[ISTP] ISTP freaking out... as much as any ISTP ever freaked out @ anything. Help please.

[missfixit]

For me, once I am stuck in the Dreaded Logic Loop of Doom (DLLD) the only thing that can pull me out is another person.

This might be why I am not attracted to other Introverted thinkers. Someone has to slap me and say "get a grip" or "you're being ridiculous", or maybe give me some insight as to why the things I'm anxious about aren't that big of a deal.

Generally this has been my ENFJ mother. Sometimes it's the ENTJ boyfriend. But somebody I TRUST has to force me out of it. I can also get into a Chicken-Little-the-sky-is-falling-we're-all-gonna-die-on-Tuesday mentality if get trapped long enough.

I have also learned that I will never make romantic decisions based on my feelings, and that's ok. I just can't.

 

[Esoteric Wench]

For me, once I am stuck in the Dreaded Logic Loop of Doom (DLLD) the only thing that can pull me out is another person.

OK, that cracked me up. I think we're going to shamelessly co-opt DLLD in our home.

I have also learned that I will never make romantic decisions based on my feelings, and that's ok. I just can't.

I would love to hear more about this. OK, that's true, but also my ISTP boyfriend is in the room with me here and he wants to know more about this.

If you don't make them based on your feelings, how do you make them? Thanks so much missfixit.

 

[missfixit]

I would love to hear more about this. OK, that's true, but also my ISTP boyfriend is in the room with me here and he wants to know more about this.

If you don't make them based on your feelings, how do you make them? Thanks so much missfixit.

Let me put it this way. If my feelings are good toward a person, then they cease to be important in the decision making process. I have to make a decision based on whether the relationship is logical for me.

So for instance, if I fall "madly in love" (whatever that means) with a man who lives 2,000 miles from me and we can't pick up our lives to move toward one another, then it doesn't matter how much I love him-- I can't do it. I'm not an NF and I won't pine about what could have been.

But if the relationship seems feasible and comfortable, but my feelings are highly negative, THEN I will try to figure out why I feel that way. then feelings are useful. But only in that scenerio.

I don't have rapturous feelings that take me on an LSD high or anything. I can usually separate my feelings from my thinking on a subject.

On the other hand once I make a decision to commit it's done. There's no going back. I don't give up commitments like that. So it's a huge step and I get stuck in endless self-doubt.

 

[missfixit]

^ Wowz, that's frigid!

Say it ain't so!

How on earth is that frigid? It's called reality.

That's a real example. There is a really great guy who asks me to marry him about every other week, but he lives many states away and I won't uproot my children and move across the country to be with him. Because other things take priority over my romantic feelings, and my kids come first.

Not frigid -- I love my kids.

 

[countrygirl]

There is a really great guy who asks me to marry him about every other week, but he lives many states away and I won't uproot my children and move across the country to be with him. Because other things take priority over my romantic feelings, and my kids come first.

Not frigid -- I love my kids.

Sounds practical. Why doesn't he move to where you live if he wants to marry you?

 

[missfixit]

Sounds practical. Why doesn't he move to where you live if he wants to marry you?

because he has children too. See? Somebody would have to uproot their kids. So reality takes precedence over our feelings. I don't think he's an NF. Although he persists in asking me, nevermind that i've turned him down about 40 times so far. I wonder what his type is, he's incredibly persistent. I know he's an E/J.

Anyway that's not the point. lol

The point is that my feelings have to take a backseat to my thinking. And that's ok.

 

[Esoteric Wench]

Wowz, that's frigid! Say it ain't so!

perfectgirl, I don't think that this is frigid. But I do think it is VERY different from the way you, an INFP, sees the world.

I don't think I could have ever successfully dated an S (much less an ST) before mastering MBTI theory. Let me quote myself when I spoke about this issue in another thread:

I talk about love with a capital L. This is the kind of love that the angels sing about. That you stand upon a mountaintop and proclaim to the world. That poets write about. This is love in its conceptual form. And being able to articulate one's feelings is really important for this kind of love. (How very NF of me, btw.)

There was a time in my life that I would have said this kind of love was the only real kind of love there was. That is Real with a capital R. And, I would have been ready to tell the Sensors I know that there was something wrong with them because they didn't express their feelings in the way I did. I might have accused them of being unable to dig deep into their feelings. Sort of like they had some emotional block. I might even have gently encouraged them to go to therapy to help them get in touch with their feelings and get unblocked.

