I was just wondering about something with INFJs and friendships.
All my life I seem to have had an interesting friendship continuum. For instance, I have had four best friends in my life- all guys, and interestingly, all romantic interests at some point or another- and then I seem to have a huge gap between my best friends and those I deem to be merely acquaintances. There are very very few people that I would put somewhere between "acquaintance" and "best friend". I can count two of them, and I know a LOT of people because I used to participate in speech and debate. These two are also guys; one of them was a good friend of mine in childhood but due to lack of contact has slid almost down to acquaintance level (but not quite) and the other one is a friend who is turning into a good friend/possible housemate.
I've been to schools outside of my own country and know people from other countries. They were very small schools, where the opportunity to make good friends was very high, but I never seemed to click with anybody. So while I know a lot of people I have very few people I would say are friends.
Anyway of these four gents, the only one that's still on the "best friend" list is my husband. One of them is my late fiance (the one who died the night of our wedding rehearsal) and the other two were pseudo relationships that weren't going to work out. I still talk to one frequently, and the other has almost dropped out of my contacts. I try to talk to him but he doesn't get online much so it doesn't end up happening.
Perhaps my standards of who I consider to be a friend are too high. For instance, the person needs to know about a disorder I have that pretty much altered my personality because of ways I had to cope with it. (I have trichotillomania; if you're interested look it up. At any rate I used to be an active, bubbly girl but when I lost my hair I had to stop going to swim parties, playing volleyball with others, etc. or else my wig would get knocked off, as I discovered the hard way.)
At any rate, a person who is on my Friends list needs to a) know I have the disorder, b) accept me even though I have it, and c) find some other activities to do that won't risk me getting scalped. Most people end up stopping somewhere before A: they have figured out I wear a wig but because of that they don't seem to want ME for a friend. If I do somehow merit an invite to a party it's usually something like a beach party (I've had a wig float out to sea before; that stopped me going to the beach) or volleyball (which ended up equally as disastrous) or something else. The people who end up on my best friends list are actually people who have a) seen me without the wig, either on accident or I allowed them to and they were very supportive, AND b) helped get attention away from me during an "accident" while I hid to put it back on.
At any rate, here's the question: Does anyone else here have a huge gap between people on their "acquaintance" list and people on their "best friend" list? What is your reason why? Is it an INFJ thing, or is it a natural response to something that happened in your life?
All my life I seem to have had an interesting friendship continuum. For instance, I have had four best friends in my life- all guys, and interestingly, all romantic interests at some point or another- and then I seem to have a huge gap between my best friends and those I deem to be merely acquaintances. There are very very few people that I would put somewhere between "acquaintance" and "best friend". I can count two of them, and I know a LOT of people because I used to participate in speech and debate. These two are also guys; one of them was a good friend of mine in childhood but due to lack of contact has slid almost down to acquaintance level (but not quite) and the other one is a friend who is turning into a good friend/possible housemate.
I've been to schools outside of my own country and know people from other countries. They were very small schools, where the opportunity to make good friends was very high, but I never seemed to click with anybody. So while I know a lot of people I have very few people I would say are friends.
Anyway of these four gents, the only one that's still on the "best friend" list is my husband. One of them is my late fiance (the one who died the night of our wedding rehearsal) and the other two were pseudo relationships that weren't going to work out. I still talk to one frequently, and the other has almost dropped out of my contacts. I try to talk to him but he doesn't get online much so it doesn't end up happening.
Perhaps my standards of who I consider to be a friend are too high. For instance, the person needs to know about a disorder I have that pretty much altered my personality because of ways I had to cope with it. (I have trichotillomania; if you're interested look it up. At any rate I used to be an active, bubbly girl but when I lost my hair I had to stop going to swim parties, playing volleyball with others, etc. or else my wig would get knocked off, as I discovered the hard way.)
At any rate, a person who is on my Friends list needs to a) know I have the disorder, b) accept me even though I have it, and c) find some other activities to do that won't risk me getting scalped. Most people end up stopping somewhere before A: they have figured out I wear a wig but because of that they don't seem to want ME for a friend. If I do somehow merit an invite to a party it's usually something like a beach party (I've had a wig float out to sea before; that stopped me going to the beach) or volleyball (which ended up equally as disastrous) or something else. The people who end up on my best friends list are actually people who have a) seen me without the wig, either on accident or I allowed them to and they were very supportive, AND b) helped get attention away from me during an "accident" while I hid to put it back on.
At any rate, here's the question: Does anyone else here have a huge gap between people on their "acquaintance" list and people on their "best friend" list? What is your reason why? Is it an INFJ thing, or is it a natural response to something that happened in your life?
