Someone you love is eight minutes into a story about her sister’s neighbor, and you’re listening the way you listen to everything: for the part you’ll need later. But there is no part you’ll need later, which shows on your face, and the person talking to you sees your disinterest.
People you love learn which of their topics meet your standard, and they start pre-screening themselves. You experience this as the conversations finally getting good. They experience it as auditioning. You think you’re filtering topics. Everyone around you knows you’re filtering people. And life starts to feel like an Edward Hopper painting, where proximity never becomes meaningful.
When someone you love was going through the worst stretch of her life, you were magnificent. Refills, referrals, all the best specialist. Ask anyone: you handled it. What she needed was you scared, next to her, doing nothing useful. She got a project manager. She still tells people how much you did. She’s just being kind, and you can’t tell.
You can also be the person who won’t shut up. You think you’ve checked that the person is interested. “Am I boring you?” is a phrase you learned to ask because you know how deep you get into whatever you know. The person says they want to listen because they care, not because they’re interested. But you can’t listen just because you care, so you don’t recognize when someone else is doing it for you.
So you’re sabotaging the relationship on two sides: not being a listener for them, and using up their listening patience for yourself. All under the guise of efficient, take-action conversations. You want me to get to the end now, where I tell you a solution.
But I’m doing intimacy. Or at least I’m trying. And that is time that produces nothing, spent with someone, on purpose — the exact thing you spend your whole life avoiding.
None of this is news to you. I’m telling it to you for me. I’ve never worked with an INTJ I didn’t love, and I’ve never known how to keep the relationship once the work ended. It’s disappointing to realize that as soon as I’m no longer useful, the INTJ stops being fun and interesting and starts impersonating a robot.
No one will tell you this because your people-sorting system already makes them careful. So I’m telling you before you decide I’m no longer useful either.
The INTJ group is where I make you sit in a conversation with no deliverable. The next meeting is Thursday, Sept. 10 at 5pm ET.
Penelope, as you have mentioned, INTJs already know this. However, I don't really see you, as an ENTJ, understanding the INTJ's perspective. I'm not an INTJ, I'm an INFJ. I don't find INTJs boring, however, I find them fascinating!
I suspect that INTJs relate to ENTJs in much the same way that I relate to ENFJs as an Assertive INFJ. I find myself drawn to them. Their positive attitude feeds my soul. I like answering their questions, as well.
I suspect that an ENTJ's focus on results is magnetic to INTJs. I suspect that they enjoy helping you succeed -- but they also see your eyes glaze over the same way I see an ENFJ's eyes glaze over when my answer goes deeper than they wanted.
My Substack is a place for INFJs and INTJs to gather and have deep discussions about our similarities and differences. We are the two rarest personality types and the only two personality types with Introverted Intuition -- subconscious systems thinking -- as our Primary Cognitive Function. bobcascaddan.substack.com
I can’t imagine spending the energy to stay aware of all the perspectives you described. I find it easier to get to know people in such a way that I can help them understand my neurodivergence so that we both can be authentic and non-performative. The mental gymnastics your approach requires sucks the intimacy out of the conversation.