It isn’t that I don’t like interacting; I do. My curiosity, though, tends to extend past the normal social boundaries of polite conversation. So, if I start “interacting” the way I want to interact, I’d end up probing until I had what I considered a complete picture of you or the situation at hand. You’d most likely feel uncomfortable with my direct questions, so it’s much easier if I just sit back and take it all in and get my complete picture that way.

“As future thinkers, we have, at times, the uncanny ability to know what will happen in the future before most of the people around us. That ability is sometimes interpreted by others as being “arrogant” and we work on trying to keep our mouths from always saying “I told you so” because that doesn’t go over well even though we are right to say it.”

I’d like to clarify this. I think we INTJ’s/INTP’s have an ability to see multiply potentials at one time. In other words, we’re able to see potential outcomes or probabilities given a changing set of variables. It’s the “if this happens, then this or this is likely – but if that occurs, then these other three other outcomes are possible.”

I haven’t met many people with this ability or who even care about this. Most people are practical in the short-term and have little use for this kind of long view thinking. In fact, it probably frustrates them as they see it as an immense waste of time. While they are out there “doing,” we are still sitting here “thinking.”

For me, this is a fundamental way of life.

I don’t know what will happen in the future. But I sure can see many possibilities with varying probabilities. Very few things are written in stone for me. And with every variable that becomes known, my “predictions” come very close to reality.

Here is how David Boles put it (italics are mine):

“We have the gift, not of predicting the future, but of knowing what will happen before it happens based on cultivating, chalking out and extending the current situation. Sometimes that can be scary for us because we can see something bad happening before our eyes before it actually happens.”

If you are in a relationship with an INTJ/INTP, it would be helpful if you humored her (or him) as s/he maps out what may be. Open ended questions work best i.e., “well, if we do this, how might it affect that…”

Believe me, your world will open up.

“Sometimes We Disappear
Disappearing is, perhaps, one of the most annoying things some INTJs (and Enneagram 5 folks ) do that people dislike. I promise you we are not trying to insult you or to hurt your feelings by leaving or by appearing to leave. We leave, usually without comment, from groups or meetings or parties or get-togethers because we become interested in something else. It’s that simple. We decide to investigate elsewhere. No malice is intended in disappearing. We don’t see it as disappearing. We see it more like, “moving on…” “

I think we simply get bored and/or drained. For this reason, I usually carry my books with me everywhere, just in case I have to withdraw.

I don’t like being bored and I especially don’t like being bored and stuck without an escape or a way to work on whatever it is that interests me. Just about the only place I am never bored is out on the ocean. Why am I not bored? Because I’m in my own head on beautiful blue water with no distractions!

There’s another component to this idea of “disappearing.” I know sometimes it appears as if I “go away” mentally. I feel it too. When I am learning something or starting a project or reading a book, I am fairly well-focused. Time disappears along with everything else and I don’t like being pulled away from what I am working on. In fact, I often resent it! I’ve noticed that when I need mental downtime and an escape from everyone, I’ll go buy a romance novel, curl up in the bed and stay there for the day. There’s nothing “wrong” I am just re-charging.

I can and do multi-task well but it’s not my preferred way of working. I prefer to focus on one thing at a time. When I am multi-tasking, I feel like i am coasting along, not really absorbing anything. I don’t consider multi-tasking particularly difficult. I just “see” that which needs to be done very much like the Tetris game and there I am, turning and shifting those bars as they fall, putting them into place.

But I can assure you I have not disappeared.  I’m actually juggling a multitude of details that drive a lot of people bananas.

So, when you think I disappear, I just think you can’t keep up.

Moving right along…

“We do great in one-on-one situations. When there are more than three people in the room we tend to hang out in corners by ourselves. Mingling is not a strong INTJ trait because it usually involves idle chatter.”

Amen.

Another point is that mingling requires an expenditure of energy. Personally, I’d like to put that energy to good use by learning something about you I didn’t know before; I can’t help it – once we’ve said “hello” and I see that you are okay and in one piece, unless you are willing to share in-depth, I really don’t know what else to do or say. Talking to me about the weather or the simple, “hey how are ya doin’” just bores the crap out of me. I just find myself mentally wandering…

I want to know what are you working on, what are your passions, what are you looking forward to and why. That involves more than just idle chit-chat.

What started out as an evening of “Gee Val, you should really update your site..” turned into this… a longer-than-intended missive on the INTJ, INTP and Enneagram 5 personality type.  I haven’t disappeared.