I hold a handful of NTs very close in my heart and tend to see the best in them as a rule. They are healthy, mature, caring individuals who love and support me. I admire them and wish I were more like them in many ways. They are all four NT types, and include family members, loved ones, and dear friends.
One thing that disturbs me about them, however, is the way that they often seem so disconnected from others. (I'm speaking of the ones I know in person, not the online NTs. I think there's a larger population of misanthropic angsty teenage NTs online and it's unfair to judge all of them by those who post "loudest".) Even the healthy, mature ones I know seem to feel very few deep ties and emotional obligations to others. They appear to me to lack a sense of significant connection to other people. I'm not sure I'm explaining this right.
I feel as though unbreakable bonds connect me to other people: to my family, my heritage, my loved ones. I exist primarily in relationships--even relationships with my dogs. I value and honor these relationships, and will go to great lengths to preserve them even when they feel restricting or annoy me.
All the NTs I know lack this feeling. They love people and honor relationships, but it's different somehow. I think they primarily see themselves as individuals. Maybe, to them, the relationship is there to serve the individuals instead of the individuals there to serve the relationship? (I'm not sure if that's right.) To me, they seem to lead lonely existences because at the heart of it all, they are alone. In a way I admire this because they are free from obligations placed on them by others. Sometimes I wish I could be as free. At the same time, it bothers me because it appears cold and lonely and empty--and sometimes even unkind and heartless--to refuse to accept these obligations.
The fact that they lack these certain types of connections worries me and makes me very uncomfortable. I know that I am bound to these NTs with something that goes far beyond my own choice. But they are only bound to me by choice. Occasionally they do things which demonstrate that they could change that choice without damaging themselves too seriously, and then where would I be? I have placed them in the center of my heart and allowed their existence to change my own, but I sense that the primary thing at the center of their hearts is a room of ideas, thoughts, theories, and values.