I’m so excited to have a guest post from Susan Storm today. When we decided to trade guest posts, I asked her for an article on INFJ relationships (which I felt unqualified to write as a very single INFJ) and she sent me this fantastic post. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!
Do you ever feel like finding your way in the dating world is messy and confusing? Are you married and wondering how you can understand your spouse better? As an INFJ blogger I get these types of questions a lot. I get it! Being part of such a rare personality means that finding a like-minded soul can be a huge challenge. I hope this article will encourage you and help you feel more at ease in the world of relationships.
What I’m not going to do:
So you might think I’m going to give you this huge list of personality types that are or are not compatible with INFJs. But I’m not going to go there. I’m a firm believer that any type can be compatible with any other type. Your Myers-Briggs type can only tell you what your preferences are; it won’t tell you who you should or shouldn’t date. The most important thing in any relationship is to understand your partner and try to work together in a way that respects each other’s differences. I really hope this article will help you find some answers to some of the most common questions!
From my own personal experience and from surveys done in various INFJ groups, it seems that INFJs most commonly wind up with XSTP personalities. I get questions about relationships daily, and probably 8 out of 10 INFJs I talk to about relationships are married or dating ISTPs or ESTPs. This seemed crazy initially…I mean, ESTPs and ISTPs are so different from INFJs, right? Plus all the personality dating books say that INFJs should date other intuitives. So why does this pairing occur so frequently?
Here’s my theory:
INFJs and XSTPs have the exact same cognitive functions, but in a completely different order. As people we tend to look for partners that will cause a “balancing” effect. If we’re primarily fueled by emotion and values, we might seek a logic-driven partner (and vice versa). If we’re imaginative and captivated primarily by theoretical possibilities we might seek someone who is grounded in reality and has his feet planted firmly on the ground. Read more →
Recently, a friend shared a post titled “After 20 Years … there remains but a poor case for a divided Church of God.” It’s arguing that there’s no good excuse for the church of God to exist in different organizations. It broke apart because of doctrinal differences, but now people believing the same things are divided up into innumerable different groups. Why haven’t they got back together yet?
It’s a lamentation I’ve heard pretty much my entire life. My parents met attending the Worldwide Church of God and I was only 6 years old when the major split happened. I’ve grown up in off-shoots of that church group including United Church of God and various independent groups such as Christian Biblical Church of God and the now-nonexistant Bellville Church of God.
Quick note for my regular readers: this post is addressed to people in church groups that split off from the Worldwide Church of God (most in 1995) due to major doctrinal differences. If you read something here that seems “odd” it’s probably because of not sharing my target audience’s background. Please bear with me going off on this specific topic for one post 🙂
I don’t really remember Worldwide. But I’ve heard about the huge church groups with hundreds of attendees each week and the Feasts of Tabernacles where multiple thousands gathered to celebrate God’s holy days. I’ve heard (and still hear) Herbert Armstrong quoted in multiple sermons every year. I’ve seen groups trying to re-create the “good old days” when the church had a central government, word-wide cultural influence, and its own university. And I read articles like the one my friend shared that wonder why we don’t have that any more and urging a return to unity.
I’m writing my post today because I feel this type of argument is glossing over the true issues. Perhaps we’re so nostalgic for what was that we’re missing a greater what could be.
First, we have to decide what we mean by disunity and division. This writer said he observed division when a church group of 800-1,000 people was split into four different congregations due to an administrative decision. He also describe the many different groups that grew out of a Worldwide background as currently disunified. It seems he means that division exists when all God’s people in a given location aren’t meeting together and when there are different church groups in existence instead of a single over-arching organization.
But is that an accurate description? Should we expect God’s church to all fall under one human label or to all meet in the same location? Or do some people just think that’s a good idea because that’s what they thought was going on in Worldwide? This gets to a key question: How does the Bible define “the church of God”? We can’t even try to be the ideal version of something until we know what that ideal version looks like. Read more →
Who responded to Jesus best when He walked on this earth? It wasn’t the religious leaders or the pious folk or the wealthy and powerful. It was the ordinary people, the sinners and the outcasts of society. But why is that? The Christian message carries good news for all people. What made some receive it joyfully and others want to kill Jesus?
