10 Signs You’re Secretly An Introvert

1. You are capable of being bubbly, outgoing, and even effusively warm, but doing so completely exhausts you. You feel as though you have to switch on that side of your personality.

2. You prefer intimate social gatherings to large parties — which, frankly, often stress you out. There are so many people! And you have to make small talk with at least two-thirds of them!

3. Whenever you do end up attending large parties (which, if you’re in college, is a #thing), you don’t mind standing in a corner or sitting on a couch and observing the world around you. When you see someone heading towards you, conversation starters in mind, you just think, “Drat.”

4. Sometimes, you hide right before you’re about to run into someone. Okay, well, not literally hide. If, say, you see them walking in your direction, you might pull out your phone and pretend to be highly engrossed in important maters, like your Twitter feed. It’s not that you don’t want to talk to them — you’ll still say “hi,” of course. It’s that you don’t feel like having a conversation that consists of, “Hi! How are you? I’m doing well. How are your classes? Cool, mine too! Oh my god, I have so much work to do. Okay, see you later!”

5. On Friday nights, your bed — with a glass of wine and your Netflix queue — is your happy place. Sadly, you don’t get to spend enough time visiting your happy place.

6. You are able to maneuver most romantic situations with finesse (or, you like to think s0). However, when you talk to people you genuinely like — whose pretty personalities attract you more than their pretty eyes — it becomes painfully apparent how much of your social skill you fake. At heart, you’re just an awkward cookie.

7. It is a train wreck when you talk to people in whom you’re interested. You can feel your cheeks grow redder with the minute, dammit. The number of times you say “like” increases tenfold. You start rambling at about 60 miles a minute — it’s as though you open your mouth; the words come out; and you have no control over them. And you end the conversation, convinced that whomever thinks you’re a grade-A idiot.

8. You love meeting new people, but you definitely don’t love it as much as you tell people you do.

9. You much prefer having a small, tight-knit group of close friends than you do having a wide net of loose acquaintances whom you only see about four times a year.

10. Figuring out how to open and close conversations is so frustrating to you that you’d rather not start a given conversation in the first place. Do you hug them upon greeting them? Do you hug them from the side or go with the full-frontal move? Do you shake their hand, instead? What do you do when you want to peace elsewhere? How do you excuse yourself gracefully? Are you supposed to hug them when you say “bye?” Or should you say “see you later?” What if you never want to see them again? The choices are endless and overwhelming.