Otrovert. Itโs a small, slightly odd word, and the first time I read it, something in me quietly exhaled.
Let me tell you why. For most of my life, whenever someone asked, โAre you an introvert or an extrovert?โ, I answered with a shrug and a half-laugh. โDepends on the day,โ Iโd say. Or, โA bit of both.โ People nodded politely, the way we do when an answer doesnโt quite land, and the conversation moved on.
But the question stayed with me, the way small questions do. Because โa bit of bothโ never felt true. It felt like a lazy answer to something I couldnโt name. A bit of both would mean Iโm a blend, a mixture, some neat fifty-fifty. What I actually felt was something else, as if I had walked into a room where everyone was asked to stand on the left or the right, and I had quietly stayed by the door, not because I was shy or unwelcome, but because neither side was quite mine.
Then I found the word again, this time with its story. A psychiatrist, Dr Rami Kaminski, had used otrovert for people who enjoy others, who like conversation and friendship and even a good crowded evening, but who donโt feel a pull to belong to the group. Who like connection more than membership.
I remember reading it and feeling something loosen in my chest. Not โthis is me, Iโve been diagnosed, case closed.โ More like someone had finally set a small lamp down in a corner Iโd been sitting in for years.
I donโt want to explain the word to you. You can look it up, and the people who study these things will say it better than I can. What I want to do instead is sit with the feeling behind it. Maybe youโll recognise it. Maybe you wonโt. Either way, letโs wander through it together.
The Door, Not the Wall
Have you ever noticed how some people walk into a gathering and immediately know where they belong?
Iโve watched this my whole life, and Iโm always a little fascinated by it. Thereโs a certain ease. They find their people, a cluster of shoulders turned inward, a shared joke already in progress, a vocabulary that doesnโt need explaining. They stand inside the circle, and the circle holds them.
I enjoy those circles. Truly. Iโm not standing outside with my nose pressed to the glass, wishing I were in. I love the laughter, the stories, the way a good conversation can make three hours disappear. I can be warm, funny, curious, and present. People often tell me Iโm easy to talk to.
But Iโve often found myself standing slightly to the side of it all. Not far. Just enough that I can see the whole circle instead of only the faces turned toward me. And thereโs a strange comfort in that spot. From the edge, you can see how the group breathes. You notice who speaks over whom, who laughs half a second late, who is quietly performing the version of themselves the group expects.
I donโt say this with judgment. I do it too, sometimes. We all do. Belonging asks a small price, and most of us pay it without noticing: a slightly sharper opinion, a slightly louder laugh, a โyes, exactlyโ when the truth was โwell, sort of.โ
What Iโve noticed about myself is that I find it hard to pay that price. Itโs not that Iโm too proud or too principled. I simply canโt seem to make my body do it. Something inside me goes quiet and stubborn, and Iโd rather stay at the door, where I can come in and go out as myself.
Maybe thatโs what being an otrovert feels like, at least from the inside: a door, not a wall.
Connection Is Not the Same as Belonging
This is the part Iโm still turning over, like a smooth stone in my pocket.
For a long time I assumed connection and belonging were the same thing, two words for one experience. If I felt close to someone, surely I belonged with them. If I belonged somewhere, surely I was connected.
But the more I look, the less true it seems.
Some of the deepest connections Iโve felt happened with people who belonged to nothing I belonged to. A stranger on a long train journey, sharing tea and half their life story before getting off at a station Iโll never visit. An old neighbour who disagreed with me about nearly everything and still showed up with food when I was unwell. A friend whose beliefs sit in an entirely different corner of the world from mine, and yet when we talk, something true passes between us.
And Iโve also felt the opposite. Iโve sat in rooms full of people who shared my views, my language, even my favourite books, and felt a quiet, unnameable distance. We belonged to the same thing, yet I couldnโt feel the person across from me. We were bound by a label rather than by each other.
Maybe thatโs the difference. Connection happens between two people. Belonging happens between a person and a group, and groups, however warm, tend to ask for something. Loyalty. Agreement. A certain way of being. Not always loudly, but itโs there, like a quiet gravity.
I donโt think belonging is bad. Many people find shelter in it, and Iโd never want to take that from anyone. But Iโve wondered whether some of us are built to receive connection without being able to absorb belonging, like a plant that drinks water beautifully but doesnโt do well in a crowded pot.
Maybe itโs just me, but Iโve started to suspect that itโs possible to love people deeply and still not want to wear their colours.
Friendship Without a Flag
I have friends. Real ones. Iโd like to say that plainly, because thereโs an assumption that people like me must be lonely, or aloof, or secretly unable to commit.