There’s a story in Luke 7 that might shed some light on this. One of the Pharisees, a man named Simon, invited Jesus over for dinner. A woman known in her city as “a sinner” followed them and started crying on Jesus’ feet. She washed His feet with her tears, wiped them with her hair, kissed them, and anointed them with oil.
The Pharisee’s mind instantly went to a place of judgement. If Jesus were a prophet, he thought, then He would know what sort of woman this was and stop her from touching Him. Jesus wasn’t too impressed with that line of thought, so He told this story:
There was a certain creditor which had two debtors: the one owed five hundred pence, and the other fifty. And when they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both. Tell me therefore, which of them will love him most?” Simon answered and said, I suppose that he, to whom he forgave most.” And he said unto him, “Thou hast rightly judged.” (Luke 7:41-43, KJV)
Jesus went on to list the ways this woman demonstrated her love for him (which, incidentally, highlighted Simon’s deficiencies in hospitality). He finished His conversation with Simon by saying, “Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little” (Luke 7:47, KJV).
One reason the sinners responded so well to Jesus is that they knew they needed what He offered. The people who viewed themselves as righteous thought they were good enough already and found His call to repentance offensive. Read more →
Beauty and the Beast has always been my favorite fairy tale. Favorite Disney movie, favorite Robin McKinley fairy tale retelling, favorite original tale … basically, I’m a fan. So you can imagine that I was beside myself excited when Disney announced their live-action remake of my favorite fairy tale. And yesterday, I finally got to see it.
It’s been a while since I wrote about fairy tales, so many of you probably don’t know that I’m not just a fan of Disney. I love the original tales as well. In many cases, I like them more than the lighter, tamer, happier versions. It’s hard to believe there was a time when it was considered normal to read children bedtime stories where stepsisters hack their own toes off, children throw witches in ovens, and princes fall from towers into thorns that blind them.
They weren’t just creepy stories for kids, though. Fairy tales represent a rich folkloric tradition passed along and refined by both male and female storytellers. And plenty of research has gone into documenting these stories’ histories, discussing their role in society, and cataloging the different styles. Beauty and the Beast, for example, is 425C in the Aarne–Thompson classification system. It’s one of a surprisingly large number of animal groom fairy tales and most likely has it’s roots in the story of Cupid and Psyche.
Fairy tales have always generated discussion and debate. This time around, people are talking about bestiality and wondering why this “tale as old as time” has endured for so long with such twisted ideas at its roots. But if we equate the Beast with an animal we miss the point of the tale. Psychoanalyst Bruno Bettelheim believed the “animal groom” stories were “intended to reassure virginal brides about sex” (i.e. he seems scary, but once you get to know him he’s not so bad).
Beauty and the Beast goes deeper than most tales of this sub-type, though. What we know as Beauty and the Beast was first written by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve and published in 1740. In this earliest version, as in subsequent versions, the Beast has to prove himself worth loving. Read more →
Repentance from dead works is the first of the foundational truths listed in Hebrews 6. But how well do we really understand it and how many of us truly practice repentance?
When I was baptized, the minister asked if I’d repented of my sins and accepted Jesus Christ as my personal savior. I meant it when I said yes, but I’m not sure I really understood how much more repentance is than just an, “I’m sorry I messed up.” It involves a change in our innermost being that manifests in a commitment to turn away from things displeasing to God.
As we prepare for Passover, we ask God for feedback on how we’re doing in our walk with Him. We examine ourselves to see if there are hidden sins in our lives and ponder how we can become better examples of our Lord Jesus. But we can’t stop there. We have to act on what we learn.