I've since come to understand that I was looking at things the wrong way. I was assuming that everyone thought like me. This was such a fundamental assumption for me that it had never even occurred to me that there was another way to think about love.

My boyfriend is a concrete thinker. He does not speak my native language (of abstraction) very well at all. So when he hears me make heartfelt declarations about how much I love him, he sometimes asks himself, Why don't I feel that way, too? Is there something wrong with me? Do I just not care for her as deeply as she cares for me? When he told me he was worried that he was fundamentally flawed in some way, here's what I told him:

"You exude love. You show me you love me everyday in dozens of little ways. Like when you gave me your jacket to keep me warm last night. Like when you made me omelets for breakfast yesterday. Like when you remembered how I said I didn't like the towels folded in a certain way and you folded them differently because you thought this would please me. These are all acts of love. This is love in its tangible form. And, this is you. There is nothing wrong with this.

"If you wait around until you can articulate your feelings in the way that I do, you're going to wait a very, very long time. You're never going to have these deep, meaningful emotional moments all the time that I have without even trying. You need to give up this idea that there is something wrong with you. There is nothing wrong with you. We just communicate our feelings in very different ways.

"You ask yourself if you are a deep person. But you are asking the wrong questions. Instead, why don't you ask yourself if you could be happy with a partner who primarily expresses herself not with actions, but by speaking about concepts?

"Are you willing to translate my expressions of love so you can understand them? Of course, I try to show you that I love you by my actions. But for me, the "money shot" is the act of me articulating my feelings. You need to ask yourself if that's enough for you. You need to ask yourself if you think I can make you happy for 30 years when in some ways we are speaking different languages and we will have to take this into account for the rest of our lives."

So no, I don't think this was frigid. It just took me a very long time to figure this out.

 

[missfixit]

My love is concrete. It does not sing songs or write poetry.

If you lose your job I will step up to the plate and do whatever is necessary to keep us afloat. If you get sick I will take care of you. I will not abandon my commitment. And I show love through sex. lol

 

[Esoteric Wench]

My love is concrete. It does not sing songs or write poetry.

If you lose your job I will step up to the plate and do whatever is necessary to keep us afloat. If you get sick I will take care of you. I will not abandon my commitment. And I show love through sex. lol

This is why I love my ISTP sooooooo much! Sooooooo much. I completely suck at all that stuff. He is my rock. He is my eye of the storm. He can find my keys when I can't.

 

[countrygirl]

Esoteric Wench, what you wrote was poetry to me, a love song

To understand and respond to someone else's needs that is expressed differently than your own, I consider compassion. After all, we all have needs. May I receive and practise such wisdom as you.

 

[JAVO]

This impending decision is causing my ISTP a LOT of stress. He doesn't know what happiness is and he's unsure if he's ever experienced it. Ergo, he's unsure if we should get married.

I'd be a little uncertain about marrying an esoteric wench too! :horor:



Maybe a more objective definition of happy would help? Since you're living together currently, he can ask himself if he would prefer things to be different. If so, identify what things. Either work on changing them together, or decide if they're deal-breakers.

 

[A window to the soul]

Re: ISTP/ENFP living together

How on earth is that frigid? It's called reality.

Golly, this conversation was gettin' too serious for my INFP taste... I was just playin' around; honest

I'd be a little uncertain about marrying an esoteric wench too! :horor:

Maybe a more objective definition of happy would help? Since you're living together currently, he can ask himself if he would prefer things to be different. If so, identify what things. Either work on changing them together, or decide if they're deal-breakers.

^INTP's = witty+smart+charming+++

---
Hmmmmmmmmm what's wrong with this whole "ISTP/ENFP living together" picture as described by the OP? class, anyone??

I suddenly feel like breaking out the violin...

It's like a "Monet"... far away it's a beautiful masterpiece, but up close it's a horrible mess, ugh!!!

Surely I'm not the only nerrrrd here that sees the classic breakdown of male/female dynamics in the worst way. Time for me to keep it real by throwing in my passionate INFP opinion... which comes straight out of the gut... aka, "the well of infinite wisdom" lol!

First of all, your man should be more concerned about making *you* happy and not himself. <<That alone should prompt a girly up and leave! ("cya!" )

I believe your first mistake though is living together. "Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?" ...wellllz, i'm jist sayin'.

Besides, what's wrong with low/no pressure living in your own place and dating? If you're uncertain about a relationship, it's best to back off, not move-in ... ugh, just a thought!

-crickets-

 

[Rainne]

 

[A window to the soul]

 

[Randomnity]

First of all, your man should be more concerned about making *you* happy and not himself. <<That alone should prompt a girly up and leave! ("cya!" )

What?!

