[INFJ] - Do you value being loved or being understood higher? | Page 5 | INFJ Forum

[INFJ] Do you value being loved or being understood higher?

I wish that I valued love higher than being understood. It's just that, love is fleeting for me. It's not something that I can rely on. It lets me down, it makes me realize bad things about myself. The few people that "get me" are people that I could only ever trust somewhat. They know and respect my shortcomings, like I know and respect theirs. We have a great time, and there's no bad feelings. Love is great, but in terms of value, I couldn't ever rate it higher than understanding.
 
To me they are inseparable because one cannot be truly loved unless one is truly understood. But yes, I value being loved highly. And not by many people. Just being loved by my spouse is quite enough. Why do I value being loved? Hmmm, harder question than I thought to answer actually! It's not vanity. I don't want to be adored. I suppose it's because I personally feel empty and sense a lack of meaning unless I have my soulmate to share life with.
 
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Love is an odd thing. Most of the time you dont even know you have it when you have it.
 
Loved. I like to know that I won't get hurt when I let you in, to be loved means to be safe without fear of pain and to be understood means no such thing.
 
How can you properly love someone if you don't even understand them? What is the point of being understood if they don't actively love you? You ask an impossible question which deserves an impossible answer.
 
Grayman said:
How can you properly love someone if you don't even understand them? What is the point of being understood if they don't actively love you? You ask an impossible question which deserves an impossible answer.
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I believe you can love someone without fully understanding them. People are complex and often don't even understand themselves.
 
Grayman said:
How can you properly love someone if you don't even understand them? What is the point of being understood if they don't actively love you? You ask an impossible question which deserves an impossible answer.
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Some people love what they don't understand because they don't understand it. Proper love or not?
 
I don't believe anyone will ever understand me. The notion is laughable. Those who believe they do and say they do seem to be the furthest from actually. Not sure what being loved means. More often than not, for me, it means saying goodbye. What I yern to be is accepted, more than anything else.
 
thirdhalf said:
Some people love what they don't understand because they don't understand it. Proper love or not?
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Inadvisable. You are speaking of an attachment, desire, curiosity, imagination, and possibly affection but not much love. At most they can love you by considering your most basic needs. At worst they will make your life harder by misunderstanding your more complex needs.
 
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INFJ16 said:
I believe you can love someone without fully understanding them. People are complex and often don't even understand themselves.
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Not fully love. Full love requires full understanding.

...I read the original question as loving me not being in love with me.
 
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Understood... because it is so rare a feeling, and because I have very rarely (if ever) felt understood and not loved, but I have often felt loved and not understood
 
i have read somewhere before that it is poor etiquette practice (impolite and inconsiderate) to respond with the claim "i understand" when someone is trying to explain something to you about their personal experience. because not having experienced those things yourself, either in terms of those actual events, but also the context of the historical experiences and temperament of that other individual, that it is not possible to achieve understanding; all that it is possible to do is to attempt to understand.

sometimes i have found it very difficult to explain parts of my experience to others, even loving family members who were there at the time. they had different experiences of understanding about what happened to me at those times in my life, and it was difficult to get through to them that their understandings did not make sense in terms of my own lived experiences of those times. i did recognise that no matter how much i argued about the event-based details of what happened to me at those times, that they would never fully understand my experience, because they were not me. but i realised that they did not need to understand those things to love me just as much, accept me for the way that i am now, and admire what i have achieved.
 
Understood.
When I was younger, I just wanted to be loved and accepted for who I was. But now I wish for a friend who can empathize and resonate with my feelings and possibly, experiences. Being an INFJ, I have been misunderstood a lot. And that has left me emotionally isolated. I long for that deep understanding that is so rare.
 
Grayman said:
Inadvisable. You are speaking of an attachment, desire, curiosity, imagination, and possibly affection but not much love. At most they can love you by considering your most basic needs. At worst they will make your life harder by misunderstanding your more complex needs.
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Inadvisable for me, definitely. For those with high and/or dominant Se preferences though? I have met many people that thrive on romance which in a large way is the mystery and adventure of a relationship, it always feels like their inner emotion of 'love' is as genuine as any of mine though very different and from a different place.
 
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thirdhalf said:
Inadvisable for me, definitely. For those with high and/or dominant Se preferences though? I have met many people that thrive on romance which in a large way is the mystery and adventure of a relationship, it always feels like their inner emotion of 'love' is as genuine as any of mine though very different and from a different place.
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IDK, The only way I understand it is like someone with their stamp collection except they are collecting 'signs of love'. They do weird things for each other to induce feelings and contribute to the collection and later they fondle the stamps with affection and show them off to others in some form of competition. Eventually they lose value in the collection and put it on the shelf where it gains dust and all that excitement goes away. They even attempt to take it down from the shelf remembering how much fun it was, wishing to do it again, but they can never again convince themselves that stamps are really of any importantance anymore. So now they seek out a coin collection and the stamps are forever on the shelf resentfully taking up space in their lives.
 
