[ENFJ] Trying to need less contact, but struggling. ENFJ with an INTP

[Sunshine8]

Hey there,
Really struggling today.

I am feeling such strong self-loathing...I feel pathetic actually. I sort of want to cry but I feel too embarrassed really.

The problem is that my boyfriend is an INTP who lives two hours away. We have lovely weekends together, and have been going out for about a year. He has told me he loves me etc, but during the week he doesn't really need much contact. I try so hard to just keep busy and not take it personally, but it HURTS sometimes! I get to most of the way through the week feeling great, but then there is this black hole of next-to-no contact from Tues to Fri until it is all happening again and he is all over me.

I hate, absolutely hate the position that puts me in - I feel wretched today, because I made it until 4:30pm before finally when we talked for the first time in three days and by then I was really angry. I try SO HARD!!! I drink herbal tea and burn incense and try not to lose faith in myself and that he cares, but I always seem to hit the painful conflict/insecurity wall before he does. That makes for an unbalanced relationship and I really don't know what else to do.

He doesn't mind everything being up in the air, he never seems to doubt what I feel for him, or that everything is OK.

The worst of it is that I did not get a lot of love as a child and was a typical middle child-expected to be really responsible for my younger sibling, but my boyfriend was an only child who was doted on not only by his parents but his live in Italian grandparents!!

I have noticed lately that I have started to drink more. I find most nights that the stress of work and especially of some of these later 'shut out and abandoned' days of the week I basically want to just 'get through' rather than enjoy.

I hate it!! I really hate it.

And the worst of it is that we actually get on really well when we are together-he is very affectionate (even more than me) and he said that he would like to look at moving in with each other in a year or so. He has also been very supportive on occasions when I have really needed it.

But I am really struggling with the envy of what he appears to have: perfect and impeccable confidence, practically zero anxiety or distress if he doesn't hear from me for days (yes, I have occasionally held out but then he just assumes I am angry which is true, so that doesn't really sex it up but numb everything). His ability to seem to 'not give a shit'.

Fundamentally - I want to lose my own 'give a shit'. I want to be like some else, someone who just chills out and doesn't worry about anything and doesn't look forward to weekends and start thinking on Thursday about shopping for the favorite treats of the person I am going to see on Sat. I want to not take my plate out or offer to wash up when I am a guest. I want to be one of those girls who never reaches for their wallet when the bill comes, or who doesn't feel so hurt when I don't know what is going on in my relationships.

And this brings me back to my current self-loathing. I don't think I have ever felt this bad before. In so many ways 'on paper' my life is great. But this pain is dreadful. Why can't I just be more TTTTT??!!!!

Halp!! Advice? Good news? Anyone?????

 

[yvonne]

aww. you seem like a really nice person. why don't you just tell your boyfriend that you'd feel so much better, if he called more during the week just to talk? he probably doesn't even realize you feel this way?

 

[Salt n' pepper]

I'll have to agree with yvonne. And I understand how you feel.

I'm sure he gives a shit about the relationship and about you. You said he wanted to move in togheter eventually, so it seems he thinks of you two as something serious and real.

I think that the INTP introversion and obliviousness is getting to you, and if you feel this bad about it, you should tell him. He won't mind. And if you really want to talk to him during the weeks, just call him, send him a text or an email to tell him you miss him and you'd like to talk.

IME, you need to be really explicit with these guys. But also, they need their down-time, especially after such intense interaction, so try to not to think of it as anything personal against you. It's more about them recharging their batteries.

You both need to try and meet in the middle, I think. As long as you understand each others needs, you can easily accommodate them.

 

[JocktheMotie]

Talk to him and tell him his distance makes you feel unwanted and undesired. Call and chat every two days or so, or even just texting each other [I'm a huge fan of the text]. Find something you can both agree on, but stress the importance of how much it hurts you. He's going to think you're nuts, but if he does care he'll make an effort.

Your problem is nearly the exact situation I went through when I first went to college, although I was the distant INTP. We're very bad at this.

