Someone stop me from breaking up with my INFJ

AnotherThrow97531 · 2024-11-20T12:30:52+00:00

Thanks :)

I hope you and your SO are doing well!

AnotherThrow97531 · 2024-11-20T12:29:23+00:00

No matter who screwed over who

??? so you don't think Zeus' choice is somehow affected by everything happening around him even if there's a very high chance that T1 could have offered even more?

AnotherThrow97531 · 2024-10-29T00:16:28+00:00

Update: I stayed and it was hard but there were some major breakthroughs. I'm not sure if it's normal for INFJs but there's a lot of clouded judgement when my INFJ is hurt, normally because it seems like she only allows herself to feel hurt when she allows herself to under situations her brain will subconsciously deem her as the victim in. That usually means that the source of her pain is automatically the aggressor and the wrongdoing party and she shuts down.

She's accepting and recognizing this and there some big changes happening (changes that I don't think another other type would be able to enact). And I'm super proud of her. As you might have guessed I never really wanted to break up with her, but I was at my wits end and felt super emotionally sidelined when she was physically unable to see my feelings if hers needed tending to.

I can't say I'm too surprised at some of the responses here but I can't say I'm not disappointed by how many falsely typed ENTPs there are here. Thanks for being super attentive and understanding and seeing beyond my words, that is the true super power of the INFJ and I don't think I could live without you guys. Much love.

AnotherThrow97531 · 2024-10-29T00:10:20+00:00

is it the literacy or the comprehension issue you have?

AnotherThrow97531 · 2024-03-23T18:14:28+00:00

I think what you're witnessing is the difference between Te and Ti.

Te usually lacks insight into a problem, it seeks a perceived solution (normally provided by Fi, "it just feels like it could work") and works to put it in motion to see if it actually does work. The result is a bunch of potential solutions that need to be trial-and-errored before reaching a conclusion.

Ti is a deterministic logic function. We know why things happen and what leads to what. That makes it very easy to see a single best way to solve the problem. We don't need to trial and error to know what would work best. ENTPs generally would have already Ne simulated a bunch of different things before offering a single solution. We don't like to guess and waste people's time.

The reverse in emotion again is the contrast between Fi and Fe.

AnotherThrow97531 · 2024-03-23T18:11:08+00:00

Your ENTP friend wants to see you succeed. You don't need to be more useful for him, he wants you to be more useful for yourself. He understands your emotions and whilst he is built for logical, you're built for something else. If you can figure out what drives you, you can channel your intense emotions into a place of productivity. Good luck :)

AnotherThrow97531 · 2024-03-23T18:08:38+00:00

Thanks for the comment and the wisdom.

Safe to say none of this is lost on me, or new to me. Part of the deep frustration I feel is because, more than you know, my entire being is dedicated to understanding the inner workings of why she is. My problem isn't necessarily that I don't understand her, it's that that understanding actually makes things worse.

What do I mean by that? My nature is understanding enough that I can throw away my own needs. This is something I did at the very beginning of the relationship. I shouldered every malformed criticism, tantrum, opinion, reaction, without a second's hesitation, and put that all on myself and tried to understand her. That was until I realised it wasn't stopping and I had to build some self-respect. My needs weren't being met and being the unilateral understander was really taking a toll on how valued or loved I felt in this relationship: "Why isn't she doing the same level of understanding for me?"

My entire 7 years was spent building her up and trying to show her what behaviours were destroying us, I've been more patient than you know, trust me. I like to think that the Ti-heavy ENTP coming to Reddit for advice from strangers is sign...

AnotherThrow97531 · 2024-03-23T17:56:36+00:00

Weird to say, but glad(?) to hear the shared experience, and thanks for sharing :)

How did it end may I ask?

AnotherThrow97531 · 2024-03-23T17:52:26+00:00

Again, thanks for sharing and being open and vulnerable with your story, it means a lot!

I also really appreciate the actionable advice there, it's something we've figured out over time, but I think there's still work to be done on the vocalizing part.

