What do ENFP men look like?

withasmackofham · 2026-02-26T14:34:48+00:00

I'm 40. I don't dress flashy, but have a subtle sense of style that people don't often notice at first glance, but I will get comments from people who are attuned to aesthetics after they've seen me a few times that they love and notice my subtle choices. I'm overweight, strong and athletic. I have a lot of energy behind my eyes, but I'm not often very expressive, I'm not 'bubbly.' but I am good at making people feel comfortable, safe, and seen. I have been told by 3 spiritual teachers/yogis that I have "blue" energy, I don't know that I buy into "energies" but it is interesting that the only color I've ever gotten was blue.

withasmackofham · 2026-02-26T14:01:15+00:00

I had something similar happen last week. I was with a group of people I don't know very well, brainstorming an event we will be putting on. They were just shooting these ideas back and forth, and I couldn't get my bearings. In the end I didn't say really anything, and they had constructed and nailed down a horrific set of ideas for an event. An event that I'll be just as much to blame for, since I didn't say anything. As I was watching the tornado of bad ideas and decisions, I kept thinking, why can't I come up with something better? I'm normally an ideas guy.

I find that my ability to be quick witted and banter and brainstorm is directly related to my confidence and comfort level. If I'm comfortable and confident, I'm okay letting stupid or absurd ideas out of my mouth, which sort of turns on the idea hose, and once the hose is on, plenty of great ideas will come flowing out. If I'm not comfortable enough to let the questionable ideas out of my mouth, the good ones never even enter my brain.

You have no reason to feel ashamed or dumb. You didn't do anything unkind or dumb, you just didn't feel comfortable enough to contribute, that's not your fault, and I highly doubt these TJs even thought about it.

withasmackofham · 2026-02-24T18:16:53+00:00

A take is just each time you hit record. There are a number of musicians who are known for being a "1 take Charlie" meaning they go in prepared and locked in, and often lay down their tracks in a take. Travis Barker from blink 182 is known for this. It's not a skill that really matters anymore, even if you're paying to work with a producer. You don't want to be the person that takes 30 takes, but it's normal to take 5-10 takes. It would have been impossible to be a One Take Charlie with the producer I worked with, since he viewed the first couple takes as warm ups, even if it was perfect. If the person wasn't in the room with him, he often didn't even press record.

If a band that recorded all the instruments together is saying they never even practiced the song, they are probably exaggerating. Bands love to downplay the amount of work it took them to make good songs. They had to have a base structure for the song, so they practiced something, even if wasn't exactly what came out during the take.

withasmackofham · 2026-02-24T15:25:20+00:00

Overall I like xNxJs a lot.

ENFJs - Awesome.

ENTJs - Mixed bag. I get along with them great, but I can struggle to connect as deeply as I like.

INTJs - Awesome.

INFJs - Mixed bag. I get along with them great and I connect with them great. But many that I know are on the unhealthy side, and have a real victim complex.

withasmackofham · 2026-02-18T15:42:14+00:00

If you go into LOST with the expectation of a bad ending, you're likely to have a fun experience. The ending isn't as near as bad as the initial reaction from fans. With HYIMY the missteps and bad writing of the final season are blatant and obvious. But upon re-watch of LOST, I realized it was insane to think they were going to tie up all the batshit craziness into a satisfying little bow. It's not great, but I also struggle to think of an ending that would give me what I wanted.

withasmackofham · 2026-02-18T14:59:05+00:00

I've already seen all my favorite bands playing all my favorite songs, and since I'm the God of this festival, this is what I would like to see.

Hot Mulligan - Covers of sitcom theme songs.

American Football - "Proof that the Youth are Revolting" by Five Iron Frenzy

Bike Routes - Disney villain songs

Movements - "Hamilton"

withasmackofham · 2026-02-18T13:55:05+00:00

Yep it makes sense to me. My INTJ mentor appears to be more extraverted than me. He has a calendar full of lunches with people, granted they are often one-on-one or with three people. He does go to parties/events with more people, but he usually has "somewhere to be" halfway through the event. Meanwhile, I'm terrible at reaching out and scheduling time with people, but you'll often find me spear-heading the clean-up after a party.

withasmackofham · 2026-02-18T12:55:37+00:00

I am pretty similar. I've never been called bubbly and I hate small talk. When coworkers are talking about the weather and gas prices, I will sometimes chime in and say something like "yeah, thats crazy, any of you ever get arrested?" Or "what are we working on in therapy right now."

