Re: Question for those who live in the US
Well conversation is a mysterious art, and while people have been generally welcoming, I do sometimes find things a little problematic, particularly since it seems at least in this part of Pennsylvania, there is a fairly rigid gender code as far as conversation goes. Women tend to talk a lot, mostly about the doings of other women or their church, while men tend to be fairly quiet unless discussing sport or hunting or their careers, all sort of none starters for myself.
Though like my lady i am a card carrying intravert, and find that I can only take company in small doses before I need to go off and read or play games or do something else solo, one ability I have found I've got is the ability to use my empathy and receptiveness, (as well as my general interest in many subjects), to enact conversation.
Where however I am used to this working most of the time after the "waaa! weerd blind man!" syndrome has worn off, getting onto anything from films to hi story to food, in the states I'm finding it generally speaking less successful and once the subject of "Yes I come from britain, and yes we're getting/have gotten married" is exhausted I do feel a trifle stuck in various situations.
I recall during one rather memorable "family get together" with my lady and a bunch of her relatives, basically we ended up spending the majority of the time just interacting with each other (usually holding hands), because the principle topics of discussion were either the births deaths and marriages of people neither of us knew, (my lady hasn't lived here for 17 years), or people's generally agreeing with right wing principles of corporal punishment.
All that being said, there is no denying are extremely pleasant, even if with a tendency to not particularly look outside a particular focus, indeed part of the problem I have is that my natural inclination to question nearly everything would tend
to be taken as an attack, (my in laws were rather horrified when I intimated that Tony Blaire was one of England's least popular prime ministers).
It actually seems often here the predominant mode of conversation on any substantive moral or political issue, or heck even just differences of opinion seems modeled far more on either agreement or aggressively radical opposition, as opposed to amicable interlectual disagreements and exploration, although again, the generally decent nature of most people tends to mean that subch disagreements more often take the form of "I'm not comfortable with that" or "I'll pray for your soul " rather than "begone foul heathen!" .
I've managed to avoid such thus far, though often by slightly narrow margins, and I suspect if I was here for a long period I'd probably fall into a trap
at some point, and certainly I'd find it a little difficult to locate people with a wide enough spectrum of conversational interests outside the circle of my lady's friends to really make much of a connection with, one reason I'm rather glad we won't be living here since while it's a lovely place to visit and certainly we'll be coming back I suspect if we stayed I'd find my store of politeness running dry at some point (I am already struggling a little with my inlaws, though in fairness they drive my wife batty as well!).
In general I'll say this is one huge advantage in being married to someone who tends to have similar intravertion requirements to myself, since if (or occasionally when), we find ourselves at a social gathering at something of a loss, we can always interact with each other, indeed one person described us as having our own language, and one thing I will say is that for my intravert radar, my wife doesn't count as "people" and time with her is pretty much iquivolent to being alone in terms of general recharging.
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