Welcome to my INTJ life

It is said that ESFP is the opposite of the INTJ personality type. Some might think the marriage is doomed from the beginning with this kind of personality difference but I have to disagree. It is not our personality types that define us, it is how we manage to understand the other person.

I am an INTJ woman and my husband is the perfomer, ESFP. I felt attracted to him because he felt so open and good-hearted. And he truly is! He loves to make everyone feel good and he is the best at entertaining people. After all, he is a true performer.

Opposites tend to attract each other like magnets. On our case it was the first thing we noticed, the challenge. Where INTJ is introverted, intuitive, thinking and judging the ESFP is extroverted, sensing, feeling and perceiving. This is the standing point of our personalities but life makes it interesting and we all alter our behaviour through our life by our experiences.

For example, my husband has a nice way of giving space to me when he sees I can’t stand to be social anymore. He will then raise his charm and direct all the questions to himself to let me follow his lead and be the wallflower I want to be. It is a nice thing to do and I appreciate it. He never pushes me to the front or expect me to entertain guests or friends if I do not feel like doing it. I rarely do.

On the other hand, I try not to restrict my husband from having social gatherings with his friends. There is no point in keeping him at home when I am antisocial and want to use my time on thinking and planning. He can go as he pleases and most of the time it all works well. Most of the time. There need to be boundaries for me to feel safe. Even some timetables I can trust and not to stress what will happen next.

Unpredictable is fine for ESFP but a nightmare for INTJ

Of course, our son brought some conflicts between us when he came around eight years ago. A baby is not a logical thing and some unpredictable things may occur. Those were hard triggers for me and I was happy to have my husband around to handle those situations.

But it brought other things too. Suddenly there was no alone time for me and being dad also forces my extroverted husband to spend more time at home. The first four years were more difficult and we had serious disagreements as I was bad to communicate and he tended to think with his feelings. Our ways on handling stress are different and that built a lot of tension between us.

Only the future will show how we manage to fix our differences to be stronger together, but it is up to us and not to our personalities. I think everything can be worked out if both parties want it and so far all is good. I might go into more details later in my blog when talking about INTJ parenting and relationships more.