Ok, so I poised Question of intjs and testing the other day. Cause it sort of "feels" that way.
I think I figured this out.
Been on a trip to san fran and spent yesterday working with an intj engineer at a another company.
55 years or so, sweet threads of Fi, moderate to mild Te in normal convo.
Then he looks at my instrument (not that you dirty minded entps, the actual instrument I sell). I have known this guy for about three years professionally.
When he looks at my "box" (this is fun), my stomach drops and I get kinda bummed out.
Why?
Becasue we will start down the NiTe path. I enjoy it if it is a path of troublshooting or mutual sharing.
Alas, when looks at my box, he is another path-discovery and assesment. He knows there are flaws.
Step by step, question by question he finds them. Always.
Like an autopsy of my equipment.
With an entp, I can sparkle and dazzle-distract or just confuse an intp-by random insanity.
With intjs on a "path", it is much harder to derail-i think they can "feel" what they don't know and dig until they find the pivot point-the crux, the flaw.
This is exactly right. It feels like this from the INTJ perspective. Without much Fe on our part, you can only persuade us with legitimate Te-style arguments. We can like you very much personally, and still evaluate on object in which you have invested much energy with dispassionate rigor?
Why do we do this, even when we have a good strong Fi? Because the object is not you, in our eyes.
There is a very strong parallel with SS's half-burrito story.
What is hard is that I seek to make my customers happy, due to a drive for emo affirmation and Fi mirrored happiness.
Problematically the end of the NiTe path typically ends up as a fundemental flaw-somthing I cannot resolve. Thus I failed in my nefi mandate of pleasing the other.
I can't remedy the intellectual inconsistancy/fundemental flaw in the product-which nefi translates into "unhappiness" thus I get kinda bummed out.
I totally understand this. It's actually one of the drawbacks of being a salesperson for a technical product, as opposed to a feel-good-happy product. (I in no way intend to demean feel-good-happy products ... I like to feel-good-happy, too.)
Intjs-is it enough to get to the end of the path and understand the truth?
Do you expect others to resolve?
Would you ideally create your own resolution?
This same dynamic might bubble up occasionally as a pattern in the intj/enfp relationship. I dunno though....
I'm not sure quite what you're getting at with these questions. I very much appreciate your observations that led to them. Very perceptive.
Really, all it is, HP, is that our NiTe evaluates a technical thingie functionally. That's it. No more, no less. We need to know what it does, how it works, how it doesn't work. Often, when we're done, if it's something we use or need to use, we know how it works better than the designers, better than the manual writers, better than technical support. We're like that.
That said, the other thing we're evaluating for is whether its functionality is useful to
us. It could be a perfectly good
Salad Shooter (tm), but if we don't have a salad, or we don't wish to shoot a salad, then we don't need it.
Alternatively, it could have a dozen "flaws", all of which we pinpoint, and when all is said and done, we still want the product, because it does more than your competition's product, or does something we need that nothing else does.
And there isn't one talking point you can use to persuade us otherwise. Your best bet is to be totally honest: we respect that, and will keep doing business with you when you're honest. We don't trust easily, but we really want to trust you. You create a very strong emotional bond (of respect) when you're upfront and honest with an INTJ. You might not make this sale, but we'll
listen to your next sales pitch for another product, rather than send you away.
I think this dynamic does come up in ENFP/INTJ relationships. I think SS's burrito story covered a lot of it.
And I think it comes up in that you ENFPs seem to admire how we INTJs just block off our feelings and analyze, wishing you could do that so easily. And it comes up in that INTJs just love how you ENFPs emote and care and don't seem to be hurt by it (or at least not for long), and we admire that resiliency.
But when INTJ and ENFP finally get to know each other for real, each learns the truth. The INTJ learns that the ENFP's emotions are just as fragile as his own, and the ENFP learns that the INTJ's ability to fend off emotions with logic is not so robust as it first appears.