The question
I don't know what's going on with me, maybe it's the season, or the situation in the world, but I've become a real homebody lately. I used to live for going out, but in the past few months, I find myself just thinking of it as a chore. A little background: I'm 33 and have been living with my boyfriend for a year. We don't have any children. I used to love to go to clubs and parties and brunches and all the rest of it. I still get invited to things, but lately, I find myself just wanting to stay home and hang around with my boyfriend and do boring, domestic things. We even played a board game the other night! Is there something wrong with me?
The answer
I used to live for "the social whirl," too.
"I should like to know which is worse," says a character in Voltaire's Candide, "to be raped a hundred times by … pirates, to have a buttock cut off … to be whipped and flogged … to be dissected, to row in a galley … or to remain here doing nothing?"
And that pretty much summed up how I felt in my 20s. I wouldn't say the daytime was just a jumble of hours I couldn't wait to get through – I had my diurnal ambitions too – but I loved to go out.
Full of anticipation, I'd get dressed, blasting music and wiggling my hips and pointing to the mirror and saying stuff such as "two minutes for looking so good!" and "creature of the night!"
I went to everything I was invited to. I kid you not, I went to the opening of an escalator once (at an upscale mall: They had wine and canapés and it was actually not that bad of a party.) I would've gone to the opening of a greenhouse, an outhouse. I turned down nothing but my collar.
Now – well, I style myself an "urban hermit," but that's not fully true. It's not that I don't like talking and socializing any more. I do. I just pick and choose more.
One thing's for sure: You mention clubs, and I can't stand having to shout at people and them shouting at me, over loud music. I'm tall, too, so they have to yell up at me. I find myself pretending to hear and understand what they're saying, which is bound to bite me in the butt some day.
(Though, hopefully, not as bad as it does Jerry Seinfeld, who has to appear on the Today Show in a puffy shirt after pretending to hear what Kramer's new "low talker" girlfriend was saying.)
Vis-à-vis wanting to stay home with your boyfriend, I don't think that sounds so bad. Of course, I'd be an irresponsible advice columnist if I didn't say that if you're staying home to avoid the world and the weather that might not be healthy. You don't want to get SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder).
Make sure you get out and skate, or go for a walk, find a way to get some of that wintry vitamin D.
But, as far as not wanting to socialize as much as you used to, I have noticed these things often go in cycles.
I've seen all kinds of people go from stay-at-home caterpillar to social butterfly and back again. It may be just a mood, a phase.
Or, maybe, you really are changing. Nothing wrong with that either. But don't knock board games! I've had some of the best times of my life, some of the biggest belly-laughs, playing board games with my family. Cards, too.
My wife and I even played chess the other night – and had a great time.
Maybe you're discovering one of life's great truths: that there can be an inverse relationship between how fun a thing sounds on paper and how fun it actually is.
In his book titled A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace paints a savagely scathing picture of the horrors of being on a cruise ship, for example.
My personal bête noir: houseboat. Sounds fun, right? "Hey, let's all go on a houseboat!"
I'll never set foot in one of those things again. I almost got served my Bachelor Papers after that trip.
Which brings me to my main point, which is: the great news is you're enjoying your boyfriend's company. That is huge. As someone who has been (over all, very happily) married for two decades now, I can tell you that if you do wind up married, you will spend a great deal of time together and enjoying one another's company is quite literally the difference between it being hell on wheels and fun.
You heard me: Marriage, if done right, is one of those underrated things that can actually be fun.
As is board games.