 

[Salt n' pepper]

Talk to him and tell him his distance makes you feel unwanted and undesired. Call and chat every two days or so, or even just texting each other [I'm a huge fan of the text]. Find something you can both agree on, but stress the importance of how much it hurts you. He's going to think you're nuts, but if he does care he'll make an effort.

Your problem is nearly the exact situation I went through when I first went to college, although I was the distant INTP. We're very bad at this.

Yes and yes.

Sunshine8, you're not alone on this. I went throught the same thing with my INTP when I went to college (4h distans). Talk to him, from your POV and try to find a middle way together.

They are the worst! But we keep coming back, cause they are the best! NERD!

 

[cafe]

INTP guys can be pretty oblivious. You have to ask for what you want because they aren't going to figure it out. It sounds like you'd be okay if he'd just call you once or twice during the week to provide a little reassurance and that isn't much to ask for. Ask for it.

Not long after we got married I started feeling pretty neglected by my INTP and it was annoying because he just didn't seem to care, etc. It finally occurred to me that I'd had a life before we met and I decided to start reading again like I used to. It helped a lot.

If there are activities, friendships, etc that you have been putting on hold for your relationship, pick them back up again. Few men can really meet more than a fraction of an average woman's social needs. Introverted men even less so. An extroverted woman with an introverted man needs a strong social support network.

The flip side to the low need for contact is that INTPs are generally low-maintenance, so your time is your own to play with and to enjoy. It's not so fun in the early stages, but you only have to see a woman whose husband won't give her a moment's peace to appreciate a nice, easy going INTP.

 

[Salt n' pepper]

INTP guys can be pretty oblivious. You have to ask for what you want because they aren't going to figure it out. It sounds like you'd be okay if he'd just call you once or twice during the week to provide a little reassurance and that isn't much to ask for. Ask for it.

Not long after we got married I started feeling pretty neglected by my INTP and it was annoying because he just didn't seem to care, etc. It finally occurred to me that I'd had a life before we met and I decided to start reading again like I used to. It helped a lot.

If there are activities, friendships, etc that you have been putting on hold for your relationship, pick them back up again. Few men can really meet more than a fraction of an average woman's social needs. Introverted men even less so. An extroverted woman with an introverted man needs a strong social support network.

The flip side to the low need for contact is that INTPs are generally low-maintenance, so your time is your own to play with and to enjoy. It's not so fun in the early stages, but you only have to see a woman whose husband won't give her a moment's peace to appreciate a nice, easy going INTP.

Someone should start a support group for INTP spouses.

I agree with the last part, too. I sometimes think I can manage my relationship in my sleep.

 

[JocktheMotie]

Someone should start a support group for INTP spouses.

I'm surprised nobody has thought of this before!

 

[disregard]

I would talk to him about how you feel.

Tell him how you envy him, tell him how you cannot relate to his lack of neediness (for want of a better word), tell him all of that.

Try and have an Intimacy Aha! Moment.

If that doesn't work, if that doesn't give you insight into and confidence in your relationship, then I would build up the courage to leave him.

You can find a partner that lives near you that has a similar need for time and affection to your own.

 

[cafe]

LOL. At this point (18 years of marriage in May) the kids are fairly self-sufficient and decent conversationalists, I have my mom (who is pleasant enough when she isn't off the deep end) living with us, and a handful of friends I talk to regularly on the phone, books to read, and monsters to kill on World of Warcraft.

He spends most of his day alone in a truck. Now it's him occasionally complaining of neglect. I make sure to baby him to make up for it, though.

 

[proteanmix]

I'm never been in a relationship with an INTP but I have two IxTP siblings. I don't really have a Susy Sunshine reply, but here it is.

The obliviousness can be so strong that you wonder if they're doing it on purpose. Since they're my bro and sis, the relationship is familial and not romantic so I've learned not to take it personally, but I don't believe you should be required to do such a thing in a romantic relationship.

