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[INFJ] INFJ and people obsessions

Lily flower

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Jun 28, 2010
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I was wondering if this is true for other INFJ's. I tend to become "addicted" to certain people in my life. These are people that I think about constantly and get very emotionally tied to, in both positive and negative ways. This has been true for guys, but has also been true for some female friends.

I have wondered recently if this is a person fault, or if it goes with the INFJ personality.

It does have some positives (like making it easier to be faithful in my marriage), but also clearly some very big negatives (like scaring people off or allowing others behavior to affect my emotions so strongly).
 

SilkRoad

Lay the coin on my tongue
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May 26, 2009
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I was wondering if this is true for other INFJ's. I tend to become "addicted" to certain people in my life. These are people that I think about constantly and get very emotionally tied to, in both positive and negative ways. This has been true for guys, but has also been true for some female friends.

I have wondered recently if this is a person fault, or if it goes with the INFJ personality.

It does have some positives (like making it easier to be faithful in my marriage), but also clearly some very big negatives (like scaring people off or allowing others behavior to affect my emotions so strongly).

INFJs do have that obsessive thing going on a lot of the time even if we hide it well. I have to say it's only really happened to me with men. I've had a fair number of female friends who I love dearly, but in most cases we're all pretty independent types. So though I may appreciate and love them and enjoy spending time with them, etc, it would be very rare for me to need/want to see them all the time, or to feel jealous of their friendships with others, or anything like that. I was a bit jealous of the friendship between my two best friends for a while, since they were spending more time with each other than with me. I told one of them this years later and she was a bit apologetic and said she knew what it was like to feel jealous in friendships. It's not common for me though.

With guys though...ouch. I've been very obsessed either within a relationship, or with guys who I was friends with but I felt it was progressing to more. This basically translates to thinking about them constantly, worrying a lot about whether I'm being either too clingy or too standoffish and trying to get the balance just right, etc. I admit I am just a little bit of a stalker. There's at least one guy I used to like who I still Facebook stalk a bit, although I have little or no feelings for him now (besides some annoyance). It's more like an ingrained bad habit at this point. And obviously, in these cases either the relationship has ended, or with the guys I liked, either they got involved with someone else and I couldn't handle it or it was awkward on their side as well so the friendship ended; or I got tired of them using me for emotional girlfriend benefits while keeping me dangling; etc. Then, the obsessiveness shows up by me feeling terribly sad and hurt and not being able to detach for months or possibly years.

Yeah...I definitely have this problem! As you say though, I think in the best-case scenarios it can make us extremely devoted and loving. But when it's outside of a committed relationship, it's a bit scary all around, allows others to over-affect us, and doesn't really lead to something good.
 

Bamboozle

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I'm not an INFJ but I found your post really interesting!—especially since I think I have my own version of 'people obsession'. When I meet people I like, I tend to think a lot about them, trying to figure out what they're really like—what their mental logic is, how they approach the world. Every time I see them is like being presented with a new case-study and, later, I comb our interaction for further pieces of the puzzle.

I would say that this habit has been thoroughly developed by having an INTJ around (who used to have a very sensitive Fe when they were younger). So we tend to spend a lot of time discussing other people we think are interesting and joking about them or just figuring out things that don't fit out understanding.

In a way, I suspect we use these models we build to figure out how to better approach these people.

I suppose the difference is that I wouldn't say that this actually strengthens our emotional bonds to the people. That is, I tend to be quite fond or interested by the people I think about like this. But I don't know that I like them anymore after it, as such.

Thanks for sharing.
 

Vasilisa

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These are people that I think about constantly and get very emotionally tied to, in both positive and negative ways.

...

It does have some positives (like making it easier to be faithful in my marriage), but also clearly some very big negatives (like scaring people off or allowing others behavior to affect my emotions so strongly).

To be honest, this seems to jibe with some of the ISFJ darkside descriptions I have read. Sometimes called the need-to-be-needed phenomenon. I don't mean to insult ISFJs by implying that they're all "addicts" or anything. I'm fond of them. And I hope you don't take offense, if you are very tied to the infj type. But it may be something else worth looking at in your search for answers and growth.
 

SilkRoad

Lay the coin on my tongue
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To be honest, this seems to jibe with some of the ISFJ darkside descriptions I have read. Sometimes called the need-to-be-needed phenomenon. I don't mean to insult ISFJs by implying that they're all "addicts" or anything. I'm fond of them. And I hope you don't take offense, if you are very tied to the infj type. But it may be something else worth looking at in your search for answers and growth.

I'm pretty convinced of my INFJ-ness, but I also know that I'm a pretty ISFJ-like INFJ... I think the obsessiveness can be common to both, though. Although in my case it only arises in rather specific (romantically influenced) situations, and I'm pretty easygoing and open about my other friendships/relationships.
 

Lark

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Jun 21, 2009
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29,569
When I'm dating I think I could be more F than T from the sound of it.
 
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