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[INFJ] When an INFJ doorslams you / cuts you out of their life / breaks off contact

Fidelia

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The more important some communication is, the worse I am at writing. Or I'll start something, but want to include everything, not have time and then it gets old. Some of my closest friends are ones that I have done very poorly at keeping in touch with, not because I don't think of them, but because I really, really want to do a good job of writing them. Sometimes I solve it just by phoning and catching up, then it makes the writing a manageable amount, particularly if there's something between us to be addressed. If you're not on phoning terms, that option isn't open to him. It may be a compliment, more than a comment on how unimportant you are.
 

cascadeco

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I've mentioned this in other threads on the board, but when it comes to long-distance friendships, I'm not much of a phone person and I may only really catch up with them 4 times a year. So, yeah, there could totally be 3-month stretches without any communication to speak of. And, I do consider a few of these folks to be very important to me; very close, good friends --> the fact that I maintain these friendships over the months/years means I really value them. And whenever we do catch up, it's as if there hadn't been a big gap - things pick up just where they left off, very naturally. If I did not value them highly, I would let them go completely...which is why after a move, I pretty much don't keep in touch with any of my acquaintances/not-super-good-friends. Also, it goes both ways too - these friends are similar to me in that they don't call often either, so I guess we have an understanding or are simply similar in this way.

I think too my concept of Time can be a little odd compared to some. I may not even notice long stretches, or I might not think it reflects a lack of care/value.

(Although I know to many, the gaps in between communication might seem to contradict that I really value them - but, our friendship when we lived close to one another was never based on the phone, either, so in essence that aspect of things remained totally the same after we lived farther apart)
 

the state i am in

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The more important some communication is, the worse I am at writing. Or I'll start something, but want to include everything, not have time and then it gets old. Some of my closest friends are ones that I have done very poorly at keeping in touch with, not because I don't think of them, but because I really, really want to do a good job of writing them. Sometimes I solve it just by phoning and catching up, then it makes the writing a manageable amount, particularly if there's something between us to be addressed. If you're not on phoning terms, that option isn't open to him. It may be a compliment, more than a comment on how unimportant you are.

i just lack initiation energy most of the time. i get overrun as is with all kinds of tangled ideas and projections and trying to keep it all straight and keep everyday life on track gets to be quite a lot to handle in its own right. i want too much too fast so i have to make up for overdoing it a lot, working on something til 4 am, not taking care of myself, etc.

i like the theory that introverts are lower in dopamine. especially pertaining to e4, e5, and e9 with regards to this. i know i get way more energized from adrenaline and ideas than i get from accomplishing tasks and feeling the reward of getting something done, which can be a vicious kind of cycle. it just takes a lot more of a kind of currency i don't have a surplus of to extrovert consistently. e7s, on the other hand, seem like they have so much of every kind of energy. i'll never get half as much done as them, but i'll do twice as much thinking.

overall it makes me feel fickle and temperamental. it's easiest with my ntp friends bc they don't care and seem to understand well enough. they distance such behavior from an explanation of how i relate to them and read it more as a basic sign that i'm an introvert, at times behave illogically, and spend a lot of energy on my own mental projects. i think i spend so much time in these imagined workings that i can drift a little too far from experience which helps ground me to my own life and the people around me who i enjoy very much. i'm guessing other infjs, especially e5s, have somewhat similar experience.
 

Quiet

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Just like communicating in person, I'm going to write to friends about meaningful things. Sometime in my boring life, it takes a fair amount of time to go by between any major events. I'm not just going to want to write about the happenings in my life, I'm going to want to write reflectively about them and put in some thought.

Also, I'm probably going to edit, change, delete and otherwise obsess over the letter until I'm truly satisfied with how it reads.
My letter to a good friend will sound sincere and have some point, not just like "talking for the sake of talking" in written form.
 

Z Buck McFate

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I tend to not write or contact someone until something happens to trigger some really fond association specifically with that person. A lot of that is because I don’t like getting called or contacted “just because we haven’t talked in a while”; obligatory contact feels stale and inauthentic, and enough of it with a person can erode a friendship (imo). I can sense the ‘obligatory’ calls/messages- because the person doesn’t call to connect with me, they’re just following through with usual social convention- and it sometimes annoys me. Instead of giving some indication that the urge to call had anything to do with me per se (i.e. “I saw an exhibit by that artist you mentioned…”) - they might ask several generic questions and give several generic answers (the same generic questions/answers every time they call, leading me to believe they aren’t even paying attention to the conversation). And because it annoys me, I instinctively don’t do it to other people; though I try to make the effort with a couple of people who have made it clear they’d rather hear prattle from me every 3 or 4 months than only hear from me once a year. I don’t understand it, but I’ll respect that it’s true for someone if they tell me.