You've gotten advice to just tell you SO person, but I understand as another Fe-dom that you wish they would just notice without prompting, without you having to explicitly tell them, break it down for them, explain to them why something is necessary or why you want them to do something. You feel like you've got to write a critical exegesis to do simple shit and that can be exhausting and sometimes I think done just to tire you out and get you off their backs.

When they don't notice, it's very easy to believe they don't care. And to be honest, sometimes they don't care; it's not viewed as important and it they will become stubborn mules and absolutely intractable if they feel like you're forcing them to do something. I have often felt like I'm always nagging at them to do what I view as simple relational things, that I've just given up and learned to do without. Like I said, I've decided that's not something I'm going to deal with romantically. That's your choice to make because high chances are it will continue unless you can make them see how and why it's important.

I'm going to say a little story that really was a revelation to me. I was a senior in high school and had gotten my first C in a class. I had never gotten anything lower than a B before and I had been coming home complaining of how hard that class was for me and how I just wasn't getting it. My sis was 17 and my bro was 15 and we all got our report cards in the mail. As soon as I saw that C, I burst into tears and they looked at me and started laughing. Of course, I started Fe-raging at them and they saw that I meant business but I guess over the years I came to see that moment as insight into what their instinctual responses are. They've smoothed out considerably over the years, but their baseline response to most things is just not to see the emotional value in situations. But don't want to necessarily pin that on ITPs, because many people are like that.

If you're looking for more attentiveness it's going to have to be an internal revelation they reach on their own. Or, and once again I'm going to be honest, you've got to be very subtle in how you "get" them to do better. My INFJ friend's boyfriend is ISTP and she's had to sit and ponder strategies to make him more attentive towards her...how to switch a light on inside of him to pay attention to their relationship. That's more work than I want to do, but if you're willing to do that then do so. There are both positives and negatives to going with the flow and while I agree most IxTPs in my experience and low maintenance, unfussy people their particular strain of passivity can be difficult to surmount.

 

[21%]

I just want to say that I totally feel for you. I struggle with the same problem and I know how hard it is.

We need a support group for this. Long-distance is hard enough in itself. No contact is horrible.

 

[Totenkindly]

Someone should start a support group for INTP spouses.

I'm surprised nobody has thought of this before!

ROFL!!!

... yeah, reading the first part of this thread... I'm so sorry you're struggling with this, and yes, this is vintage INTP esp for males. The cerebral nature of processing relationships means he naturally thinks everything is fine if you are getting along fine, and the emotional pain you're feeling at the space isn't something he necessarily feels or grasps in full. Even when you bring it up, he might still not quite get how bad it is; you just need to work on a compromise, that he at least texts or communicates with you... you just gotta figure out the frequency in a way that to him does not feel like a cage or he might go p.a. on you.

It's not easy, honestly. I would like to think I have figured some of this out over the years myself, but I still had to negotiate some with my INFP because I was more distant than he wanted. It took me a little time to figure out a new balance in my head and invest during the lull periods.

(There are some INTPs to whom the communication means nothing. For me, I do get SOMETHING out of the communication with him during the absent periods -- we only get to see each other every few days -- but it's so limited that for me, it's almost worse/more frustrating than not talking at all, because texting is so limited in what it can convey. I'll do e-mail, if I can. But I understand other types get a lot more emotional energy just from that little periodic sense of connection.)

 

[proteanmix]

Some additional thoughts.

I've tried off and on to identify what the things are that lead to the disconnect. When you believe you've pared down to bare necessities you start analyzing every little thing for merit and significance. When I checked my email this morning, this came to me.

In my inbox sits two emails from Yahoo News and another from Forbes.com from an INTJ friend of mine.

There is nothing personal about these emails. Aside from the message saying "______ has sent you a news article." there's a brief message from my friend stating, "I know you're into this, you may want to know."

It's small stuff like that let's me know someone THINKS of me. They have me on their mind, they've listened to what I've said, it just doesn't blow over them. It is harder to get these types of responses from IxTPs, there seems to be no signs that they've ingested what you say to them, no signs that they've listened, you often feel like you talk too much, but all that talking you're doing is you giving out scads of information about yourself, what important to you, what your interests are. I try to show people in small ways, 'you are on my mind.' Nothing extravagant is necessary.