But my friendships look a little different from the ones I see around me. Theyโre less like a village and more like a scattered constellation. Each friend is a bright point, and the lines between us are thin and personal. Thereโs no banner overhead, no shared identity that says we are this. I have a friend I talk to about books, another I only ever talk to about lifeโs heavier questions, another who makes me laugh until I forget my own name. They rarely meet each other. Theyโd probably get along, but Iโve never felt the urge to merge them into one group.
Sometimes I wonder if this makes me a poor friend, someone who doesnโt build a tribe, who doesnโt host the big gatherings or keep the group chat alive. Part of me worries that Iโm withholding something.
And yet when someone I care about is struggling, Iโm there. When someone needs honesty, I give it gently. I think what I offer is less a place to belong and more a place to be seen, one person at a time, without needing them to be on any particular side.
Have you ever noticed how much of friendship, in groups, quietly depends on having the same enemies, the same opinions, the same โusโ? Iโve noticed it so often that it almost startles me now. A group laughs together at an outsider, and the laughter feels warm in the moment, but I always catch a small chill. I think, what do they say about me when I leave the room? And then, more honestly: what do I let them say about others when I stay?
I try to be better about that. Iโm not always successful. But I find I canโt quite settle into the comfort of an โusโ that needs a โthemโ to hold itself together.
Joining the Conversation, Not the Identity
Hereโs something hard to explain to people who naturally belong.
I can sit in a conversation about almost anything and genuinely enjoy it. Politics, spirituality, parenting, books, cricket, the meaning of life. Iโm curious about how people think. I like hearing why someone believes what they believe, and Iโll happily offer my own view if itโs wanted.
But I canโt, for the life of me, adopt the full package.
Itโs as if every opinion arrives with a membership card attached. If you think this about one thing, then of course you must think that about another, and those people are with you or against you. And I stand there with my little handful of thoughts, thinking, but I agree with part of this, and part of that, and Iโm honestly not sure about the rest.
That kind of answer rarely satisfies anyone. A group wants a clear signal. It wants to know whether youโre in. And โIโm in on some things, uncertain on others, and Iโd rather not wear the jerseyโ isnโt a signal anyone knows how to read.
I used to think this was indecision. A kind of weakness. A failure to commit to anything. But lately Iโve been softer with myself about it. I donโt think itโs a lack of conviction. I have convictions, quiet ones, held close. I just donโt feel they need a flag to be real.
I suppose what Iโm saying is that I can take part in a conversation without taking out citizenship in it.
The Loud Little Room We All Carry
And then thereโs the internet, that enormous, restless, never-sleeping circle.
I donโt need to tell you what itโs like. Youโve seen it. Every event, every tragedy, every small human moment seems to arrive with an immediate demand: Where do you stand? Which side are you on? Say it now, say it loudly, or your silence will be counted against you.
Iโll be honest, it exhausts me. Not because I donโt care. I care a great deal, often too much. But because the format asks me to compress something complicated into something tribal. A feeling that has seven layers must become a single sentence, preferably one that signals clearly to the right people.
Iโve drafted posts and deleted them. Iโve watched a conversation unfold and felt that old familiar standing-at-the-door feeling, except now the door is a screen and the circle is a million people wide. I read and think; I understand what theyโre saying. I also understand what the other side is saying. And I also think thereโs something neither of them has touched yet. But thatโs not a comfortable place to stand online. Thereโs no category for it. No hashtag for โIโm still thinking.โ
Sometimes I feel a pull; Iโll admit it. A little ache to simply pick, to join, to be absorbed into the warm roar of a crowd that agrees with me. I can see how lovely that must feel. To be carried by a current instead of swimming your own small lap.
But when I try, something in me resists. I feel like Iโm putting on a costume that doesnโt quite fit at the shoulders.
Perhaps youโve felt this too, that small private tug-of-war between wanting to be part of something and wanting to stay true to the unfinished, undecided, sometimes contradictory person you actually are.
The Quiet Freedom
I want to say something about the freedom in all this, because itโs real, and I donโt want to make it sound only like a burden.
Thereโs a lightness to not needing a groupโs approval. When I change my mind, thereโs no tribe to disappoint. When I learn something that challenges an old belief, Iโm free to let it. Iโm not defending a territory, only following a question. I can listen to someone very different from me and let their words actually land, because Iโm not busy deciding whether theyโre on my team.
Iโve found this makes me, I think, a better listener. Not because Iโm a better person, but because Iโm less defended. When youโre not protecting a groupโs position, you can afford to be curious.