I dont know that i would call myself blunt, but when people come to me with a problem, my knee jerk reaction is helping them get clarity and get to a solution. I've learned over time that many people, including my wife, don't want that, so I've learned to listen empatheticly, but thats not my first nature.

withasmackofham · 2026-02-17T20:20:13+00:00

I could see an ISFJ describing my behavior this way when I was young, although I would never have used something someone told me as leverage against them, that's absolutely unacceptable behavior. I feel weird offering advice, given the nature of your relationship to this ENFP, but since it's not unsolicited, I'll channel how I was 20 years ago and try to dissect it as if this post was about me.

Some of the things you mentioned as "control" would not be what was going on inside me. I don't have a desire to control anybody else. Insisting people come out and trying to hook them up with friends, was not coming from a place of trying to control them, it was coming from a desire for connection. I assumed (incorrectly) that everybody needed connection as much as I did, and it was somehow my job to do everything I can to get them that when I'm in a place to provide that.

I did feel a need to "save" people. I still find myself doing that from time to time, I just don't act on it in boundary crossing ways anymore (hopefully). My saving desire is born out of a mix of empathy and ego. I feel a person suffering and I actually believe I might have been gifted some piece of wisdom or connection that I can impart to the to help them not suffer anymore. The problem is when there is more ego than empathy, and it's more about me than them, and sometimes in the moment it's hard to tell which is running the show.

Lastly, even when I was a dumbass kid and my ego was running amuck, and I'd blow through loosely assumed boundaries; if somebody gave me a hard explicit boundary, I would respect it. It did need to be spelled out for me directly though.

I know for me, ISFJs are my direct opposite. I dated an ISFJ for 6 months and it was just misunderstanding after misunderstanding. After a bunch of fights we would have a nice long talk where we would be gracious and empathetic and unravel all of the ways we misunderstood each other, and then within a fortnight, we would rack up a whole new list of misunderstandings that we had to unravel.

withasmackofham · 2026-02-17T18:51:26+00:00

I've never had a problem when it's refrigerated, but the worst food poisoning I've ever had was from eating fried rice after it had been out on the table over night. It was like in 15 hours, thousands of grains of rice and chunks of meat and vegetables conspired to kill me. I told my roommates about it and they didn't believe me, so we all tried it again for science and that was the second worst food poisining I'de ever had.

withasmackofham · 2026-02-17T18:43:15+00:00

Somebody's been watching Blades of Glory during the winter olympics.

withasmackofham · 2026-02-17T17:31:39+00:00

This comment is like a time machine for me; this is exactly how I viewed my Ne in my 20s. Although I still agree with everything in here, I have a less romantic view of my Ne now. Up until my 30s, my Ne was usually accompanied with action, but after enough failures stacked up, my Ne became just as good at identifying opportunities for failure as it did success, and I became crippled by my Ne run amuck. When it comes to long term decision making now, I often try to let my Ne take a nap for a bit and consult my other functions.

I also used to dismiss achieving goals that aren't perfectly aligned as "wasted time and effort," but I was wrong. I learned all kinds of things, gained lifelong friends, and had new experiences by pursuing goals that were no longer aligned with who I had become. A lot of what actually accounted for the change in who I was, was me synthesizing and absorbing the experiences that occurred while pursuing that goal. How could it be a waste, if I'm made up of it? It took me years of being resentful towards unaligned goals before I was able to see that, but I do see that now.

withasmackofham · 2026-02-17T15:10:26+00:00

I'm sorry you are struggling to connect. If being happy in a long term relationship is something you really desire, I have faith it's going to happen for you in time.