But something needs to happen for me to know there's some life in this. I can relate to your desire to develop more not give a shit. For me not to give a shit about someone or something requires total apathy and detachment. I'm either there or I'm not and if I'm there then it's not point in standing around in a corner. I mean, am I at a party or am I not at a party, meaning I'm going to interact and engage.

I particularly feel you on this problem because it's an issue I've dealt with for a long time. The best solution I've come up with is to not care, to do without, to make do on less. I remember being in college and calling home and trying to talk to my sis and bro, see what's going on with them, how they're doing, and getting rushed off the phone or being told straight up they don't want to talk, they were playing a video game, or getting the phone passed off to my mother. I used to wonder why they never called me to see what's going on, why I had to find everything out that was going on with them secondhand. I don't talk to them much unless we're literally in each other's presence.

I wonder if I'm going to have much contact with them in the future, when we all have our own families or if we're just going to be kind but distant siblings only speaking on holidays and birthdays. It makes me very sad and I'm already trying to get ahead of the curve and start detaching now so it won't be as big of a deal later.

 

[Fidelia]

I can tell you from experience that it sucks to always feel like the needier party. It makes you hover more, or get emotional, both of which are going to annoy the other person and make them less likely to ante up with what you need. T types are always going to be able to feel more detached than you. Introverted T types are also going to be fine without a whole lot of regular contact and don't see why you can't do the same.

I think Protean is right that it pretty much comes down to whether you are willing to be the one making the adjustments all the time. I realized after some time that T types are not likely to be the ones to come to you, and if they don't use a lot of Fe, they really aren't going to feel obligated to either, or expend the energy to think of what might make you feel like you are important to them. If you are hoping for it to happen without you trying to make it happen, it won't. If you try, your success isn't guaranteed. It can really do a number on your self-esteem, even if you are normally pretty confident. If this is already affecting your personal behaviour negatively, it is time to consider if you can comfortably and willingly make those adjustments in the long term without doing serious damage to yourself.

 

[Zoom]

It's just a thought (I'm an IxTP, for reference), but one surefire way with me to initiate conversation even if I'm off in la-la land and not interested in the existence of humanity is to bring up topics I'm interested in intellectually. I can smell false enthusiasm a mile away, but a quiet "I just wrote a story, *what do you think of the plot?" would be golden. I love connecting with certain people, just more on an intellectual plane normally.

Strictly emotional, talking about how one's day is contact would be draining for me. But it's not rocket science, and takes five minutes to do. Also, the "Feelery snuggle bumpkins" side of me developed a lot due to my youth so I see where ye're coming from.

*Pick almost any intellectual topic that can be analyzed.

P.S. It's quite possible he is just as susceptible to wavering confidence as you are, just in another area. Ye seem to be looking at yourself through his template.

 

[Spamtar]

Maybe you should find another boyfriend to keep you company during the week.

 

[JustHer]

You ENFJs and your need for contact....

 

[LeafAndSky]

Fundamentally - I want to lose my own 'give a shit'. I want to be like some else

It's probably going to work better to be yourself.

I understand how hurt you feel, over and over. I was with someone, long-term, who didn't need or want intimacy, and that eventually broke the relationship. Now I'm in a (long-distance for now) relationship where we happily never miss a night talking on the phone: sharing the events of the day, our observations, our feelings, new things we've learned or interesting things we've seen. What a difference.

If you're the kind of person who likes contact and enjoys doing little affectionate things for other people, maybe you could consider happily being that person? You're probably really great just the way you are, and as you age you'll get more greater.

 

[seamaid]

I don't have much advice to offer at the moment, but I also completely understand where you're coming from, since I have an ISTP bf who behaves exactly the same way as your INTP in that regard. And emotionally, since I have similar expectations as you relationship-wise, I go through the same roller-coaster internally. It's upsetting, I agree...