The Introvert’s Guide to Cultivating – and Actually Enjoying – Community
Six practical suggestions you can enact right away. I know this is clickbait-y but I really do think the fifth one is kind of profound.
Before I moved into co-housing in 2019, I avoided my neighbors and I never had people over.
For a decade, I’d lived in a century-old duplex in a lovely neighborhood where the weekly farmers market was just half a block away. It would’ve been a great place to build community with my neighbors, but I was so stressed by the job I had at the time that I could hardly stand to interact with anybody extra – especially without warning. I avoided getting to know the people who lived on my street, and in ten years, I only once attended the annual block party that happened right outside my front door.
I have no recriminations for my past self. I understand just where I was coming from and I empathize entirely: given the demands of my job and the realities of my emotional state at that time, I could not have behaved differently. (If this sounds familiar, I feel you – and I’ll be offering you some encouragement below). These days, the way I relate to my neighbors is so much more social and engaged, and it’s turned out that this is better for my wellbeing and for our neighborhood capacity and resiliency.
Today I’m writing about how deep introverts like me can cultivate community in a way that feels actually nourishing, so we can show up for our neighbors and loved ones and participate more fully in the social world.
Now, building community can be hard for introverts. We’re often deeply connected to a core few people, but branching out and building connections with strangers can be tough. Yet so much of daily life in a society involves interacting with acquaintances and strangers, often about surface-y topics, often unexpectedly. I’ve always had a hard time figuring out how to gracefully end such interactions, so either I get stuck in a conversation I don’t want to be having, or I feel guilty for exiting with what feels like insufficient grace. It’s so much easier to limit my interactions and stick to connecting with the people I know and vibe with.
But also, community matters so much! A good social interaction can be so nourishing and restorative – for introverts most of all.1 Not only that, but our hurting society and world need us to build strong, inclusive webs of connection and interdependence. The more things go sideways, the more we need each other. Indeed, in an age of rising fascism and accelerating climate catastrophe, I’m convinced that supportive relationships with the people around us will become increasingly necessary for survival – literally.
So we introverts know we need to make community happen, but enactment is hard. On the other hand, I’ve found that the more I practice community-building, the more I learn about how to do community in a way that works for me, and the easier it becomes. I am still easily tired out by social interactions, but I also do experience multiple meaningful human connections almost every day, and this has turned out to be my preference. It’s so, so worth it.
Here’s how this shift unfolded for me.
I had dreamed about co-housing for years before our little group made it happen. I knew from the outset that the only way I could handle communal living was if each household had its own residence. I’d lived in plenty of group arrangements throughout my early adulthood – and I even enjoyed myself – but as I got older, I increasingly recognized my need for privacy and alone time.
My partner and I got lucky in finding a house next door to our good friends – somewhere we could all live together but also have our own spaces. Then the pandemic pushed our little group into a new level of interdependence, and by the time society started to open back up, we’d experimented our way into sustainable routines that included my doing a weekly shift or two of childcare and all of us sharing communal meals four or five nights a week. We’d also incorporated a third household into our community. My self-contained lifestyle was in the rearview mirror, and to my surprise, I liked it that way.
Part of what makes our co-housing community work for me, introvert that I am, is that everything has become so routine and also so casual. I mostly know when my commitments are going to happen, which lets me budget energy expenditures ahead of time. We’re also so much like family these days that we don’t have to do anything different when we’re in and out of each other’s houses. We don’t tidy our spaces on each other’s behalf or try to curate a particular image of our household. We’re able to just be.2 It’s such a relief.
And as I’ve been able to relax into a more communal style of living, I’ve found some capacity (though not a ton!) to expand who I feel actually comfortable around and be a more active part of the life of the neighborhood. Part of this comes from having kids in my daily life, because they do like to get out and about. I also feel much more resourced than I once did, having left the job that was taking so much out of me. But I’ve also simply developed more confidence that saying hi to my neighbors will truly add wellbeing to my days – it helps me feel more connection and meaning and it makes me happier.
Okay, so right about now the me of a decade ago might be feeling a little ashamed or defensive or self-accusatory. I might be thinking something like, “I don’t need this pressure!” or “great, one more thing to feel bad about,” or “why can’t I get my act together and put myself out there more? The world needs me to build community, but all I want to do is avoid every stranger forever!”
Poor 2015 Lisa! These are such painful, unpleasant reactions. I hope you’re not getting caught up in thoughts like these or something like them, but if you are – honey, I feel you. And in fact, you’re right: you don’t need this pressure! You don’t need self-recrimination either. Before we go any further, I’m just going to say: expanding into a more communal life may need to take the time it takes. You’ll do it when you’re ready. It was true for me and it’s true for you and I fully believe that, forever and ever, world without end, amen. Be patient and love yourselves, Aunties – and maybe work on cultivating appreciation for what you’re already doing, which probably isn’t nothing.
Now, please also don’t imagine that your life needs to be shaped like my life. Our circumstances are snowflakes! I’ll say it again: my particular co-housing community came together with the help of a lot of luck, not to mention privilege. We found the right place at the right time, and my partner and I had the privilege of enough wealth to put a down payment on a house in a very expensive city. (And sure, that wealth came from hard work,3 but it also came from generations of our white families getting to acquire valuable resources and opportunities at the expense of our black and brown neighbors). We needed luck because in the United States context – and in lots of other places as well – it’s genuinely hard to make co-housing happen. Policy and infrastructure are set up for nuclear families living in single family homes. We are not supposed to interdepend.
However! So much that I’ve learned about building a more communal life is transferable to all kinds of contexts and set-ups. So now it’s time for six practical everyday suggestions for how you, dear introverted Auntie, can cultivate and even enjoy a life with lots of people in it.
