regarding INFP/INFJ relationships

I posted this on a different forum, and thought maybe someone here could find it useful.

That's how it is with my INFP (and yes, the chemistry is DEFINITELY amazing), but minus the moodiness on my part, cause I'm very level, even in stressful circumstances/touchy situations and such. I honestly think most any other INFJ guy who has had all the stuff built up in their life over time that I have, who is also highly sensitive, would have an awfully hard time having a relationship with my INFP--at least at my age, anyways--because if I wasn't nearly as stable I am, well....there are all kinds of things that could be causing difficulties, or even kill the relationship entirely, hurting both people a lot in the process, but I can see through all that quite easily to the root of everything like any emotional outbursts she has or misunderstandings that could be taken personally, among other things.

I'm able to take care of that stuff in a way that is very firm and uncompromising as to what needs to be done, but at the same time never hurts her, and does not push her away, but rather, just gives her a little shove in the right direction, so to speak, and helping her back up if she stumbles. She's said that I'm always totally right when I do that (We could probably end up talking for hours when I get into it. It makes for very good conversational material that helps bring us closer, which I always love.), but that it's just really really hard for her; I know that she'll get better with those things in time, though it could very well take quite a while, as she also has various emotional disorders, depression, and even PTSD (most likely from her father abusing her, though she no longer has to worry about that because he was finally dealt with just this past week), and her ways of coping with those things are very much ingrained, and I'm working with her on changing them to better methods that don't just hurt herself further.

Most of that is largely intuitive for me, though, as I seem to just naturally understand her a lot better than anyone else she knows. I am very good at understanding people in general, but with the people I can really connect with (which are few and far between), it's on an entirely different level, like to the point of frequent non-verbal understanding of exactly everything the other person is feeling, and pretty often I even end up personally feeling myself what they're feeling without having any actual knowledge of it....which can get a bit overwhelming at times (though never out of control), but I'm very glad for it because understanding her is very important to me and that does help a lot.



I think the biggest problem for an INFJ/INFP relationship would be one or both people taking these issues (This could, of course, be an issue of varying degrees in many different relationships, but it can easily be compounded and greatly magnified in this specific type of relationship.) and trying to solve them on merely the surface level, instead of actually taking the time to see exactly WHY those reactions/perceptions/etc. happen by going backward through their thought processes each step to find the base cause and take care of that before anything else. I know a lot of times this can be initially VERY difficult and painful to do because those things are very deeply seated in their psyche, and if one or both people can't handle the pain of it, it could very well end up making the relationship impossible to be healthy, or even exist at all, but it's very much worth the effort, because taking care of all the superficial stuff is merely a temporary fix.

One other thing I should mention is that I think an INFP/INFJ relationship would work out a lot better (this is just based on the majority of both of them being Enneagram type 4 [which seems to be more common] or 9) if one is 4 and the other is 9 (Healthy 9s are a very stabilizing factor in any sort of relationship.). If they were both the same type--especially if they're both 4s--the difficulties and insecurities that each person has would reflect off each other getting worse each time, while also creating a dynamic that is unchallenging and stagnant, but if it consisted of one of each, it would be highly complimentary. Here's what The Enneagram Institute says about that, which I think is perfectly descriptive of my relationship...except for the part about reading papers. lol