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[INFJ] INFJ's don't know what they want.

greenfairy

philosopher wood nymph
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INFJ's don't know what they want. True or false? Please discuss.
 

Destiny

A wannabe dog
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Haa I have the same problem too.

Like right now, I am in a serious relationship and we are already discussing about marriage a few years later. But I don't even know if marriage is my thing, I have so many things that I wanna do, so many places that I wanna explore, I don't wanna be tied down by marriage... But at the same time, if I were to stay unmarried forever, the people around me would keep asking me why I am single and stuff like that and they would keep trying to matchmake me with guys.
Idk, I don't even know what my sexuality is, there is a high chance I might be asexual. The same goes for friendships. I don't really feel the need for friendships but I still go around socializing with people and making friends anyway because society deems me weird if I don't have any friends.
Why do we need friends? Why do we need a romantic relationship? Until now, I still don't know why. Because I don't really need these in my life.


I often struggle between trying to fit into society vs remaining true to myself. I don't even know which is the real me anymore. I have given up a lot of my real needs/wants just to fit into society. Externally I seemed to fit in with society, but internally I feel so different from the people around me. The external me vs the internal me are two extremely different people.
 

á´…eparted

passages
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There are plenty of types that don't know what they want. It's not exclusive to INFJ's.

As a general for INFJ's? I am doubtful to say that it is.
 

greenfairy

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Come on, y'all are lame. 79 views and only two people have an opinion on the matter? Denial? Explanation? Anything?

Ok, here's my motivation for asking the question: I'm still thinking of making videos on youtube about typology, and I was going to make one about this, and I thought there was a good chance people would argue with me about it and say I'm wrong or something, so I wanted to get all that over with on here.
 

greenfairy

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There are plenty of types that don't know what they want. It's not exclusive to INFJ's.

As a general for INFJ's? I am doubtful to say that it is.

For sure, but I think if it is the case then INFJ's have their own flavor of it, and it might be true that they are more likely than say, INFP's because Fi gives a person an internal sense of preference.
 

Ene

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[MENTION=15773]greenfairy[/MENTION] I was wondering where you were just yesterday. And here you are. I'm glad to see you are still around.

Now to answer the question, I don't know about other INFJs but I usually have a pretty good idea of what I want. I'm a long range planner.
 

Fidelia

Iron Maiden
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I think I know what I want in a big picture sense. In little things, maybe not so much, but like my other decision making, it generally is just waiting for a missing bit of information and then the choice is very clear. If in doubt, particularly for smaller choices, I probably tend to fall back on what is familiar, more than something totally unknown. On the other hand, I think I've ended up being open to flying by the seat of my pants and improvising more than a lot of people feel comfortable doing.
 

Forever

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I think it very well applies to INFJ's just depends on what stage of life and how things turned up to be according their visions in mind. I could see if it went bad like it did for me, you can feel like you're wandering around with purposelessness before you find that thing to move you again.
 

Z Buck McFate

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Come on, y'all are lame. 79 views and only two people have an opinion on the matter?

^Lol!

I saw this earlier, but it's stated too broadly to even know where to begin- "don't know what they want" can mean so many different things (from food/clothes to the slightly less tangible aesthetic tastes of art/music, or bigger picture wants/goals, etc)- so that's why I passed it up. I find questions this general difficult to answer, because there are so many answers. I considered breaking it down into categories myself. but I don't even think it's the categories that determine how decisive I am so much as the context/situation I am in while needing to make a decision (or rather, in addition to the categories- there's several influences at play here). It's at the mercy of factors like- who is waiting on me to have an opinion (and why), if anyone will be impacted by what I want, is it something I want solely for myself or family or community, etc. I almost feel like I'd have to write a book to correctly answer the question in the op.
 

greenfairy

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^Lol!

I saw this earlier, but it's stated too broadly to even know where to begin- "don't know what they want" can mean so many different things (from food/clothes to the slightly less tangible aesthetic tastes of art/music, or bigger picture wants/goals, etc)- so that's why I passed it up. I find questions this general difficult to answer, because there are so many answers. I considered breaking it down into categories myself. but I don't even think it's the categories that determine how decisive I am so much as the context/situation I am in while needing to make a decision (or rather, in addition to the categories- there's several influences at play here). It's at the mercy of factors like- who is waiting on me to have an opinion (and why), if anyone will be impacted by what I want, is it something I want solely for myself or family or community, etc. I almost feel like I'd have to write a book to correctly answer the question in the op.
My point exactly. It's not an extremely well thought out idea, just something I was thinking/daydreaming about one day and thought I could make into a funny video; but the gist is Fe. I haven't fully fleshed it out and connected it to INFJ (I don't remember why I did in the first place), but the Fe connection is there; I was hoping some people would talk about feeling the same way so I could get more of an idea of how it works. Anyway, Fi seems to know what it wants more than Fe. Everyone has preferences, but since we define our feelings externally what we want inevitably becomes confused in some respects at some point with what other people want and what we think we should want, and it is easy for us to lose touch with our own personal feelings and what we personally want. Also I feel like even within myself I am composed of numerous selves and many of them want different things, and I wanted to know if other INFJ's felt the same way.

