INFJ emotions in new relationships

[elect locution]

Fellow INFJs, at the beginning of your prior "successful" (progressed to long-term) relationships, did you have strong feelings early on or did feelings only develop after spending a significant amount of time with that person?
How can you tell whether a lack of "butterflies" is due to unfamiliarity or to incompatibility?

I ask because I have only experienced the former--crushing heavily on women initially before pursuing them. I avoid or terminate romantic relations with women that I do not initially/quickly feel anything with, but I am cross-checking wisdom of this--wondering maybe I need to give more chances and more time.

 

[Rasmus]

Fellow INFJs,

At the beginning of your prior "successful" (progressed to long-term) relationships, did you have strong feelings early on or did feelings only develop after spending a significant amount of time with that person?
How much time (or how many encounters) do you allow yourself for feelings to develop?
How can you tell whether a lack of "butterflies" is due to unfamiliarity or to incompatibility?

I ask because I have only experienced the former--crushing heavily on women initially before pursuing them. I avoid or terminate romantic relations with women that I do not initially/quickly feel anything with, but I am cross-checking wisdom of this--wondering maybe I need to give more chances and more time.

I don't know man. As far as "giving more chances" goes, it's been my experiences that the disqualifiers (<-- word I made up) aren't going to magically change if I draw things out or if she draws things out. As an INFJ there are specific things or reasons why I wouldn't feel a quick connection with a woman or any human for that matter. Some of those things are shallow but most of them are considerably deep issues in my opinion. An example of a shallow thing would be that she doesn't speak very good English. An example of a deep thing would be that she doesn't exhibit the ability to make independent decisions without consulting her mother.


On a side note, I have a theory that one of the reasons why INFJs seemingly fall in love so quickly is because they have consciously and subconsciously mastered the art of rapidly gathering and sorting through mountains of information (regarding other humans) in a fraction of the time it might take other folks to do so. I can notice things in a brief interaction with a person that might have taken their closets friend years to discover. It happens so fast that it almost seems supernatural though I don't believe it is. I have verified my findings with persistent persons only to watch them crumble beneath the harsh truth of it all which broke my freaking heart and taught me that it is better for an INFJ to keep their observations of deeper things to themselves.


Rambling aside, I don't think we require significant amounts of time to deeply connect with other humans or to fall in love.

 

[grt$5vb]

I'm in a relationship, now with someone I initially did not have any sparks with. The sparks developed after the friendship did.

 

[elect locution]

I don't know man. As far as "giving more chances" goes, it's been my experiences that the disqualifiers (<-- word I made up) aren't going to magically change if I draw things out or if she draws things out. As an INFJ there are specific things or reasons why I wouldn't feel a quick connection with a woman or any human for that matter. Some of those things are shallow but most of them are considerably deep issues in my opinion. An example of a shallow thing would be that she doesn't speak very good English. An example of a deep thing would be that she doesn't exhibit the ability to make independent decisions without consulting her mother.

Rambling aside, I don't think we require significant amounts of time to deeply connect with other humans or to fall in love.

I agree with you, but I'm personally in a bit of a intuiting-judgmental rut when it comes to relationships so I've come to the following conclusion:

While we can pick up on certain things well, we should also counter our intuitions with a healthy dose of skepticism. It's easy for us to feel out a person and jump to premature conclusions. There are other flavors of "deep" and "thoughtful" besides that of the INFJ brand. I think that ours is a very "overt" and self-asserting kind of "depth," but there are also less aggressive and subtle depths in personalities--and if anyone see it in people, it's us.

I've been making the mistake of trying to find my ideal of what a relationship should be. I realize now that what someone has to offer may be richer than my narrow ideals. I've been thinking and forum-ing about this a lot in the last few days and this is what I've decided on as my new outlook going forward.