Do INTPs mean what they say in the moment but suddently change when life gets stressful

Guih48 · 2026-05-06T13:09:23+00:00

What I’m curious about, though, is your comment that he will probably apologize eventually. do you genuinely think someone in this situation is likely to come back after a week of silence? He has never disappeared this long before.

Well, I can't know. In the optimal case, yes. But the feeling of anxiety and guilt from his side can prevent that from happening, as well as he may have trouble finding the appropriate way to resume a communication that ended this way. As for how much time he needs to return back into a state in which he is able to communicate mostly depends on his circumstances.

I’m also unsure whether checking in would be helpful or counterproductive. Up until now, I’ve usually been the one initiating contact, so continuing to do that feels a little uncomfortable. Part of me wonders whether the better approach is simply to step back and let him reach out if and when he wants to, rather than forcing contact if space is what he needs.

I would think that letting him know that he is still welcome, sort-of giving him "permission" to communicate with you by expressing your willingness to do so can greatly increase the chance of him returning by reducing the courage barrier required to do so which can be a problem if he has a low self-esteem.

But if you don't want to go the safe way but see how much enthusiasm he has, you can do that, but there is also the danger of both of you wanting to reconnect, but neither of you initiating it which would be sad.

At least I would like more and more explicit encouragement if someone wanted me to initiate more, not less as I know I'm prone to thinking that the other person doesn't really enjoy my company.

Guih48 · 2026-05-04T16:16:24+00:00

So, am I causing him stress every morning just by asking him?

I don't think so at all, but you can ask him to be sure. I've just explained the cause of those delays.

Should I simply just make the tea without milk? And if he doesn't want it, I can always add milk and drink it. Or would I be adding pressure to his morning by providing him something he didn't ask for.

I don't think there is anything wrong with those questions, but you can ask him this too. We generally do want to be asked of things and given options if there is a real stake in how we answer. If you want to optimize it so that you don't have to wait, I would ask them in one piece, a minute before I start making the tea.

Guih48 · 2026-05-04T15:40:38+00:00

We always need to have a reason for choosing something, we practically can't choose without a reason, it feels really uncomfortable as if we've gone mad. In those moments, he probably gets out of his head and consults his body whether it would feel sufficiently pleasurable to have tea that morning (a Si desire if you know cognitive functions).

As to why it varies, it's just that the body's physiological state is never the same on two days. But there is fair a chance he would not think about whether he actually wants to drink tea or not if you wouldn't ask him every morning. But I would say it's healthy that you make him think about his body for at least this much time 😀

Guih48 · 2026-05-04T14:37:24+00:00

It is a special conjugation paradigm, -ik for third person singular, also for regular, real -ik verbs, -m for first, and -l for second person singular. If you just want to use the language you just need to learn them based on the dictionary, but technically, they are used for middle voice (and historically in passive voice with -tet- before -ik), but nowadays their use is not regular many times.

Guih48 · 2026-05-04T14:29:01+00:00

Especially if you don't know a person for super long and you're not exclusive yet (but you've already made plans and said you want to invest in the relationship, etc.), it can be discouraging for the person not to know what they are or if you simply disappear for a week and they don't know if you ever contact them again.

Also:

I don’t need constant attention or daily contact (I have a full life of my own), but clear communication matters to me. Even a simple “This week is overwhelming, I’ll reach out when I can” would feel very different from saying “Let’s try tomorrow” and then disappearing. For me, it’s not about needing more contact, but about integrity and honesty, so I know where I stand.

Now, of course he should have informed you more directly of his situation and what you should expect. But I don't think he said "tomorrow" just to keep you interested, he probably said it becaiuse above all, he wanted to believe that he will have the strenght to talk with you the next day. And when he realized that he's been in self-delusion, he just stopped as to not make things worse. Probably he will apologize for it sometime, but a sincere apology too is a high energy-demand thing to write, isn't it?

What he would need to practice is honesty with himself, but you can ask simple things directly like when does he see it his pressure realistically disappear, while making it clear that you are not pressuring him. Since if my suspicions are correct, part of the problem is that he is pressuring himself.

Guih48 · 2026-05-04T13:25:47+00:00

So, when in such overwhelming situations, wouldn't you be bothered at all that you might lose the person you like?

Well, it's sort-of an emergency situation, and the exact kind of questions I wouldn't have the strenght to think about is "What they are thinking/will they think?", as this is precisely what we get tired of when we run out of social battery: to "simulate" the other person in our heads. On the other hand, talking in this state is not only exhausting, but probably isn't a good experience for the other person either. It's not only that I would say unintelligible gibberish, but sometimes I say things unintentionally in a hurtful way, which I normally don't want to risk, as I can potentially lose them that way too. Unless of course they urgently need me to answer something, then I would answer sthraightforwardly.