I hope this is sarcasm.

 

[A window to the soul]

What?!

I hope this is sarcasm.

lol nope

 

[sLiPpY]

lol nope

oh, I iz' soz' gonna get you!

 

[Esoteric Wench]

First of all, your man should be more concerned about making *you* happy and not himself. <<That alone should prompt a girly up and leave! ("cya!" )

Wow! I appreciate you sharing your honest opintion perfectgirl. However, I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with your opinion here.

I don't want to derail this thread's original topic by talking about INFP's dominant Fi and how the INFPs I know (some of which are my best friends) can get so focused on how they think things SHOULD be that they forget to look at how things really are. I suspect there is a little bit of this going on here. That and perhaps a little youthfulness and lack of life experience. (Just a guess but right now this is the best guess I've got.)

Let me just say that I would not want to date a man who put his happiness before mine. I (once again respectfully) suggest that you shouldn't either. Such notions may sound all well and good in books or on the movie screen, but in real life they don't play out well.

I want a man who wants my happiness AS MUCH as he wants his own. I want a man who is an equal and who will challenge me.... not cowtow to my whims or blindly subsume his own needs for mine.

I believe your first mistake though is living together. "Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?" ...wellllz, i'm jist sayin'. Besides, what's wrong with low/no pressure living in your own place and dating? If you're uncertain about a relationship, it's best to back off, not move-in ... ugh, just a thought!

Again, I don't want to go too off topic here. The point of this thread was my ISTP's DLLD (Dreaded Logical Loop of Doom, see earlier posts).

However, let me just say that we lived four hours apart when we started dating so the trial period was a way for us to be in the same town together while he keeps his apartment in his original town for a couple of months. Sometimes economic realities trump ideals. (And this is not a bad thing.) And as for the milk and cow, unless you are of the ilk that believes in being celibate up until marriage then I see little difference between sleeping with your boyfriend while maintaining different apartments and a time limited trial run of living together. Again, I respect your right to have your opinion, but let me gently suggest that after you've lived long enough to see all the shades of gray in these things, you'll see that one dimensional cultural cliches about milk and cows don't really help in a three dimensional world.

Thanks again, though, for your honest input.

 

[toast]

My istp has this outlook on happiness too. He is always saying he isn't and has never been "happy", even when he definitely isn't 'unhappy' with things. He is very oblivious to 'meaning', but seems to know its there and just 'escaping' him. He doesn't really equate "fun", "comfort" or "pleasure" with "happy." Its a sort of pursuit he brings up when he is depressed or feeling insecure. He also talks about having difficulty coming to big decisions based on his feelings about them, and seems to envy that in others. He takes long periods of time to process things he considers "big" & usually longer if he feels the pressure of expectations or a deadline. It sounds like maybe stress like that in your situation, but if it happens a lot it could be depression and youth (as in he isn't ready to see marriage as you might). Seems to me like the best time for an istp to marry would be much much later in life than for an enfp.

 

[Esoteric Wench]

My istp has this outlook on happiness too. He is always saying he isn't and has never been "happy", even when he definitely isn't 'unhappy' with things. He is very oblivious to 'meaning', but seems to know its there and just 'escaping' him. He doesn't really equate "fun", "comfort" or "pleasure" with "happy." Its a sort of pursuit he brings up when he is depressed or feeling insecure. He also talks about having difficulty coming to big decisions based on his feelings about them, and seems to envy that in others. He takes long periods of time to process things he considers "big" & usually longer if he feels the pressure of expectations or a deadline. It sounds like maybe stress like that in your situation, but if it happens a lot it could be depression and youth (as in he isn't ready to see marriage as you might). Seems to me like the best time for an istp to marry would be much much later in life than for an enfp.

Very interesting, toast! This thread has helped me more than I expected. I think you articulated what my ISTP goes through very, very well. I like the term koan to describe his ruminations. A koan is a question which cannot be understood by rational thinking, yet it may be accessible by intuition. "Am I happy? What is happiness?" are questions that seem to baffle my ISTP. Intuition is way, way down on the ISTP's function of hierarchies. It is really difficult for him to tap into it at all, much less while feeling time pressure.

My ISTP is 41 and this is his first toying with the idea of marriage and the first time he's lived with a girlfriend. I'm 39 and was married once before. It's interesting to watch him work out the finer points of living with someone. I learned such things so long ago that I didn't even remember that at one time I had to learn them.