| An observation about hermits... If one skips sexual companionship, you get the 27-year total isolation like Christopher Knight. However, if one allows that one activity of procreation, he can suddenly become a hermit hiding in plain sight that nobody calls a "hermit". An example of that would be my friend's dad. Because my home life wasn't always the most joyful, I spent a lot of time at my friend's house. His dad was a doctor so they had a big enough house where we could play and make noises without bothering the parents. Anyway, I noticed that his dad never went out with his buddies for golf or have colleagues over for drinks. He shared a private practice with 3 other doctors but they never came over. His only outings were walking to a nearby creek to fish with one of his kids. As another example, his dad would spend $100 for a pay-per-view boxing match but the only people watching was the 3 of us: his dad, my friend, and me. Many other guys that spend $$$ on a pay-per-view would use it as an event to invite all their friends to get maximum mileage out of it. Growing up around him, the repeated description was "he's extremely reserved" -- as in "yeah, my dad is extremely reserved and private". Now that I'm a lot older and share many of the same traits of extreme introversion, I can look back and sum up his disposition as "hermit in plain sight". Having a family fooled a lot of people. Instead of "hermit", you get more society-approved labels such as "dedicated family man". |
Did your friends dad ever get invited to your own parents' house, did he go? Perhaps he just had no friends rather than choosing to be a recluse?
I match the description you give of your friends dad quite well, except without the money. I've one friend who'll send a birthday card, none that will ring me and suggest we hang out; I try to do things for my children to encourage them not to fall in to my pattern (perhaps that's what the pay-per-view was, a treat for his son and you?).
I like people, enjoy shared work to a common goal, get involved when I can with things like helping out at school clubs and Scout events (was previously a leader with Cub Scouts) but somehow things just don't really work; I have social anxieties that inhibit me contacting others but I think I can be reasonably good company.
"Dedicated family men" seem entirely orthogonal to the matter at hand. To me it's an epithet - mostly used for dead people - to say they spent time with their kids and put them before other things like their career.