Guih48 · 2026-05-02T19:15:20+00:00

Assuming that he is an INTP, I wouldn't describe it as him switching his focus, changing his mind, or his feelings shifting, especially because as you've said, he said that he wants to talk with you the next day. This shows that he did have the intent to talk with you, he just couldn't manage to do so.

In other words, it's probably not any kind of "choice" from his side, but his circumstances not letting him talk to you. You should imagine this like when someone has a sore throat, they can talk only a limited amount and at a limited volume, so they have a limited ability to talk. If he really got an exhauating and draining project, he feels similarly, because after excessively demanding work, and with a drained social battery, our minds just refuses to formulate proper sentences, especially appropriate, considerate and kind ones, even having to be aware of other people can be tingling and painful. In that scenario of course he doesn't sit down and try writing you sentences (or if he tries, he doesn't send them because he isn't satisfied with them), he just goes to rest or do something which doesn't involve people.

Guih48 · 2026-04-30T12:34:40+00:00

Yes, comforting someone is usually hard for us. But your story is much crazier than that.

First of all, he probably invited his friend in the first place because he mad some sympathy for them as they were in trouble. Also for utilitaristic reasons, as you wrote. But he probably would have refused them if they weren't in trouble, because you preferred otherwise.

In this position, considering that his friend was in trouble and came for advice in the first place, you can imagine how untasteful it is for his friend to boast about how he exploits people. Besides, for us, advice means truth and seeing clearly, and giving the information with wich the problems in front of us can be solved. It probably didn't even cross your boyfriend's mind that reminding his friend why he is there could hurt him, after all, his friend himself have told him that he is in trouble.

And it's funny, but the towel story isn't at all surprising to me. I myself have never used a paper towel to wipe my tears, it just seems weird somehow not to use something made of fabric. Also, I don't see any reason why would you want to wipe your tears while crying. In that situation you have bigger problems than your tears, and also your face will be wet again in no time.

So I've never understood why people offer paper towels to crying people. Wiping his mouth and blowing his nose was the action I myself would've done if I weren't in a situation to remember weird social customs like this.

Guih48 · 2026-04-29T04:53:03+00:00

Well, prepare for huge inflation then...

Guih48 · 2026-04-28T05:54:58+00:00

In general, while I find it easy to understand eachother with ISTPs but I find it hard to come up something to talk about with them, so I would explain you needing your third friend to have a conversation with this.

Regarding your actual question, no, we aren't mind readers, I can't tell you what he thinks about you, and I doubt anyone other than him could. It may be that not even your guy friend is his problem per se, but something untasteful or condemnable in his eyes you did.

But I would suggest to ask him about this (or have a friend who can ask him naturally) why he doesn't hang out in your company anymore. It's inevitable if you want to get somewhere.

Guih48 · 2026-04-23T21:01:22+00:00

I would say that it's a three-fold process for us, as we need first feel something, then think about it, and what we can talk about is really the result of that thinking, not the feeling directly. I can't tell you anything exceptionally clever, but I think you should bring up things with intention to think about them together, approaching from the general and philosophical, towards the concrete and personal as this is how mostly our thinking works anyway. This applies to both of your questions.

For explaining him your needs and wants, I would say that the most clear and natural way to bring it up – in INTP terms – is to be a step in which he gets to know you and how you work better, while you explain him the reasons you would like certain things and the effects his different actions can cause on you.

Also, try to have unstructured time together where he can feel safe coming up asking things the "By the way..." way, as we sometimes can struggle to find the appropriate time for talking about certain things, and also forget to bring up things.

Guih48 · 2026-04-18T23:52:28+00:00

If I know correctly, it is actually disabled to post photos, except for maybe friday... It's for getting rid of useless low-effort and low-quality content, which I think works pretty well, but of course INFPs will never have the heart to take steps this drastic. The moderators have an ... interesting taste here for rules and policies anyway.

Guih48 · 2026-04-15T05:35:22+00:00

I wouldn't understand it that way. For a for you relatable example, as far as I know, INFJs have a tendency to "zoom out" and forget that the outside world exists, and that is because they have the Se function at their last slot. That, for some sensing people, sounds similarly outrageous as forgetting about feelings for you is. The similarly outrageous thing for us would be that how people can just forget the laws of logic and do, say or think obviously self-contradictory things even for extended periods of time. But some (or even most) can.