Grayman said:
IDK, The only way I understand it is like someone with their stamp collection except they are collecting 'signs of love'. They do weird things for each other to induce feelings and contribute to the collection and later they fondle the stamps with affection and show them off to others in some form of competition. Eventually they lose value in the collection and put it on the shelf where it gains dust and all that excitement goes away. They even attempt to take it down from the shelf remembering how much fun it was, wishing to do it again, but they can never again convince themselves that stamps are really of any importantance anymore. So now they seek out a coin collection and the stamps are forever on the shelf resentfully taking up space in their lives.
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Good analogy. The switch from the stamp collection to the coin collection does not devalue the 'love' of the stamps at the time the stamps were loved. If the stamp collector turn coin collector were to hope for and let the stamp collection lovingly go to a new home there would only be fond memories and a very happy new stamp collector as well as equally loved stamp and coin collections. Do you believe that the concept of love is finite or is it fluid in its existence appearing and disappearing like a breeze on a calm day? Is it not possible to love the breeze when it blowing and love the calm inbetween?
 
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thirdhalf said:
Good analogy. The switch from the stamp collection to the coin collection does not devalue the 'love' of the stamps at the time the stamps were loved. If the stamp collector turn coin collector were to hope for and let the stamp collection lovingly go to a new home there would only be fond memories and a very happy new stamp collector as well as equally loved stamp and coin collections. Do you believe that the concept of love is finite or is it fluid in its existence appearing and disappearing like a breeze on a calm day? Is it not possible to love the breeze when it blowing and love the calm inbetween?
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My love doesn't go in and out like a breeze but everyone's ingredients are different. My love is more about bonding, loyalty, reliablity, understanding, concern, empathy and stablity. These things do not go in an out like a breeze but they do not burn like the sun simlar to affection, idealism, desire, lust, enslavement of the heart, admiration, respect, appreciation, esteem, and high regard.

The first set of ingredients is about your own actions and sacrifices you make that build up on these emotions and strengthen them. The second set is about how you precieve their actions toward you and it is less in your control so it is like the wind as it comes and goes but it can also be strong when it comes.

A relationship has all these different ingredients in the emotion we call love and more. But a good reciepe doesn't just contain your most favorite ingredients, it contains the ingredients in the right proportions.

I think people spend more time in enjoyment of eating the cake never considering the ingredients and what that might mean for them long term.... that is until they get a cavity...or a sign of pre-diabetes.

EDIT: I am debating my placement of affection. There are a few types of affection. One is of preference, my affection for sugar, and another is the affection you have for a child....
 
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Grayman said:
My love doesn't go in and out like a breeze but everyone's ingredients are different. My love is more about bonding, loyalty, reliablity, understanding, concern, empathy and stablity. These things do not go in an out like a breeze but they do not burn like the sun simlar to affection, idealism, desire, lust, enslavement of the heart, admiration, respect, appreciation, esteem, and high regard.

The first set of ingredients is about your own actions and sacrifices you make that build up on these emotions and strengthen them. The second set is about how you precieve their actions toward you and it is less in your control so it is like the wind as it comes and goes but it can also be strong when it comes.

A relationship has all these different ingredients in the emotion we call love and more. But a good reciepe doesn't just contain your most favorite ingredients, it contains the ingredients in the right proportions.

I think people spend more time in enjoyment of eating the cake never considering the ingredients and what that might mean for them long term.... that is until they get a cavity...or a sign of pre-diabetes.

EDIT: I am debating my placement of affection. There are a few types of affection. One is of preference, my affection for sugar, and another is the affection you have for a child....
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...there is always a breeze somewhere to be loved, but I also do not consider love to be constrained into a singular sense that only has one direction. I am much the same as you in my own way; loving the whole cake, eating it, and all its ingredients, and loving the sugar. But not everybody does, and sadly suspect that not everybody can. There is a beauty to the opposing viewpoint of loving just sugar, or just the eating of the cake to the point of diabetes, or even just how the cake looks; viewpoints that I cannot fully truly understand but those people that do have an intensity about it that is beyond compare. Oh, to be giddy in love with just sugar in a cake without any regard to the type of cake and the other ingredients that come with it. Or diabetes.

To the nurturing types the affection for the figurative sugar and a child are one and the same.

What about your flavor of love, throw in some scorching hot sun burning, and the care free all-inclusive nature of a gentle breeze?
 
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"You have enemies? Good. That means you stood for something, sometime in your life". --From Winston Churchill

I'd rather be understood, because I would rather people know where I stand and hate me than be loved by people that have no idea why they love me, and worship me like a God. It means I'd be living in a society that encourages skepticism over blind acceptance without independent thought.
 
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