Psalm 51 is perhaps the best example we have in the entire Bible of repentance. David wrote it after committing adultery with Bathsheba and having her husband Uriah killed. There were consequences for those sins, but David was forgiven. He didn’t just “get away with it” because he was king and God wanted to keep working with him. David was forgiven because he confessed and repented from a humbled heart (unlike the previous king, Saul, who made excuses when confronted with his sin). Read more →
INFJ and INTJ personality types are known for being able to see multiple sides to a given situation. Both these types lead with a mental process called Introverted Intuition (Ni). Personality Hacker nickames this process “Perspectives.” It functions as an advanced pattern recognition process that analyzes what’s going on inside the human mind. But it’s not just focused on an individual’s take on how the world works. To quote Personality Hacker’s Antonia Dodge, “users of Introverted Intuition aren’t married to their own perspectives. They can take a meta-perspective and understand the ways in which we’re the same and different on a cerebral level.”
So what does this look like in real life? Let’s take politics as an example.
Most of the people I’m around in real life are strong conservatives, but I’m also in contact with quite a few liberals online. I get to see arguments, news articles, and personal perspectives from both sides of the ideological divide.
I see people who were vocalizing hate for Obama up in arms about how the liberals are treating Trump. I see people who told conservatives to get over it and be happy with Obama as their duly elected president protesting Trump in droves. I’ve seen conservative news articles vilifying Obama for his expensive vacations replaced by liberal news articles condemning Trump for the exact same thing. It just goes on and on and and both sides seem completely blind to the fact that they’re reacting in such similar ways.
My Introverted Intuition lets me notice patterns like this. More than that, I can understand people on both sides without really feeling like I identify 100% with either (except on a very few individual issues). And that makes it hard to discuss politics with most of the people who want to talk about politics. If you’re trying to find some middle ground and encourage others to step outside their own perspectives, you might find both sides fighting you as strongly as they’d been fighting each other.
The Few, The Frustrated, The Misunderstood
There aren’t all that many people operating with Ni as their dominant mental process. According to the Center for Applications of Psychological Type, combined they only make up 3 to 7 % of the total population. Our minds don’t work the same way as most other people. That’s one reason we often feel misunderstood. On top of that, our ability to climb inside other peoples’ perspectives gives us insight into others’ minds that not many people can match in return or even fully understand (though some ENFJs and ENTJs who’ve developed their auxiliary Ni, and maybe some ISTPs and ISFPs who use tertiary Ni, might come close).
Our rather unique way of looking at the world can make us feel lonely and frustrated. We might feel like we don’t fit in with certain groups because we can also understand the perspective of the people they disagree with. We might have people reject us because we can only agree with them 75% instead of 100%. We might hide our true opinions or the questions we think about from the people we care for so they won’t feel like we’re attacking them.
Most Ni dominant types are curious about how the world works. They want to ask questions to see where other people stand and understand different viewpoints. We like to throw out “what if …?” questions and see what happens. We’ll also play “devil’s advocate” in arguments to refine our thoughts on a given topic and help the person we’re talking with refine their’s. Other people can misinterpret these things as threatening to their own convictions or as an attempt to sabotage the status quo.
Another Perspective: Ni As A Superpower
I actually love this side of my INFJ personality. At least, I do now. When I was younger, I felt odd because I didn’t feel as firmly convicted about most issues as the people around me seemed. I felt that sharing my questions and voicing alternate opinions wasn’t encouraged. But my second quarter of college, I met a professor who actually encouraged me to write my questionings and unpopular viewpoints into my essays even when I completely disagreed with him. And he, and others, kept doing that for the next four years.
Some time after that is when I started getting interested in studying Myers-Briggs types, so I discovered this ability to adopt a meta-perspective is a natural part of my personality. Studying personality types also helped me understand why so many people see intuitive idea generation as threatening. Once I understood that, I could start phrasing my shared thoughts in a way that appealed to other personality types more.
One of the great strengths of the Ni types is that we bring alternative perspectives to the table and we can learn to present these perspectives in a way that appeals to the different personalities. We have a gift that can help build bridges between people on intellectual and emotional levels. And that’s a pretty cool superpower.
Like An Anchor 