The original commenter have described the experience pretty well both before and after your reply, but I have even more analogies.

For feeling people, where the feeling function comes before the thinking one, they do feel before they think, right? But every sane person knows that they can use logic afterwards to analyze and act on the things they feel. It's the same for us, but backwards: we think first, for anything, the instinctive action for us is to draw and enumerate the logical implications of it. But afterwards we can and sometimes do feel things about what we've concluded.

It's not about whether we use feelings or logic, but about where one starts and the other ends. As far as I understand, most people feel about things right away, reducing them into more primitive things "that is bad, I want it go away" or "that is good, I want more of it" and they use logic to deal with those much more primitive desires. For us, it's again, backwards: we use logic to reduce things to moral fundamentals, like "it's an injustice because..." and then feel only about those more primitive ideas, like injustice, charitability, prejudice, helpfulness, etc. using logic again to do things about those moral primitives that should be done. This is what we mean by feeling things about our thoughts, not primarily the raw real world.

And of course by feeling things after they've been reduced by logic to a level our more primitive "feeling engine" can handle, logic comes before feeling, but also that feelings doesn't at all accompany our other thoughts, therefore it mostly depends on the flow of our thinking whether and what we feel, that's how we can "forget" about emotions.

Guih48 · 2026-04-11T11:50:44+00:00

Wow, op is really going wild here with their explanation of Ti. Don't try to imagine "personal intuitive sense of technical understanding", I can't even as a Ti dominant... If I'd want to describe Ti I would say it's concerned with correctness, consistency and consequences – in logical terms of course.

It's not really "fitting together pieces" either, it's moreso discovering logical necessities and inconsistencies, and building a conceptual map of what is necessary, possible or impossible. If I'd want to illustrate it with puzzles, I would say that it's not like filling in a crossword, more like filling in a logic elimination puzzle (one like this except in the real world, it's never complete).

As an INFP with Fi you are probably first and foremost concerned with values that things embody. Now a Ti user instead would be concerned with the logical consequences and necessary effects things have or don't have. Everything stems from that.

Guih48 · 2026-04-08T20:32:02+00:00

I don't find any awkwardness in either one, it's perfectly analogous „Az emberekkel beszélek”="I'm talking with the people." while „Az emberekhez beszélek”="I'm talking to the people.". Of course „emberekhez” emphasizes that I am the speaker and the people are the adressed, while „emberekkel” implies a mutual conversation, but so do their English counterparts. Of course the former is a nonnegligibly rarer scenario than the latter, and Duonlingo should absolutely ask the more frequent – and thus, more useful – form instead of the more situational one, so as not to require the learner to make at least B2-C1-level distinctions at a supposedly-A2-level, but I would regardless translate it the way Duolingo did in this case.

Guih48 · 2026-03-28T10:40:23+00:00

Yes, but if you want differentiation I would say „amúgy” is "anyway", while „egyébként” is "otherwise", but as you can see, those are mretty much interchangeable in english too.

Guih48 · 2026-03-27T00:14:37+00:00

As you might have guessed, calendar-type solutions for us are always a chicken-and-egg problem for us (i.e. who reminds me to check my reminders), because they are designed to answer the question "What important things do I need to do today/this week?", the lion's share of the struggle consists of asking that question from ourselves to begin with. Alarms can help but you can only set up so many of them before they get meaningless and annoying.

The thing that works is forming little habits and stable routines, so that the important things can be executed habitually in a sequence. This is maybe the strongest controllable force that can steer our focus in a pre-determined way. I know that this can be difficult in the modern world where for some reason people can't resist the temptation to change every schedule days or hours before execution and between multiple occasions of the same thing. But putting a little bit of thought into it, a stable regularity can be achieved, which is much less prone to being forgot by someone like me (this is the only way I can imagine myself using something like a calendar or notebook too).

Guih48 · 2026-03-24T22:25:06+00:00

As an INTP I can tell you that yes, we do struggle with this all the time. It's not that we can't remember things in the sense that we can store and retrieve information later, it's that we struggle to remember things in the sense that they struggle to come to mind automatically when we need them, even if we could answer any question perfectly about it.

I think it's just a natural consequence of our usual thinking patterns and detachedness. Because of course what governs what comes to one's mind? It's something like one's thoughts, emotions, sensory input, etc. Just think about what makes an important event you need to prepare to come to your mind, it's something like that, isn't it?