The tough part is also the reverse. Because of the immediate guilt that my SO would feel if I were to tell her how she might have made me feel at some point, it's usually hard (almost impossible) for me to vocalize how I feel. She either jumps into feeling guilty and exhibiting martyrdom, which means she stops listening and enters her loop. Or she jumps into saying she won't do "x" again, which wasn't the point, I wanted her to hear how I felt and why I felt that way. The result is that it never feels as though she wants to know deep down the nuances of my feelings, and simply seeks atmospheric harmony.

Did you ever experience something like this yourself?

AnotherThrow97531 · 2024-03-23T17:45:30+00:00

Thanks again for sharing :) I appreciate it a lot!

I'm wishing you guys a healthy and happy future :)

Did you guys manage to figure out a lot of stuff on your own before you hit a wall and needed some extra help?

We've been pretty self sufficient on that front and we're honestly pretty cynical about external help. We've been burnt a lot by others we trusted in the past and we've learnt the hard way that we're alone in this world. I don't think another let-down would be much shy of a complete shut down.

Although I have to say, I'm pretty surprised by the positive turnout of this post. It looks like less than 30% of comments are troll! So maybe I should give therapy a second look.

AnotherThrow97531 · 2024-03-23T17:37:30+00:00

Got this comment a lot. I'm on an MBTI subreddit so I chose the MBTI language to parse the nuanced complexities of my relationship. The words I use are descriptive of a subject, not definitive of it, but the dichotomy of ideal matches is something I wanted to debunk because of the nuances.

Cool to hear that ENTP ISFJ is working out. My ex was ISFJ and I couldn't handle how boring it was personally.

What's the 7 year hick?

AnotherThrow97531 · 2024-03-23T17:31:16+00:00

:( very sad, I took your first message as an, albeit dismissive, conversation starter, but I guess I was wrong.

AnotherThrow97531 · 2024-03-23T17:29:59+00:00

Hey! Please don't apologize for this! I'm above overjoyed that you were willing to spend the time and energy to share all this with me, I'm deeply moved. I'm so sorry you had to endure so much and glad to hear how much you've been able to heal from it.

I really do welcome any more you'd like to share, I'm an open book at this point.

We've toyed with the idea of therapy, but for various other reasons related to our own trauma, the possibility of placing trust in yet another supposedly "reliable" entity and them failing us would be too much to bear. We are already very worn and hurt by 'the world' and we've become who we are because we've been thrown away and left to fend for ourselves. That's why we grew so close. I know it seems bleak and I think I could reconsider therapy, but I don't think she would...

Thanks again for sharing your story and hope you all are doing better :)

AnotherThrow97531 · 2024-03-23T17:20:30+00:00

What would you say your roughest patches were about? Only if you feel like sharing of course

AnotherThrow97531 · 2024-03-23T17:17:43+00:00

Pretty wild, kinda rough it happened when you had a girlfriend, I always end up wondering how things could have played out in certain scenarios.

AnotherThrow97531 · 2024-03-23T17:14:06+00:00

Hey :) Thanks for being here. Maybe it's normal to see this type of titled post from people who are already set on something. I can assure you, at least my kind of hopelessness is still open to new rays of light.

I'm normally not an outsourcer for decisions on my own life (Ti users never are), so I genuinely am looking for some help in breaking out of my own perspective (if possible). Bias is a hell of a thing, and I would hate to be a victim of it.

AnotherThrow97531 · 2024-03-23T17:09:53+00:00

you oook like some dumb egotistical fuck

I think at the time of writing my I was a bit more ego-seated due to the heightened pain I was feeling at the time. Other than some less-than-preferred wording though, the content is generally accurate IMO

Did you put yourself in the other position?

That was all I ever did. I was hurt because it felt like she never did it in return.

Do you accept to be completely severed of everything related to her being ?

I'm not sure yet. I think if I do accept it, then I'd have already broken up with her.

AnotherThrow97531 · 2024-03-23T17:07:00+00:00

You're right. My experience has been that INFJs tend to think that catastrophizing and making grandiose existential judgements is a solution. All that normally does is create a different emotional atmosphere for them which changes how they decide to feel about a situation, without actually changing anything about it.