Thing is, they do need to tell me, I never assume “I should call ____, because it’s been a while.” When left to my own devices, I only call when I’ve been thinking a lot about someone- and for me, it really isn’t an indication of how much I respect them or like them.

I think too my concept of Time can be a little odd compared to some. I may not even notice long stretches, or I might not think it reflects a lack of care/value.

Definitely true for me as well. I tend to be friends with people who won’t take it personally that I get so lost in my thoughts that I might not call for long spans of time (like state mentioned, I have a rather close INTP friend who couldn’t be more awesome in this regard). I've only recently been thinking it's something I might want to work on; I've probably inadvertently made a few people feel the way burymecloser described in her post. It's just such a different viewpoint from my own, like I said- when left to my own devices it just doesn't occur to me that it might be offensive. I have to be told. And unfortunately, the people who get offended are usually uncomfortable with directly explaining they've been offended by it.

I’m really not sure how common this is for INFJs, but it’s prolly true at least for the e5s.

You people could use a chill pill.

It’s true. I am, more often than not, in need of a chill pill.
 

cafe

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LOL. I will take that chill pill right after I stop thinking so much, get out more, and quit taking everything so personally!

Anyway, I just figured out what my doorslams have in common -- feeling as though I was being attacked in my own home.

I guess with me, inviting yourself into my home and then criticizing me, browbeating me, or telling me what a horrible person I am will get you put on the other side of a closed and locked door, figuratively and literally.

FWIW, I am horrible about keeping in touch, even with people I adore. Having some nasty anxiety about calling people doesn't help.

So far the best solution has been facebook. I wish my dad and my son's former teacher were on facebook. :(
 

Lauren

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The more important some communication is, the worse I am at writing. Or I'll start something, but want to include everything, not have time and then it gets old. Some of my closest friends are ones that I have done very poorly at keeping in touch with, not because I don't think of them, but because I really, really want to do a good job of writing them. Sometimes I solve it just by phoning and catching up, then it makes the writing a manageable amount, particularly if there's something between us to be addressed. If you're not on phoning terms, that option isn't open to him. It may be a compliment, more than a comment on how unimportant you are.

I'm just like this. I almost never write because I want to include everything. Writing's important to me and I take my time. So, I also use phone calls to catch up. My good friends understand when they don't hear from me for long periods. When we do talk, it's as if time hasn't passed.

I remember reading about INFPs or INFJs that when good friends are absent for long periods, they never feel as if they've lost touched. It's as if once a friend always a friend, regardless of time, distance, amount of contact. Very true for me.
 

Quiet

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Chill pills are over rated, a glass of red wine sounds better to me :)
 

burymecloser

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Fidelia and others: thanks. I'm now really questioning my initial (Ti) interpretation of an INFJ's motives. Here's the message I got in mid-April (everything edited out is personal information):
Just wanted to say happy birthday and that I'm thinking of you.

I still have two half-written emails that I wrote to you in January and February- I didn't stop writing because i didn't want to be in contact or anything- it was just one thing after another kept coming at me - <redacted> -- and then felt bad for not writing, so I kept procrastinating....anyway you get the picture. I'm really sorry.

<redacted>

I hope you have a great birthday. Drop me a line if you get a chance. Would love to hear from you.Sorry again for not writing for so long.
Can other INFJs identify with the tone/ideas expressed here? If you were in the writer's position, what would you think if you got a response at this point, nearly two months later?

Red wine on the house for anyone who can help. :yes:
 

Fidelia

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Sounds like he truly would like to stay in touch. In fact I laughed when I read it, because I have written almost those exact words to people I really like and do wish to remain close to. No door slam or even particularly bad feelings from the tone there.

I tend to worry when I get no response, even when I seem to have taken my time to write back. No news is always bad news. My feeling of getting a response back nearly two months later would be tremendous relief. I'm very bad at dealing with a complete absence of information. Even a negative response would be so much better than just wondering. You can at least work with that and there's some hope of restoring the friendship if there is at least some talking happening.

Whether it's writing to someone or cleaning, sometimes I'll put off doing it for a long while, but all the sudden wake up one day and have all of this energy and desire to write to one specific person or do go crazy with making the place look great.

It also really depends on my emotional energy at the time, especially if I want to be honest with the person about how I really am and show the proper concern for them. There was one person from this forum that I used to write to every day. I feel terribly bad for suddenly quitting, but I was working at a very demanding job, both time wise and emotions wise. I just didn't have it left in me at the end of the day. Even now that the job is quit, I want to write again, but now it seems like such an enormous task to catch us up (even though I don't think that expectation is there) that I have put it off.