In some ways INFJ's do very much know what they want, as in they often have ideals and goals they are working toward, but it's not always clear what they want in smaller decisions, and even in some cases we might not know why we want the big things we want because we are influenced by other people. I think I'm less influenced by other people than by my multiple selves wanting conflicting things.

I find that my Fi-using friends find it much easier to make decisions, have preferences, know what those are, and then act on them. It's like it's instinctual.
 

the state i am in

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i think not knowing what i want comes from being a head type more than anything. losing the grounding of my body, being caught up in a world of seemingly infinite possibilities with nothing to anchor some of them over the others. this is made worse when commitments aren't solidly entrenched, and when my decision making process kind of postpones getting stuck in one and tends to hold myself at a distance like a foul smelling chess piece that i neither want to hold on to or let go of (and this is what feeling rushed and avoidant to choose feels like).

at the same time, when compared to my p friends, i have (and NEED) so much singularity of purpose, the deep feeling that i am not living out the moment as it emerges from the past and opens into definite paths but living towards something that is orienting me even more than the present. i feel attached to this kind of beacon for myself, which is still a felt sense and deeply aesthetically defined for me.

i think as i've gotten more grounded in an actionable sense of self, the more i've committed to goals that are important to me in spans of time my awareness is actually blooming enough to be able to recognize and sense, the more i feel like i know what i want. i know what i'm choosing between. i'm narrowing it down. i'm imposing the requisite focus needed to move forward and define the situation enough to do so, to know where to start, identifying less with the bigness of the world and more with my grounded anchored self moving within it. i think acceptance energy, which allows me to let go of the comprehensiveness i always crave, empowers me to focus on what i can control and check in more consistently with my immediate responsibilities and the probable outcomes of performing those in different ways.

i also notice, as an sx type, i generally express my preferences and desires naturally relatively strongly. i feel very connected to what would be better or more fulfilling for me. i can't not sense that. i feel like a bloodhound in that sense. having a better process to both manage that energy and also aggregate it over more carefully selected spans of time has made that more apparent. i almost always know what i want to eat, what music i want to listen to, what film i would be willing to watch, what topic i'd like to talk about. i am learning how to look down the line in more skillful ways, for what i want in the next year or two, what i would save up for (travel plans, for instance), for a better job that would improve my life style and flexibility. seeing it more clearly, i just feel what is likely to be there, and in that embodiment process i know i want it or i don't. unless i have allowed too many factors to sap away my vitality, i'm worn out and my choosing process is becoming increasingly lazy and unconscious, or i'm feeling down and struggling with most things not feeling good (and calibrating myself to make choices based on a context for myself that isn't equipped to really want when nothing will ultimately feel as good as i expect it to for me to commit to choosing it).
 

21%

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Most of the time I know exactly what I want. However, I sometimes change my mind and suddenly want something else. At any given moment I'm resolute in what I want though.
 

PocketFullOf

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I only know one INFJ, my mom, she's always known exactly what she wanted, or at least she does a good job of convincing others that she does.
 

1487610420

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I only know one INFJ, my mom, she's always known exactly what she wanted, or at least she does a good job of convincing others that she does.
 

Siúil a Rúin

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I usually know the inner concept of what I want, but get rather confused as to how to map that to reality.
 

Susurrus

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I think for INFJs it's more common for them to ask themselves "what is needed" more than "what do I personally want/need?" because perhaps on a philosophical level they want to contribute to a good greater than themselves for which to strive. This becomes a basis for their careers or personal life in that everything they're doing integrates with this ideal in some way. If you notice their functions, they are so "anti-self"(NiFeTiSe). Perhaps the closest function that can assist the INFJ in assigning a value to something is Ti, and even that function just takes apart the rationale of wanting something because it's not a very strong function to begin with.

In my opinion, it's not that INFJs don't know what they want but they don't know how to want something because the "how" is subservient to the why they should want it in the first place. The "why", of course, is defined by the ideal that they have set for themselves.
 

baccheion

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Judgers, especially guardians, seem to spend more time trying to figure out what they want and are usually clearer on it (right or wrong) than perceivers. xxTJs seem to be the clearest. Usually if you ask a judger what they want (out of life, in a relationship, etc), they'll have a list. That said, I usually don't listen to much to what a feeler says regarding what they want. They are usually bending the truth to avoid criticism, saying something other than what they want to come across in (what they think is) a positive way, or think they know what they want, but are actually not being honest with themselves.
 
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