Is anyone else best friends with an INTJ? I have a friend from school days -- we've been great buddies our whole lives. We're very different, but we've always shared a view of the world that keeps us on the same page as we go through life. It must be the shared Ni dominant. And the difference between his auxilliary Te and my Fe makes for some interesting arguments.
Friendship with INTJ
- Thread starter David W
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Yes. Two besties both tested as intj but I recently, I suspect the other is istj. In any case, both have been my friends for over 15 years.
I saw your post about dating an ENFJ woman. I didn't date one but I'm pretty sure my mom is ENFJ. It was always an experience of being dragged around her social affairs and my perfecting my self-preserving walls without making them look intimidating. Imagine them as cushioned walls if you don't mind.
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Nope, no friendships with INTJs at all.
BTW, orange is used on the forum to imply we're joking. I'm married to an INTJ and many of my close friends are INTJs.
We have a lot in common, and all share similar backgrounds of one kind or another, but the common thread is an understanding of each other that seems rare for any of us.
BTW, orange is used on the forum to imply we're joking. I'm married to an INTJ and many of my close friends are INTJs.
We have a lot in common, and all share similar backgrounds of one kind or another, but the common thread is an understanding of each other that seems rare for any of us.
Hi Asa - we have that in common - my other half is INTJ too.
I completely agree with what you say.
There have been times we almost killed each other (does red mean anger?)
It all was sorted out when we got into MBTI and realised who we are and accepted it. We both need A LOT of space.
I feel that I can totally be myself with him and I do not feel that with anyone else.
- Aug 21, 2015
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It can if you want it to. Color coding makes tone easier to read sometimes.
I'm sorry you were conflicting with your INTJ, though. Things can get metaphorically jagged and sharp during INFJ/INTJ conflicts.
This is the main reason I like MBTI and think typology is important even if it is flawed. It helps us understand and accept needs and differences.
Yes, both INFJ and INTJ go into silent stupors when upset but the INTJ has perfected it into an art.It can if you want it to. Color coding makes tone easier to read sometimes.
I'm sorry you were conflicting with your INTJ, though. Things can get metaphorically jagged and sharp during INFJ/INTJ conflicts.
They can keep it up for much longer...
Here are the conversations :
"Tigger:I 'recoggonize' you. You're the one that's stuffed with fluff.
Winnie the Pooh: Yeah. And you're sitting on it.
Tigger: Yeah. And it's comfy, too!"
- Winnie the Pooh And Tigger Too', 1974.
I'm INTJ and my best friend for a decade was also INTJ.
He was fixated on personal accomplishments in the academic field, and has multiple doctorates and master's degrees. I'm more inclined towards the clumsy sensory immersion, INTJs engage in, but with the majority of my total time spent in stoic contemplation of religious-ey things.
It was a good dynamic we had: he'd pick my brains for insights into papers he was writing, and I had a friend who could appreciate hiking and camping for days, as part of a lent penance.
In true INTJ style, our friendship ended with mutual doorslam finality. My friend was gay, and I'm straight. We had implicitly not ever made our respective sex lives a topic of much conversation, probably because we'd each find details repellent to listen to. My friend started to encroach upon this area of discomfort by commenting on men he found attractive. In turn I'd comment on bangable women. That's pretty much how our friendship ended. We continued to meet out of habit, and because the disrespect hadn't been formally expressed, but it was obviously just a chore. So I accelerated the termination by saying "yuck" at the first opportunity, when my former friend made some comment about something he found attractive.
INTJs aren't easy to offend, except in three doorslam provoking areas: deliberate inefficiency, deliberate stupidity, and if someone expresses disdain for their very personal values or sentiments.
He was fixated on personal accomplishments in the academic field, and has multiple doctorates and master's degrees. I'm more inclined towards the clumsy sensory immersion, INTJs engage in, but with the majority of my total time spent in stoic contemplation of religious-ey things.
It was a good dynamic we had: he'd pick my brains for insights into papers he was writing, and I had a friend who could appreciate hiking and camping for days, as part of a lent penance.
In true INTJ style, our friendship ended with mutual doorslam finality. My friend was gay, and I'm straight. We had implicitly not ever made our respective sex lives a topic of much conversation, probably because we'd each find details repellent to listen to. My friend started to encroach upon this area of discomfort by commenting on men he found attractive. In turn I'd comment on bangable women. That's pretty much how our friendship ended. We continued to meet out of habit, and because the disrespect hadn't been formally expressed, but it was obviously just a chore. So I accelerated the termination by saying "yuck" at the first opportunity, when my former friend made some comment about something he found attractive.
INTJs aren't easy to offend, except in three doorslam provoking areas: deliberate inefficiency, deliberate stupidity, and if someone expresses disdain for their very personal values or sentiments.
What I find attractive in an INTJ is his lack of sophisticated charm. I agree with Jane Austen in that I mistrust charm to be just another form of dishonesty. I can look past the INTJ's arrogance and see his clumsiness in emotional matters and it is endearing, even sexy.
The INTJ's lack of emotional intelligence can also be construed as stupidity but it is not deliberate. They can have a one dimensional or flat view of such things and find it very difficult to see emotional issues in three dimensions for example people's true motivations, drives and intentions.
My husband have been backstabbed many times in business by partners or clients due to this. When it is pointed out he will stubbornly refuse to acknowledge my fluffy arguments as it is not rooted in fact. Through the years he has come to rely on me to "read" people - this includes the emotional intelligence needed to nurture children and grand children.
The INTJ can be thankful that the INFJ do not door slam him on this but rather take him on as a "project" and let Tigger sit on him.