Another person is someone that I corresponded with last year during a really hard time when I was living in an isolated community and someone I had dated for a long time broke up and then spent several months falling apart and acting very out of character. Our correspondance was a nice diversion and he was an interesting person to talk to even though I was not interested in him romantically. However, in the flurry of moving etc and then starting a new job, I suddenly dropped off. Even now, he responds right away when I write (he's on the other side of the world travelling), but it often takes me awhile to write back. I feel bad about this and can't even quite tell why I do it. Maybe he is associated on an unconscious level with that hard time in my life and so it conjures up some of those feelings again. I don't know. But again, I feel terribly guilty as he's an interesting, thoughtful person.

Lastly is one of my best friends from grad school. He ended up meeting up with his childhood sweetheart shortly after I went home and he had stayed on to finish his doctorate. Even though I like him and miss him, there was an undercurrent in our friendship where he would have been amenable to dating even though I wasn't interested. He didn't push the issue or even bring it up. However, after his fiancee was in the picture, I realized that I didn't want to be in too constant of touch because I didn't want her to feel threatened.

Anyway, I wouldn't say this behaviour is atypical, and in most cases it means that the INFJ likes you more rather than less. It isn't designed to be manipulative or keep you from moving on. Hope that's of some help...
 

Lauren

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Sounds like he truly would like to stay in touch. In fact I laughed when I read it, because I have written almost those exact words to people I really like and do wish to remain close to. No door slam or even particularly bad feelings from the tone there.

I tend to worry when I get no response, even when I seem to have taken my time to write back. No news is always bad news. My feeling of getting a response back nearly two months later would be tremendous relief. I'm very bad at dealing with a complete absence of information. Even a negative response would be so much better than just wondering. You can at least work with that and there's some hope of restoring the friendship if there is at least some talking happening.

:yes::hug:
 

Esoteric Wench

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This thread in smilies: :reading::eek::confused::angry::smoke:
/:offtopic::nerd:

I love the randomness of ENTPs. Such an ability to detach from the heartfelt emotional outpourings on this thread and sum it up with smilies. Excellent.
 

Z Buck McFate

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Sounds like he truly would like to stay in touch. In fact I laughed when I read it, because I have written almost those exact words to people I really like and do wish to remain close to. No door slam or even particularly bad feelings from the tone there.

Anyway, I wouldn't say this behaviour is atypical, and in most cases it means that the INFJ likes you more rather than less. It isn't designed to be manipulative or keep you from moving on. Hope that's of some help...

Same here, actually, with “I have written almost those exact words to people I really like”.

I don’t think it’s typical for an INFJ to say “thinking of you” in a flippant way. If we say that to someone, it’s usually because we really do think about the person fondly and often. Of course- if there’s any INFJ reading this who disagrees, it’s available AND encouraged to speak up- but I think it kind of goes against the grain of the INFJ ‘need for consistency in our external environment’ to express affection that is fleeting or sporadic.

Can other INFJs identify with the tone/ideas expressed here? If you were in the writer's position, what would you think if you got a response at this point, nearly two months later?

I can strongly identify with the tone. And like fidelia, I would be very relieved to get a response. Even an angry response is better than no response. I realize how hypocritical that sounds- coming from an INFJ, on a thread about ‘doorslamming’ no less- but it’s true.
 

Z Buck McFate

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This thread in smilies: :reading::eek::confused::angry::smoke:
/:offtopic:
:nerd:

Chill pill in smilies: :chillpill:

It seems like there should be an emoticon for doorslam.


edit: for the record, the chill pill is for the thread- not for phobik, who I think is being really funny.
 

1487610420

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I love the randomness of ENTPs. Such an ability to detach from the heartfelt emotional outpourings on this thread and sum it up with smilies. Excellent.

:cheese:


Chill pill in smilies: :chillpill:

It seems like there should be an emoticon for doorslam.
doorslam.gif



edit: for the record, the chill pill is for the thread- not for phobik, who I think is being really funny.
*swallows* Huh what? Now you tell me? :doh:
 

Esoteric Wench

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I absolutely fell over laughing when I saw this. We need to petition the typologycentral.com powers that be to add this as an official emoticon on this Website. Excellent again. Nay... fantastic.

:devil:
 

Vasilisa

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I feel bad for those of other types who care about an INFJ who behaves like me because sometimes it is difficult for us to keep in touch the way that we and others would like.

Dear True Friend,
When you are physically in my day-to-day life I am very psychically giving and emotionally supportive naturally. (This is part of the reason I cannot tolerate toxic people and I doorslam them). But when you are not physically in my present life it is hard for me to keep up that level of intensity over distance. I feel guilty about that. I am sorry. But since I truly love you then please know that I don't ever forget our cherished friendship and experiences together. I relive them in my mind and they are so close to me, they last forever without fading. So even though you might not be existing in my day to day life, you are nurturing me by continuing to exist in my inner life. I will always value and honor you in my heart, its just a bit harder for me to express it physically the way many others do. This is why I may not write as frequently as I promised or it might seem like I have grown distant. Please be patient and please don't give up on me.
 
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