I take care of my son, my patients, my friends, my animals--lots of beings and feel like I have a very meaningful life with these responsibilities. BUT, if someone starts to want too much of me, then I'll pull the plug for fear of suffocating from their needs. Right now I can't decide if I really want a relationship because my ex needed so much and then blamed me when I didn't give 150%. Thought this was an interesting description of NFs on
David Markley
"And yet such emotional sensitivity (some would say hypersensitivity) can take its toll, and Idealists have been known to become upset when these affective ties begin to bind, as they do when the amount of emotional input from their mates becomes a psychological overload. NFs report that at times, they find their emotional circuits so overloaded with their own concerns that they cannot deal positively with the emotional experiences of others who are especially close to them, particularly when those experiences are negative or unhappy.
In addition, emotional dependence in a mate can really bother an Idealist, even though their own sensitivity sometimes encourages dependency. If their mates begin to seem weak and clinging-to appear to need more and more attention, more and more expressions of the NFs unusual appreciation, more and more signals of deep affection (for example, if two NFs were in the same relationship - both seeking deep affection) Idealists can become resentful of pressures to deliver what they had seemed to promise to their mates; the ideal love, complete understanding, and total acceptance. At this point NFs can turn irritable, insisting unexpectedly that their mates stop hanging on their approval and learn to stand on their own two feet. This shift in attitude is usually abrupt and the loved ones who heretofore believed that they were very special in the eyes of the Idealist now find themselves apparantly rejected. The Idealist does not mean to be unkind; he or she is simply disconnecting from a relationship which can no longer be handled. Of all the temperaments, this scenario is least likely to happen with an NT mate as they are usually more independent and appear to have an atypical aloofness regarding receiving appreciation from their mates, it isn't as important to them as it is other types."