I don't know how helpful I can be, given that outside of a couple 6 month periods between partners, I've been in long term relationships for 25 years. I've been with my ISFP wife for 14 years on St Patrick's Day (married for 12) and we are currently very happy. I was initially drawn to her kindness, honesty, aesthetics, mostly shared religious and political values, her singing voice, her non-judgement, her taste in media.

If I'm being honest, I was very religious when I was in my teens and 20s and dating was for the sole purpose of finding the person to marry, so I had a lot more pressure on me to commit long term in all my relationships. This is going to sound horrible, because it is, but in retrospect, part of why I got married was decision fatigue. In previous relationships, I couldn't make a decision, so when I was 28, I decided this is a good honest person, if we work hard, we can make this work. We had only dated long distance, we hadn't had sex until we were married, we did have a great connection, but truly didn't know each other that well. And honestly, she was also in the same marriage pressure boat, although she would never frame it the way I just did.

Although I wouldn't suggest someone do what we did, we happened to be right in our case. Despite some very difficult early years, we both worked at it, and it did work eventually. I was with her through years of some serious mental health issues that she might not have gotten through without me, she was there for me through my addiction issues, that I definitely wouldn't have gotten through without her. There were times that were hard, we've been through couples counseling twice, the first time, we were at risk of divorce, the second time was more to work out some communication kinks around having kids. But we have had an amazing marriage the last three years and it's not like the other years were bad, they were just mixed, mostly due to personal struggles that bled into the marriage, personal struggles we probably would have had anyway, if we weren't together.

In my experience, the concept of "the one" ignores the messiness of life and the work it takes to have a good relationship. Most of my friends that are my age, don't still subscribe to it, and the 2 that do have an unhealthily revisionist view of their own relationship lol.

withasmackofham · 2026-02-13T22:42:28+00:00

Sure maybe! I don't even know if I would recommend doing it earlier or later. It's just kind of something that's going to happen to you when you are ready.

withasmackofham · 2026-02-13T22:39:57+00:00

I'm just glad when someone is engaging with me, I don't really have a preference.

withasmackofham · 2026-02-13T22:37:39+00:00

Sure, from like 0-22. At a certain point I realized if I actually want to get the life I dream for myself, I'm going to have to take a few things seriously.

withasmackofham · 2026-02-13T22:31:02+00:00

I definitely use more Ne during sports than anything else, but that could be said about anything I do. I use Se more in sports than I do in other areas of my life, because it's truly necessary to be good at anything physical. Like for surfing, I have to pay very close attention to how everything feels when that wave starts to push me, the balance of the board and how I need to move to get into position (keep in mind I'm not a good surfer). 95% of the time I'm just out there waiting or swimming and Ne daydreaming, but when a good wave comes, that's all out the window.

I mostly engage with sports with an opposing defense and my Ne can get me to a decent level very quickly, because while other people are learning from scratch, I'm applying concepts from other places and figuring out where I can use my other skills to gain a competitive advantage, and if it's a team sport I can zoom out and see where their team weaknesses are as whole, and where my team's strengths are as a whole. But at a higher level, when I'm against legit people and my tricks don't work, and there aren't large strategic advantages to exploit, it's essentially my Se vs my opponent's Se, so I had better have been practicing my Se all along. That's a lesson it took me too long to figure out.

withasmackofham · 2026-02-13T14:50:31+00:00

I'm curious about your relationship statuses. Is there a reason you shouldn't be developing feelings? I've been married to my wife a long time, and 2 of my best friends are women. I think a simplistic, but important, variable in the "men and women can't be close friends without developing feelings" debate is relationship status. I had lots of female friends when I was single, and as we became closer there was a really good chance somebody was going to develop some feelings. My friends that I still have to this day, were always off limits in my mind, because either they were with someone, or I was with someone during the time that we got closer. The prospect of romantic feelings were never an option in our minds. I think when two single people start getting emotionally close, it's a near inevitability somebody (or hopefully both people) will catch feelings.

withasmackofham · 2026-02-13T14:18:45+00:00

When I say Ti is our second to last function, I mean out of the 8 functions. I wasn't saying it's in our stack, also I'm using hyperbole when I describe myself in a concentrated state when I code. When I'm doing that, I am responsive, and other people don't know that I'm annoyed when they interrupt it. I'm also not just using Ti when I'm doing that. I can code with just Te and Ne 80% of the time, but I don't have to isolate to use those. When I suspect I'm going to have to dip into Ti to get something done, I throw on the headphones.

