• You are currently viewing our forum as a guest, which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. By joining our free community, you will have access to additional post topics, communicate privately with other members (PM), view blogs, respond to polls, upload content, and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free, so please join our community today! Just click here to register. You should turn your Ad Blocker off for this site or certain features may not work properly. If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us by clicking here.

[INFP] An INFP's Dilemma or Just Mine?

heart

heart on fire
Joined
May 19, 2007
Messages
8,456
I
When the ESFP left on his wife's birthday right after Christmas, it messed up the INFP for weeks and months afterwards, and he wouldn't talk to the ESFP when he'd run across him because he felt the ESFP was not truly repentant for his behavior and he felt he also had to take a "moral stance" on the issue and thus refuse to talk to him. But it was very much a personal and religious failure on the ESFP's part to just leave (and especially without even telling the INFP directly or "saying goodbye" -- he just DISAPPPEARED), and it was taken very personally.


Well, re-reading this and have to say that I have never broken a relationship with someone to "punish" them or force some kind of repentace from them. It seems really foreign to me. I wonder what other INFP would think.

For some reason I just bristle at the notion that one must accept any sort of behavior from someone just because they happen to be a friend or relative or that one should never pass a judgement on whether one wants to continue a friendship or relationship with someone who shows less than caring or honest actions.

To me it is like saying just because birth, luck or fortune brought you together with an individual, you are a bad person if you someday find out more about them and question your association with them.
 

Meursault

New member
Joined
May 29, 2007
Messages
44
It may comfort you to know that everyone is flawed, whether openly or not. Do you hold it against those who want to hide their flaws? I'm pretty sure a lot of people do that, unless they're really unselfconscious.

It's weird that you say you like openly flawed people but also say that it's flawed people in the past who have hurt you. I'm not sure how you can like flawed people, in that case, and only let those kinds of people into your life, when logically speaking the people who hurt you would have to be flawed, too.

FineLine and Maverick have points. The highest price of idealism is bitter disappointment, and if you set the bar too high, who's ever going to meet it? But the paradox here is that you seem to like flaws - which everyone has - but not like humanity. If you like flaws, you should LOVE humanity, hehe. I mean, what better place to find them?

your post is sort of representative of many that responded, so this is sort of to all who were along the same lines--i guess i should have asked that people read my posts in the thread that prompted this one before responding--if you had, you might see that this line of reasoning is sort of off the mark concerning me.

i agree that all people are flawed, but there is a huge difference between all of the people who faking not being so (usually a facade they can only maintain at the expense of others), and those who aren't--i don't hate those people but i find them tiring.

what i mean by "openly flawed" are people who admit or accept they are flawed--in the radical honesty sense.

my post wasn't really a question about my not being able to accept people, or blaming or hating the people who have hurt me--as i said in it, i don't hate them. i have trust issues because people lie constantly about everything, and lies destroy trust, lies damge people--but like i said in my opening post, i have absolutely no ill will to any one in my past or my present...i am not even sure i ever stop loving them--i certainly wish them well and am always glad to hear that they are happy...and i take full responsibility for the part i played in allowing them to have an effect on me.

my original post was pretty rambling, so i understand the confusion (also i understand that people tend to respond to what they think is said rather than to what is actually said, especially when responding to long poorly written rambles). it is very hard and uncomfortable for me to talk about myself, when i try i flail.

my hermit-ism is not so much because i hate people but because when i love it is so intense and long lasting but is never returned and this has become too great a risk for me now--it takes too much out of me (i would have thought it would have gotten easier with age but it has only gotten harder)--it is completely out of fear, i admit, fear of loving and not being loved back...again. but now after being a hermit for so long, it has striped me of my ability to interact naturally with people, so now part of my hermit-ism is to just not impose the mess-of-me on others =)

cynicism is not an option for me...and i don't think it is even in my make up--instead of anger and cynicism, i would just collapse into severe depression. we all have to chose our own paths. i was just curious if anyone else had chosen mine. if it was personal or a function perhaps of type.
 

heart

heart on fire
Joined
May 19, 2007
Messages
8,456
i have absolutely no ill will to any one in my past or my present...i am not even sure i ever stop loving them--i certainly wish them well and am always glad to hear that they are happy...and i take for responsibility for the part i played in allowing them to have an effect on me.


