INTJ: The system works. That's the problem.

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Me with my goat

I was coaching a female INTJ who had built a logical system for attracting an ENTJ partner. She filtered for people who signaled ambition, discipline, and intellectual seriousness. From inside the model, it worked. But the people showing up were not ENTJs, they were ESTJs — not the cognitive style she wanted.

When we reviewed the results together, she couldn’t see she was attracting S’s. This is an INTJ failure mode: a system functions correctly, so the mind shifts the interpretation of the outcome to protect the system.

INTJs build models, test internal coherence, and invest heavily in executing them. Once the logic checks out, the model feels settled. The assumption becomes simple: if the logic is correct, reality will eventually catch up. But the more carefully an INTJ builds a model, the easier it becomes for the model to hide that it’s wrong.

The breakdown happens at the level of milestones. INTJs choose milestones that make sense inside the model they've constructed. If those milestones don't actually measure progress toward the real outcome, the feedback loop reinforces the model instead of testing it. The system appears to work because the system itself is what's being measured — and by the time the drift is visible, it's usually been going on for a long time.

I saw this in myself when I moved to a farm and started working with goats. I got them all jumping on me and proudly told the farmer I had trained them. He laughed. Goats instinctively jump onto the highest thing they see. I hadn’t trained them at all. I had built a story around behavior that was already going to happen, measured it through the lens of my system, and called it success. The logic wasn’t wrong; it just wasn’t connected to the force actually driving the behavior.

INTJs run into the same problem with people. People have instincts, temperaments, and social dynamics that do not respond to system diagrams. A model can be perfectly coherent and still be disconnected from the forces that actually produce the outcome. Before assuming the system works, ask whether the result you got is the result you wanted — or just one your model can accommodate.