I would be fine with that! Like I said I just don't want to sit on the tracks anymore.
She's the one who's been pushing to get me to meet her folks. I never suggested it but I did agree to it when she asked. Also she's the one who's been talking about the future all the time, asking me to help go with her to europe, disneyworld, california, all kinds of places.
I send one text a day. That's it. Usually to tell her about a get together with friends or to ask how she's feeling.
She goes through these shut-downs and then the first person she calls is her best friend. I know her feelings towards me are what brought about her shut-down. Whatever way she goes tomorrow, or tonight, I will be cool with. She is an amazing girl and I would love to be friends with her but I can not be ignored for days on end. It doesn't work for me.
I guess maybe this thread should just be retitled and moved into the relationship forum eh? She is definitely infj but she has had some rough spots in her life that has made her very fragile. I'm trying to be patient but it's crazy hard.
Anyway I'll stop with this thread now. Sorry to dump on all ya'll!
This is the first time I checked out this thread.
I've been in a similar situation a couple times. That is, the gal and I seemed to be in synch and we were both making all the right commitment noises when we were together, but then it turned out to be difficult to get together. The gal put up a lot of barriers, I felt like I was being kept at arm's length, etc.
It seemed like a big quandary. We were supposedly committed to make the relationship go forward; but OTOH I couldn't actually seem to get any personal time with the gal, which killed any possibility for forward motion.
In the couple cases where this happened to me, it usually turned out that we were engaged in a tug-of-war over timing. The woman honestly felt the relationship had a lot of promise and wanted it to move forward as much as me, but for reasons of her own she wanted it to progress very slowly. I, on the other hand, wanted to move it along pretty quickly.
The quickest way to get on the same page (or at least find out what was going on) was to be very direct and ask how she was scheduling the relationship in her head. For example, if we hadn't had sex yet and she was obviously derailing any attempts on my part in that direction, the quickest way to find out what was going on was to say, "The relationship seems to be going well, we seem to have a future together, I really like you and you seem to really like me. So I'm not trying to push here, I just would like to have an idea of the timeframe: So when do you see us having sex for the first time?"
If she hemmed and hawed about it, I would press a bit. I would say that as long as the relationship is working for us, it's not unreasonable to want to peer into the future a bit and see where we're heading and at what pace. I would also point out that I tended to wind up in bed with past girlfriends pretty quickly, and by comparison this current relationship was moving at a snail's pace. I didn't
need to go to bed right away, but I would like to at least know her philosophy on the subject--for example, did she plan on holding out until marriage or something?
Anyway, that approach always led to some lively discussions. And with the type of woman I mentioned above, it usually turned out that they were thinking in terms of us getting to know each other slowly and holding off on sex for a prolonged period of time. In turn, that tended to lead to some lively negotiations about the timing of sex. Sometimes it took us a couple get-togethers to work out a compromise we could both live with.
But to the extent that we eventually worked out something, the actual process of spending time with each other ceased to be a big problem. That is, with some agreement worked out about where we were headed and some trust built up, suddenly it became a lot easier to get together and spend time with each other.
In summary, women usually like to be courted and they usually like to be in the company of an adoring partner. So when a woman seems committed to a relationship but holds the guy at bay, I tend to suspect she's skittish about sex (or perhaps some other relationship threshold) for various reasons and is trying to control the timing and progression of the relationship by controlling access and the amount of time spent together. So if you work out something on the sex issue, then presumably there's no more need to be so controlling about access and time spent together.
That's just a general rule, of course. I don't know how that works out for INFJs specifically, or your girlfriend in particular. (I did most of my dating in my 20s and 30s and didn't learn about MBTI until my 40s, so I don't know the types of most past girlfriends.) I also don't know if your relationship is sexual. But as a general rule, if she seems into the relationship and into you but is keeping you at bay, then I would suggest that it's not your physical presence that's bugging her. My experience is that she is trying to slow down and control the progression to the next relationship threshold (which was usually sex in the cases that I encountered).
As for how exactly you negotiate a compromise on sex, that's another story. I'll leave that aside for now and just stick to the principle: She probably doesn't dislike your company; she's probably just trying to control the pacing of the relationship.
Also, there's the issue of what that says about her--that she would unilaterally control the relationship and put you on hold to that extent. I'll leave that aside for now, too. But I would say it's not a bad thing. I like a woman who knows what she wants and fights for it. Just get used to negotiating. When she acts a little strange, don't just take the easy route and assume that she's nuts. Instead, get used to digging a bit to find out the real reason, then be willing to negotiate.
But that's just my experience of course. I don't know you or your girlfriend. Who knows. Maybe you really are that difficult to endure. Or maybe your girlfriend really is just a bit nuts.
That's amazing dude!