I can agree with this. I have no "ill will" towards any people whom I have fet Ihad to either limit or cut contact with and I certainly hope they have happiness in their lives and I can see how my own weaknesses or limits contributed to me feeling the need to limit or break contact. I get plagued with second emotional thoughts about these situations but intellectually I know I have done what I had to do for myself. It can be hard.
 

Meursault

New member
Joined
May 29, 2007
Messages
44
Well, re-reading this and have to say that I have never broken a relationship with someone to "punish" them or force some kind of repentace from them. It seems really foreign to me. I wonder what other INFP would think.

ahh, so we are very similar after all =). this was my point in the other thread--to me many of those posts over there sounded like people punishing people.

as for behavior--as i said to toonia, there is a big difference, to me at least, in saying that you do not like what someone is doing or saying, and in saying "i don't like/accept you as a person."
 

GZA

Resident Snot-Nose
Joined
Aug 13, 2007
Messages
1,771
MBTI Type
infp
I wouldn't say I've been extremely hurt by people, but I have felt kind of alone for much of my life... but more in the way that I was just a different person. Sometimes, especially in the last couple of years, I've just kind of gone out and tried to sort of just "mingle" a bit more and see if people will just bite. Sometimes its good, people find me funny and pleasant to talk to, but on the other hand I really just feel like I have a tonne of aquaintances and no real friendships. I certainly have no confidents of any kind... Although I am fascinated by people and the depth of every individual's soul, I don't think I've actually really gone into someone and understood them, and vice versa.

So... does the whole NF or INFP thing kind of have a fear of intimacy? I think I might have a mild fear of intimacy. I value privacy and my own space so much... I don't even ever have people to my house because it would feel weird to have other people in my space. I've never really let anyone in my head.
 

runvardh

にゃん
Joined
Jun 23, 2007
Messages
8,541
MBTI Type
INFP
Enneagram
6w7
Instinctual Variant
sx/so
I don't fear intimacy, I fear bitches who want to get intimate so that eventually they can walk off while I pay out the ass. :nice:
 

quietmusician

New member
Joined
Nov 29, 2008
Messages
320
MBTI Type
INFJ
Enneagram
4
in the thread about when and if INFs give up on people, toonia disliked my comments and searched my old posts and found what she felt were conflicts between what i was saying in that thread and what i had said at other times.

because of this i went back and re-read all of my old posts here, and this got me to thinking about something--i would admit that i am internally conflicted a lot these days about what i think of people in general and what i think of people specifically--and from reading posts on infpgc, it seems that this may be problem of older infps in general--on the one hand i have a deep love of humanity and the idea of people, but on the other i have been treated very badly by people who meant a lot to me over my life and avoid close relationships for the most part now. to prevent cynicism and maintain my idealism, i have largely kept myself from interacting with people for the last two years.

i don't have any ill feelings toward those people who hurt me, i've never been able to hold a grudge and i don't see them as bad people, but i do have trust and attachment issues from it, and to be honest, for the last two years i have mostly been a hermit, and i now prefer the company of people who are openly flawed in some way to people who seem to have it all together (i spent a day last week working with a mildly retarded woman and it was the most pleasant day i've had in a long time with another person, because there was no gamesmanship, no dissembling, no power-plays, it was just really honest--it made me sad to think how life could be if everyone wasn't motivated by fear and trying to convince everybody else that they aren't as screwed up as the next person and don't really suck like we all do).

anyway, my question is this: is this something other infps here have experienced a conflict between your generalized love of humanity and the reality of how you have been treated that causes sort of a disconnect in your thinking? and if so, have you reacted like i have, to preserve the love of humanity at the expense of actually having people in your life?

(ps: before the triumvirate of toonia, cafe, and heart jump on me with "aha!"--i didn't bail on anyone, they all bailed on me--the boys i knew left for prettier girls and the girls i knew left for husbands and kids and life got in the way with everyone else--married people are allergic to single people...and by 35 just about everyone you ever knew is now married...).