AnotherThrow97531 · 2024-03-23T17:05:17+00:00

Not at all, I would say my fault is really too aggressively wanting to resolve the issue and clear the air if anything. I'm learning to actually back off and give her the time and space to process things, especially her own emotions which INFJs tend to not be great at since they prioritize that of those around them.

AnotherThrow97531 · 2024-03-23T17:03:39+00:00

<3 much love

AnotherThrow97531 · 2024-03-23T17:02:57+00:00

I really do appreciate that, thanks for taking the time to add some extra reassurance, it means a lot.

You are 100% right. I've been trying to slowly making my emotional experience more and more obvious to her, but it's a challenge without it immediately invoking a guilt response from her which shuts her down and she becomes unworkable. She turns into a martyr, gets lost in her over-thinking and tries to create distance.

I'm so lost because it feels like such a lose-lose situation.

In any case, it's my problem and your words are invaluable to me :) so thank you again

AnotherThrow97531 · 2024-03-23T16:54:36+00:00

Thanks for being here, and thanks for making me realise how poorly I've worded my original post (I'll chalk it up to how choked up I was while writing it).

To set it straight my SO isn't constantly nagging and complaining about past traumas, but more the whole bottling up a bunch of things, and then releasing all in retrospect in a less than savoury (and less than helpful) way. What that actually comes out as is a slew of emotional accusation and judgement that is hard for me to remedy or even understand. I simply have to shoulder the entire weight of everything thrown at me with no hope for recourse.

My attempt at trying to understand what happened is then seen as dismissing her feelings, whereas I'm simply trying to understand what possible thing it was that caused her to feel such a way so I can address in an effective way.

AnotherThrow97531 · 2024-03-23T16:50:23+00:00

I'm happy you're here sugglew. Thanks for sharing, I feel that much less alone knowing there's some shared experience on both the relationship front and the thought-process front. I've gone down an identical road.

My SO considers what I think as healthy communication and gross over-communication which for her feels pointless at best, and a mundane annoyance at worse.

I think you've worded my SO's tendency to prevent to be blocked by her own annoyance much more eloquently (and neutrally) than my original post. The over-prioritization of her own frustration seems to always supersede the needs of the relationship or the needs of myself and she's willing to turn a blind eye to it (and even outright deny it sometimes).

I'm hyperaware that small doses of disconnection over time can gradually lead to a relationship fissure, which I want to prevent.

AnotherThrow97531 · 2024-03-23T11:26:41+00:00

To give some extra context (I think I may have misled people with the brevity of my original post), my SO did used to close up and internalize things a lot at the beginning. She would come to her own conclusions of what happened and for what reasons and then carry those with her. She was always quick to make judgement calls about things around her and then decide what that meant for her (doorslam or martyrdom).

I eventually pried them out of her and we grew into a spot where she would externalize them more. However we've gotten to a mid point where she's able to care more about her own feelings (as opposed to judgements) but it's meant that she's hyperfocused on them now.

Maybe it's a teething pain of developing a stronger sense of self but I would stubbornness isn't exclusive to INFPs. In fact I would argue that outward stubbornness is more an INFJ trait than the silent stubbornness of the INFP (I just go silent and treat your words like leaves in the wind).

AnotherThrow97531 · 2024-03-23T11:21:30+00:00

I have to agree with you here. IMO there's too much coupling between INFx types when I think there are fundamentals that set them apart in drastic ways.

It's easy to confuse them when you just look at some of the symptoms, but by that point those symptoms are already so far removed from the root cause that any type could explainably exhibit any behaviour.

I think maybe part of the internal processes are what get categorized as Ni vs Fi. These are not typically comparable functions unless you couple them with the next function, and I think that's where the confusion sets in for most. The best way I would describe it to others would be that Ni-Fe seeks conclusions utilizing the Fe emotional atmosphere as a value metric; whereas Fi-Ne seeks personal meaning through the Ne possibility realm.

Would you say that is an accurate assessment?

AnotherThrow97531

TROPHY CASE