sorry, but you are a woman?
Biography
Mother of an adult son, three grandchildren, great partner.
Type
INFJ
Location
New Zealand
Interests
reading, travel,
Occupation
Counsellor
I'm going to assume you're a reasonably healthy and socially skilled person and go from there with my thoughts.
INTJs naturally seek their value in their intelligence; it's also something highly valued in others. Some INTJs only see this as book intelligence; others (like me) learn to see this in all sorts of skills. If he's male and INTJ, it's likely drawing him into an arena where he's not competent is going to make him over-think everything to the point of inaction. There's a stereotype of PhDs being book-smart but a little socially awkward; how well does he fit this? If you're trying to engage him socially you might find he's soo out of his comfort zone that he closes up.
Can you use NFJ skillz to meet him in an arena where you don't feel intimidated by him, and he doesn't feel incompetent? Any shared interests?
Also, INTJs tend to be paranoid about people "wasting my time." Which isn't to say that he thinks any individual that wastes his time is a waste of time themselves. Instead, he probably has an extensive mental list of Things to Accomplish. And being an Ni dom (INxJ), as I'm sure you know, sometimes it's hard to deal with real life enough to the point where you're really mastering things like you dream up in Ni land. So often he's probably making a pro/con list of what he's achieving by talking with x person, and if it appears there's more cons he probably is thinking of getting out of the conversation.
(Note: This sounds really cold. My experience is that it's more of a reflection of my desire to be valued as competent and ingenious, which, when mixed with a near-impossible standard that we set for ourselves, is a constant let-down. Plus we're always pretty sure we could achieve our plans if we just had more time and resources to devote to it. It's not so much a reflection of the people we interact with as it is our natural psyche.)
That being said, when I don't feel stressed with my course load, I'm pretty decent at setting interpersonal interaction and relationship-building as a goal, and genuinely enjoying my interaction. Perhaps you could plant it in his brain that he wants to get better at interpersonal relationships?
Also: When people tell me what I should do, it makes me stubborn enough to avoid doing it at all costs sometimes. (If it's relatively trivial.) I still handwrite in all-caps because my grade 7 English teacher told me it wasn't appropriate for handwritten assignments and it made me never want to write "properly" ever again just to spite her. And she was my favourite teacher, btw. I loved her! I just hate being told what to do.
I read on another forum an INTJ father with an INTJ son saying how if he wants the lawn mowed, instead of asking his son, he makes the teeny-tiniest mention of how he himself wants to get to it later in the day after he's run his errands, and by the time he's home, his son has mowed the lawn.
We love doing things for others if we know they'll value them. It also feeds our need to "understand"--if you drop tiny clues he might chase after them. (Don't be resentful if he doesn't get it, though.) Just don't expect him to listen to you directly telling him what to do.