I get what you're saying. On my "up" days my posts are usually a lot lighter and I tend to add light hearted sarcasm in them. And on my "down" ones I seem a bit edgy and I go straight into severe cynicism and criticize everything. Some people don't understand when we do this because we are so conflicted internally. I can be something one day, but can't guarantee you'll be talking to the same individual the next day. On the darker days I will do everything possible not to feel anything remotely good and I think it translates through my posts. And everyone has either failed or bailed me. So you are not alone.
 

Anja

New member
Joined
May 2, 2008
Messages
2,967
MBTI Type
INFP
I had this existential crisis for about twenty years. It took a lot of work to learn how to accept what is rather than what I thought it could or wanted it to be. It's not an easy task for anyone regardless of personality types.

The answer for me lay in acceptance. Some days it boils down to "suck it up." Other days it's more matter of fact. I can do both exceedingly well after plenty of practice.

And I can say that I'm more content than I have ever been.

Think they taught it to me in kindergarten - "Live and let live." Doesn't take so long now to accomplish that state of mind does it? ;)
 

Flutterby

New member
Joined
May 27, 2010
Messages
36
MBTI Type
INFP
Enneagram
5
To the person who said that INFP's need an insincere audience: (Paraphrasing, sorry, your post was pages back and I don't want to go back and find it)

I hate insincerity! It makes me suspicious of the person's motivations. If I feel someone is being insincere I will stop seeing them or I will confront them. (Unless I work with them, in which case I will see it, pretend like I don't notice it and carry on because I go to work to make money and it's not a social club.)

As for idealism, I was very naive and idealistic when I was younger, and I was constantly disappointed when the results didn't live up to my ideals. This was compounded by the fact that I felt like my inner nature was being rejected all the time, (I live in what I feel is a very extroverted culture and a lot of people would say that I was too quiet, or they would overestimate my ability to do something that involved other people, and I in turn would constantly not understand why I was getting so cranky and why I couldn't be like other people.)

In any case, when I went through some very hard times personally where strange people were deliberately being cruel to me for their own entertainment, I began to hate people with a passion, whereas before I had believed there was a way to help everyone. With time and research I became more realistic about what could and couldn't be done, and nowadays I'm mostly indifferent to most people, but sometimes when a stranger is rude to me I temporarily switch back to hating people very intensely for a short period of time until I calm down and fall back into being indifferent. Finding out about introversion and extroversion has helped me a lot in being able to accept and understand people better. I've also learnt that you can't help someone who won't help themselves, that you can not control others but you can control yourself and that the quickest way to ruin your own life is to try to live someone else's for them. I also learnt a lot about being *very* careful about who you do and don't spend time with, and that if I am spending time with someone who is consistently rude to me the best thing to do is to stop spending time with them! With some people it will be good riddance, and with other people you will find that they miss you so much they beg to see you and stop being rude! I also like reading those pop psychology books, I know a lot of people sneer at them but as with everything you have to make up your own mind and they sometimes have very helpful ideas.
 

paradox fox

New member
Joined
Feb 17, 2010
Messages
132
MBTI Type
INFP
Enneagram
4
I believe there's beauty in everyone, and all you have to do is look for it. That's all very well until you take into account, oh yeah, just like me everyone has ugliness inside too. If you choose to see only the good parts in people, the bad parts will come and bite you in the private parts.

That's about as close to "love of humanity" as I get. Once in a while I can do compassion for humanity. But I don't know all of humanity, do I, so how can I love it? (Let alone define it.)

Sure I have ideas of what kind of friends I'd like or what traits I'd like in a man, but how can I expect everyone to live up to that? I used to want to fix people. But some people don't see anything that needs fixing, and even if they did they wouldn't want my help. How would I feel if someone came along and tried to turn me into something just like them? Pretty mad, that's how.

There's good and bad in everyone. I just have to decide what kind of bad I'm able to tolerate in other people, and learn to deal with the bad in myself in the best way possible. It's a learning process for me to try to think realistically.

That's it I think.
 

PotatoPeeler68

New member
Joined
Apr 19, 2016
Messages
44
MBTI Type
INFP
I definitely feel you here.

Most of the time, i would rather be by those type of people too. It makes me happier than most anyone else can.
There are a lot of annoying people in my life and, it's sometimes hard to look at them positively, so you just got to
change your point of view so a grudge doesn't happen to develop.
 
Top