In turn Tigger is very balancing for Pooh as Tigger is nor serious nor a worrier.
He understands too little to be worried about it.
Also the INTJ is stable and dependable and the perfect weight on the scale for the other side of "fluffiness".
And @Sometimes Yeah, I know as an INTJ you are already itching to correct my writing, but be soft on me, my native language is not English, Just let it go.
That was a nice post.
Emotional intelligence seems to me, to assume that emotions have some inherent value in themselves, and are not just a symptom of bad (or good) habits and expectations. While I find people who expect their feelings to carry any weight distateful, those emotions are expressions of intangible goods and assets, which people can value more than tangible goods. It's the mythology about feelings which, ultimately, I dislike.
As for grammar, I'm not especially interested in grammar, so long as what's being said can be understood. I'm more likely to go off about things like relativism, hypocrisy, intemperance, and anti-hierarchical ideology.
I could send you down the philosophical rabbit hole here (not that I would be able to keep up, but I could inundate you with philosophical questions with no clear answer). Thinking can be overrated at times - I would have to qualify this statement in great depth but yah it's kinda complicated to say feelings are distasteful.
I'm super curious about what kind of philosophical questions you may have up your sleeve, and whether I'd be stumped.
Thank you.
This was not meant in a condescending manner but as a statement of fact. The INTJ does not know that he does not know. "Emotional Intelligence" was a description in passing which I employed to describe something much bigger. It was too shallow for what I mean. If I can use the metaphor of a submarine. The INTJ can use the periscope to see the ship outside but is not proficient in using the sonar system to track other submarines - the real threat.
There is therefore value in the observation of the emotion and what it means as it can prevent you from being torpedoed.
The periscope only uses the eye but the sonar system is very complex.
Well, it's quiet easy to go down this rabbit hole because the whole purpose of going down this line of thinking is to get your mind to be stumped on purpose. It's what guru's do, they see how long your thinking will go in circles.
1. I guess, you would have to define feeling
2. Define thinking
Then go to your direct experience of these phenomena in the present moment. This is where things get fun, because you could make a philosophical argument about feeling and thinking as a concept, but as soon as you go to your direct experience you will find your mind goes around in circles. Put another way, if you make your mind act like a closed loop system. This is what the guru fundamentally does he/she forces you to find direct evidence in your experience as opposed to arguments based out of the moment.
My intention is not to act cool or make out like I'm some guru or something, I guess I just had a chuckle at that statement, because when most people do "direct" experience exercises they actually see how closely thought and feeling are in present moment awareness.
Once again, I'm not writing this post to sound cool or to get any sort of validation out of it, I'm just having my own "inside" joke, and it was cool to see that you were at least partly interested.
If only you could say something as coherent about emotional intelligence, as you do about navy equipment. In no way have you demonstrated the fact that submarines cannot use periscopes to view other submerged submarines had any correspondence to emotional intelligence, even analogously. You've just asserted it.
That would be like me saying that emotional intelligence is illusory, and giving it any consideration is like a rabbit running into a bear's mouth mistaking it for a rabbit hole.
It is exactly why I am trying to step away from the term " emotional intelligence".
I am trying to show that we both employ different systems to make observations and that one is useful in certain instances and the other in tracing some hidden enemies.
Employing my navy metaphor to the issue of distasteful emotions - it is comparable to a green blib on the radar screen.
What are you going to do about it?
When I notice people displaying negative emotions, I ignore it.
People get into the habit: if they display an emotion, others usually have a certain response, and that response satisfies some neurological need.
For the most part, they're also used to some people not giving a response pathway to their habitual need being met, and they're implicitly quick to recognise what prospects there are for their fishing expedition. I seldom find people with a reputation for being difficult or unpleasant either difficult or unpleasant, because I don't fit with their routine patterns of interaction.
Thank you for still engaging. I mean you no harm.
I agree with your observations of negative emotions in other people. It is very observant and wise to do what you do. You are using your periscope well.
I think our misunderstanding is this. You are referring to other people's emotions. I am referring to my own experience with them. My own distasteful emotions and what I can deduct from it.
It is part of my sonar system that I know how to extrapolate certain observations and connect it with past experiences, similar feelings, psychological insights into how people feel, think and act under certain circumstances which I have picked up since I was a child - I am just wired differently to you to survive I guess.
It is difficult to explain how it works - I get insights from dreams and during stages of diffused thinking. That is why I call it a sonar system. It works in the undersea world that is foreign to one that cannot breath under water. Let's call the water the "fluffyness" of feelings, intuition, making connections, getting sudden unexplained insights - a lot more can be added to this if I start to think about it. Accessing my heart more than my head is part of it.
I deliberately asked what you are going to do because that is my experience with the INTJ. They tend to ignore the blib on their own screen. Because they do not always know what to make of it.
They have not made a study of these things and are maybe not really interested to do it either - unless they try to understand what the use of such a skill can be. We know how intelligent INTJ's are. They will maybe not study these things because they see no use for it themselves, but after burning their fingers a couple of times in taking a hit - they could contemplate bringing someone into their circle who have this as a skill.
In that it can be helpful to use the raising of a child as an example. The patterns used in emotional validation will have as an end result either an emotionally neglected or emotionally nurtured child. This can have serious implications. The end result of the pattern will only become apparent after many years, maybe. It is only then that the observer will be able to verify the emotional nurturing to have been useful.
The "fluffiness" therefore is about patterns and their predictable outcomes - but it can take a long time to validate the insight. That is why INFJ's feel so misunderstood. Their wisdom only become apparent after the fact.