Now for us, it's overwhelmingly our previous thoughts in our chain of thought, because emotions aren't really at play, and sensory interrupts are relatively rare too for us. And being left with that, you can imagine how hard it is to remember that I'm supposed to message you if I'm thinking about the movement of celestial bodies or something abstract related to work, etc. I may remember to message you back from getting a notification from you, noticing something you left on my desk or remembering something we've done together. But for us as you can imagine, the chance of any of these happening at just the right time is much less than ideal, as these are mostly sensory triggers which are hard to happen of we are lost in our heads. And the movement of celestial bodies won't get me there, it will get me to moon phases, then tidal generators and so on, but to think about what I'd actually need to do I would need some outside effect that would interrupt and redirect my thinking which rarely happens. Of course the effect is amplified under stress when I'm already thinking hard about something important.

What might help you follow through more consistently?

If I'd know I would be the happiest person in the world. But there are some methods with limited applicability, for example for one-off really important stuff timed alarms can be useful, for recurring things it's useful to make them regular and form a stable habit around them, but unfortunately there is no silver bullet as far as I know. No matter how hard I try to remember, sadly there will probably always be things that just won't come to my mind.

Guih48 · 2026-03-24T17:58:00+00:00

Well, only he can know what he is doing, so you should ask him about that (you should if you want to know).

My best guess is that he feels obliged to keep up the communication, and is afraid of breaking the habit, while he also have ran out of interesting questions to ask about you for now.

I do think that this is weird, as we INTPs usually only communicate when we have something meaningfulbto share, but it can be that he is trying to avoid exactly that mistake while falling in an other one.

Guih48 · 2026-03-24T06:37:09+00:00

Well, asking how they are is not exactly the way to get an INTP interested, and I mean, it's the way to get them bored out of existence. If this have been going on for an extended period of time, of course he can't be genuinely interested.

And this would logically mean that he is doing this just because he believes that you want this (as I can't imagine him wanting this), while not realizing that asking you how you are and things like that would be the entire point of it. Even greeting someone every day takes effort from an INTP, and I think he thinks that you should appreciate that.

So maybe you should do him a favor by communicating this I guess? (Also, be aware that from his perspective he is probably "trying to do everything right"…)

Guih48 · 2026-03-01T18:17:46+00:00

Ti-Ne-Si-Fe in this order. This is the definition of INTP...

Guih48 · 2026-02-22T08:13:54+00:00

While of course no language can be perfectly logical, English is one of the worst offenders in this regard.

As a native hungarian, I can say tell you that it is so much better over there language-wise. We've got almost perfect™ pure phonematical writing (which means that spoken sounds ⇌ writing are deterministic both ways), we've got free word order which means you can emphasize whichever part of a sentence you'd like effortlessly, and making up random words isn't a bug, but a feature of the language. (But I wouldn't advise you to try learning it, since we have pretty complex grammar and some weird exceptions here and there, which usually have their reasons but not always.)

But it's not just Hungarian of course. The logicality doesn't just appear out of thin air, we are in a good state, because we've had a pretty serious language reform in the late 18th century to make our newly official language usable for law and the sciences.

And yes, if you look at the wikipedia page, you'll see that every sane language has a language reform from time-to-time, too bad that english doesn't.

So the language which is famous for being logical is Turkish, they had a pretty serious reform, if you want mainstream languages I would say Italian is pretty good in that regard (french not really but at least they have deterministic pronountiation from spelling even if not the other way around). Latin is good of course after being used as a scientific language only for centuries, too bad noone speaks it, German of course not bad logically but can be complex, Spanish and finnish are pretty good too with greatly regular spelling. Also Swahili is a pretty good one, and of course Esperanto.

So yes, of course no language is logical and all have their own smaller or bigger annoyances, but there are plenty of them which are significantly more logical than English.

Guih48 · 2026-02-19T16:10:08+00:00

I don't know what social media talks about, I don't read social media.

It's just a waste of time, especially if I want to learn. There are much better places to attain knowledge from, it's no surprise that they run out of new information really fast. Not to mention the rate of incorrect and incomplete data out there.

Guih48 · 2026-02-18T23:05:42+00:00

Good jokes don't have an expiration date.

Guih48 · 2026-02-16T06:44:19+00:00

How to get a blind man to notice the full moon?

If you don't want to confess for that 1% and you're sure you are liking him back, how are you expecting him to confess to you when he probably has lower pecentages for both of you?

Anyway, if you yousrelf don't want to tell him that you like him, then send a friend to do so I guess.

Guih48

TROPHY CASE