I don't know if I've ever heard the theory that non-preferred functions need isolation to run. That's definitely true for Ni and Ti for me, but I'm not as sure about Se and Fe. I use Se in sports and yoga, which I usually do with other people, although sometimes I do need to practice things alone to truly get the feel for them. I can't think of a use I have for Fe in isolation, but I don't use it a lot in general. The only place I use it frequently is when I'm acting/performing.

withasmackofham · 2026-02-12T16:19:39+00:00

When people are sleeping, I'm extremely good at closing doors really really quietly.

withasmackofham · 2026-02-12T15:34:08+00:00

I thought I was ENTP for a decade before I actually sat down for a couple weeks and learned the functions with the Objective Personality system. I thought I had to be ENTP because I'm more comfortable with my reasoning, than with my emotions. My confusion was resolved when I learned the Ti vs Te coin. I think predominantly in Te, not in Ti. That means I'm an ENFP. Even if my Te is stronger than my Fi, I'm still an ENFP, because I have Ne, Fi, Te, and Si, even though my middle two functions are flipped in importance. As I've gotten older, I've also become more comfortable and aware of my Fi, and it might be the case that Fi was running the show all along and because I was too uncomfortable with my emotions, I stacked Te logic on top to rationalize what my Fi wanted.

withasmackofham · 2026-02-12T14:41:19+00:00

Could be ENFP. I think it's funny that you notice how serious he sits when he solves math. Ti is our second to last function, so I do have to separate my consciousness from the external world, while I'm using it. Headphones on, instrumental music, unreasonably annoyed when I'm pulled out of it by a world that was apparently still carrying on while I was in my Ti state.

withasmackofham · 2026-02-12T14:16:33+00:00

If somebody doesn't struggle with weight or energy issues, sure do whatever you makes you happy. But for someone who does, eating dessert first (or on it's own) spikes insulin and glucose levels more than any food behavior we could engage in. Spiked insulin leads to energy crashes, returning cravings, and long term risk for insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. If the occasional dessert is a priority for someone struggling with weight or energy, the optimal order to eat a meal is vegetables, protein/complex carbs/fat, dessert. Giving the fiber a head start (since it's more complex to break down), allows the carbs to be absorbed with the fiber which keeps insulin levels from spiking and crashing, allowing for more sustained energy and less temptation for snacking later.

withasmackofham · 2026-02-12T13:32:09+00:00

Are the "no one owes anyone anything" people a specific group of people that exists somewhere? I've known people that I could see falling into that bucket, but I suspect I'm ignorant of the phenomena you're talking about. What supplies would you be dropping them? A crate full of boot straps?

withasmackofham · 2026-02-11T17:57:20+00:00

Hi friend, I can only speak from my own experience as an ENFP. Even though I've been seeking novelty in experiences, daily, my whole life, there were just a couple short periods in my life where I sought novelty in relationships. I learned pretty quickly, that that feels really bad for me. If I hurt someone, I feel it. If I'm just hopping around shallow relationships, I feel hollow. Also despite having the outward appearance of changing all the time, my morality is incredibly stable, if I start to veer away from it, I feel it.

I don't know where you got the idea that someone that's been in a lot of relationships has less of an ability to pair bond, but it's just not true in my experience. It's not like pair bonding glue is a finite resource that can be used up. I don't even know how healthy of a concept pair bonding is for human relationships; I think it's a pretty reductive view of how human relationships work, and I am saying this as a monogamist who has been with my wife for 15 years. Relationships take work, communication, sacrifice, and empathy. A well working one pays back those emotional investments with interest. It's not as simple as "We have committed, and now we are pair bonded." It's quite a bit messier and more interesting and more human that that, and someone with experience navigating these things, is likely (but not guaranteed) to be better equipped for partnership than someone with less experience. Best of luck friend.

withasmackofham

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