And thereโs a kind of peace in my own company that I donโt think Iโd have if I were always seeking my reflection in a crowd. I can sit alone with a cup of tea, a notebook, or a half-formed thought, and not feel that anything is missing. The solitude doesnโt frighten me, nor does it feel like a retreat. Itโs more like coming home.
Thatโs the otrovertโs freedom. Itโs quiet. It doesnโt announce itself. But itโs there, steady, like a pulse.
And the Loneliness, Because I Promised Honesty
Iโd be lying if I said it was always easy.
There are evenings when I watch a group of people share a belonging I canโt quite enter, and something aches. Not envy exactly. More like a gentle, passing sadness, the kind you feel watching a lit window from the street. I think, how warm it must be in there.
There are times when Iโve wished I could simply be a joiner. When a friend says, โYou should come, weโre all going, itโs our thing,โ and I smile and go, and Iโm glad I went, and yet somewhere in the middle of the laughter I notice Iโm still standing at the edge. Still observing. Still a guest in a house everyone else calls home.
And thereโs a particular loneliness in being misunderstood as distant. People sometimes assume that if you donโt join, you must not care. That if you hold back from the group, youโre holding back from them. Itโs hard to explain that the opposite is often true, that my care is individual, specific, and unwrapped by any banner.
I donโt have a solution for this. Iโm not sure there is one. Iโve simply learned to let both things be true: the freedom and the ache, living side by side, like two people sharing a bench who donโt need to talk.
Are We All Otroverts, Somewhere in Between?
Lately Iโve been wondering about something, and I offer it only as a wondering.
When people say, โIโm an introvert,โ or โIโm an extrovert,โ I listen differently now. I listen for the little qualifiers that follow. โIโm an introvert, but I love a good party with the right people.โ โIโm an extrovert, but I need days to myself.โ โIโm quiet, but I can talk for hours with the right person.โ
So many of us seem to add a โbut.โ And Iโve begun to wonder whether the โbutโ is where the truth lives.
Maybe the two big labels are a little like the two sides of that room, useful for sorting, but not quite how human beings actually are. Maybe many of us are standing somewhere in the middle, or off to the side, or moving between them depending on the hour, the company, the weather of our inner lives.
Maybe the word otrovert isnโt meant to be yet another box. I hope it isnโt. Iโd hate for it to become one more tribe, with its own membership and its own jersey. (Wouldnโt that be a funny irony? A club for people who donโt join clubs.)
I think itโs more like a window that opens in the wall. A small acknowledgement that there are people who love others without needing to merge with them, who can be warm without being absorbed, who belong most of all to themselves, and, in a quiet way, to everyone.
I donโt know how many of us there are. Maybe more than we think. Maybe a lot of people stand at the edge of the circle on the evenings no one is looking, wondering if theyโre the only ones.
A Small Evening Thought
Itโs late as I write this. The tea beside me has gone lukewarm, which is how it usually goes when Iโm thinking.
I notice that I donโt feel the need to end this with an answer. Iโm not sure I have one. I started out hoping to understand myself a little better, and I think I have, but only in the way you understand a friend: partly, gently, with room left over for surprise.
What I do know is this. Iโve stopped apologising, at least internally, for standing where I stand. The edge of the circle isnโt a failure to enter. Itโs just a place, and from here the view is wide, and the air is clear, and I can still hear everyone laughing.
And sometimes, if Iโm lucky, someone else wanders over. They stand beside me, not quite in the circle either, and we donโt say anything for a while. Then one of us says, โNice evening, isnโt it?โ and the other says, โYes. It is.โ
No flags. No sides. Just two people, noticing the same sky.
Perhaps youโve been that person too. Perhaps youโre standing there right now, wherever you are, with your own cup gone cold, wondering whether anyone else feels this way.
If so, I hope you know youโre not as alone as it sometimes seems.
And if not, if youโve always known exactly where you belong, Iโm glad for you, truly. Come and find me at the edge sometime. Iโll make the tea.
Related blog posts:ย Non-Judgment and Finding Inner Peace: The New Definition of Success
About the author: Anu Chandrashekar is a bilingual writer, poet, and content creator. ORCID: 0009-0002-8916-9170
Read this in Hindi: เคเคเฅเคฐเฅเคตเคฐเฅเค เคเฅ เคกเคพเคฏเคฐเฅ เคธเฅ
Disclaimer: This post is a personal reflection based on my own observations and experiences. The term โotrovertโ was introduced by psychiatrist Dr Rami Kaminski, but this piece is not psychological, medical, or professional advice. Readers are encouraged to reflect and decide what resonates with them.
Copyright: ยฉ Anu Chandrashekar. This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
