. I like getting out, and don't seem out of place in a crowd of strangers, but unlike here at SP, I'll sit back and listen to the crowd more than I speak up. Now certain situations do come up where I can take over a conversation, but once you get away from Games or Hockey or wrestling, I'm sitting back with my mouth shut...

 

I did ask if our board members know people with complicated personality. Who can they know any better than themselves?

Interesting answers.

Although initially I was referring to friends, and family of the board members, it seems this topic has given us some insight about our own BoM family.

 

I don't think I know anyone with a non-complicated personality...

 

I agree with Stefanina. The more I get to know someone the more complicated they are. When someone tells me they are not complicated I just smile.

 

I'm strange. With friends and people I know I am extremely talkative, witty and intellegent. But with people that I don't really know I'm quiet around, almost to the point of ignoring them. Even at work. An attractive girl was telling me about that on Friday night, how she would see me around the plant, flirting with girls, goofing off with guys, but until this year I never talked to her. Until I got to know her roomate, and through him, I got to know her a little. Now she says I am one of the most interesting people that she's ever met because I' very much a wide open person.

 

In formal environments, such as at work and in classes, I tend to monopolize attention through confidence and humor. It is always about me in those situations, and I imagine that makes me somewhat intimidating to the shy. I get competitive when equaled, and therefor I am a jerk as well. Imagine a class clown but lacking the haplessness; I always have harbored a secret dream of being a stand-up comic.

Privately, things are somewhat different. I don't find friendships with other guys easy to begin or ever really comfortable. They usually involve drugs and alcohol coupled with a penchant for strip clubs and porn. During that phase of youth when guys make life-long friends, I would get quite aggressive with anyone who was around me during a teen-age breakdown; I wasn't in fights all the time, but the ones I was in were usually with friends; hence, entering adulthood, I had none. So now I have work-mates and college buddies.

Women though: whole different story. I have always, even as a young child, found eager female friends and companions. Well, friends as a child and companions as an adult. I don't think I am particulary good-looking: I weigh all of 145 lbs but I guess I am proportioned well and I have a kisser that is not ugly. I think it is more that I can be quite perceptive to their feelings and yet am quite "male" at the same time; i.e.: I listen and then try to get naked, not the other way around.

My girlfriend says I used to be a man-whore. I think she is exagerating a bit, although I was puting quite a streak of confused young women behind me. Then I had a wierd encounter with a biology professor that clued me into the fact a mature and intelligent woman could see right though me. And so I decided to grow up. Me and my girlfriend have been together for almost two years now and we plan on getting a place together within the month. I try to make her exempt from all of my self-delusions and lack of compassion. She tries not to stab me. It's love!

Oh...and I am terribly self-absorbed, but really, who amongst us on this board is not?

 

I work the worst possible way myself. First I'm silent and expressionless, throwing only well thought-out comments. This gives people a highly intellectual first-impression of me. Then when I get more comfortable, I start talking and talking and talking and I don't really think what the heck I say anymore, I just say it for the sake of it. I have this problem that when I talk about something, I assume the people I'm talking to are so stupid they don't know anything about it. So whatever the issue is, I cover every little path along the main story, effectively boring them to death before I get the point accross that should have taken like 20 seconds to spill out. So after the first-impression, I'm marked as a blabbering geek. Since I'm also highly uninterested in anything beyond my own little world, I'm poorly educated in the ways of the world and our society. Which, if the discussion goes there, further increases the impression of geekyness I have on others. TV sports? Beer? Bars? What was on news two days ago? I don't know / care.

2/3:rds of my friends are more or less freaks and geeks, I myself walk somewhere inbetween being a bit of both a geek and a normal person. Out of my friends, those 2/3:rds have mild or serious problems from depression to personality issues that limit how they work with the outside world. One is too systematic and emotionless, one is too emotional and hasn't got a backbone. One only sits inside his room weeks in a row doing nothing but trips to the market for food every few days (kinda like me nowadays), etc. We all suffer from the fact that we don't do mass-hobbies, and we don't drink or go out to town during weekends, so we rarely meet new people. The 1/3:rd then are your typical normal people, with the appropriate twists to them, making them interesting enough to be my friends.

Funny thing with life: nothing works out the way you first thought it would. I make my images of life based on what I know instead of the media (well I try at least), and everyone has too many things screwed up for them, in my book. Kind of like the story of the Ugly Duckling, the biggest lie ever told to children. Comparing the idiots and the oppressed I knew as a kid, the idiots have clearly risen to become the "winners" in life that they always were anyway (well of course there are exceptions, but I'm talking about the average here). Even I am only now beginning to realise the truth and forcefully take the control away from any God or whatever (that's right, since some 4 months ago I've counted myself among the unbelievers), into my own hands. I can only hope that's not too little & too late.