Welcome to my INTJ life

I just had a horrible fight with my hubby about a topic I wasn’t even enthusiastic about. But we are all looking for a different things in our conversations with others. Some want facts, other just want to share their innovative thinking process.

As an INTJ woman, my expectation is always on the facts. On the little details. On things of “what is happening” instead of “what might happen” in the near future. It is difficult for me to have a conversation about things that are not certain and that always impacts on my expectation in conversations.

At the end of this blog post you will find few nice links to other websites that have written about this topic with much more details than I have. I am also planning on writing some tips for communication with other personalities, and will add it in here when published 🙂

There are personalities who just love to chat and I had to marry one

My hubby (ESFP), loves to chat about mundane things. Things like, if the postman will bring the newspaper or not, if the sun is shining tomorrow and we can go out to hiking etc. He loves to talk about everything! Even though those things are not even happening or will not happen.

I feel drained after those conversations. It is difficult for me to understand why anyone would want to have a conversation about uncertain things that might or might not happen. My mind is always trying to create a pattern on how to end the situation with win-win solution instead of uncertainty but that is a bad thing because it makes my hubby lose his marbles.

So, there are personality types who just love to chat without the need to force the conversation to an ending. Weird huh? Those personality types are representatives of the sensory/feeling group (SF) including ESFJ, ISFJ, ESFP, and ISFP. Their train of thought is the most difficult for me to understand it takes a lot of effort on my part to keep the communication on point.

I think for INTJ the easiest conversations are held with other intuitive/thinking (NT) ENTJ, INTJ, ENTP, and INTP personality types who share the same kind of view of the world.

What kind of conversationalist is an INTJ?

We tend to be quite good in conversations. It is because we try to figure out the world around us and that forces us to ask questions and be interested in the things the other person is saying. It is important to us to understand how something works and how to improve it. That makes us comfortable to have conversations even though our introverted nature do not usually seek out company.

But how to behave when the conversation is not about important topics? That is more difficult. Sometimes I even zone out and do not listen my hubby or friends when they chat about he yesterday’s news. The conversation is about things that have already happened and honestly I am not fond of knowing what people ate before they got to work. I think it is safe to say that sometimes INTJs have difficulties in situations that require finer skills when communicating, such as being patient.

I think INTJ’s mostly respect the boundaries others create for the level of communication. As for example I can understand and respect my hubby’s need to share things with me even though those are not very interesting to me. It does not mean I can’t listen and even ask few questions to keep the communication open between us.

How to learn to communicate with different personality types?

This is a question I do not have direct answer, but being interested on getting to know people is essential. Even though I end up having a fight with my hubby, he has teached me to understand the opposite personality type more than any book or article could.

But, we are INTJs and we like to be prepared to have the conversations with others. Hence I have a link for you in here to a good article / blog post that has helped me to understand how to have a conversation with people who do not think the same way I do 🙂

Communicating with the different personality types of Myers-Briggs functions is possible—here’s how

Most Effective Communication Strategies With Various Personalities