ThatENTP seems to enjoy antagonizing my family. ? We haven’t talked in several yrs & I feel a bit heartless realizing it’s tough to hold out hope that he’ll change. Well, if he refuses to even be civil, good riddance.
A pet peeve: being put in the position of someone expecting a white lie from me. I guess the stereoype is a husband whose wife asks, ‘Do these pants make me look fat?’ ?♀️ What does she expect him to say? Why does she even ask? Why does she wear pants that, yes, do make her look fat? Simple why they do: they’re obviously too tight around her bigger parts. Or worse,leggings, with just a long shirt, making her thighs & hips look like jiggly sausages.? Always makes me cringe. (Well, there’s the occasional woman w/ a perfect figure, but regardless, it’s immodest. I just glance at a person & feel like a voyeur, & conspicuous & embarrassed.) Leggings are not pants & shirts are not dresses. So glad no one has ever asked me don’t I love her legging-&-long-shirt combo. Would have to say, making an effort to unclench my teeth, ‘That’s a good color for you,’ (well, if itwere1) or something. I don’t have ‘gal-pals’ I go out shopping w/ or whatever.
I’m not so future-oriented, not in the usu. sense. Of course I want my kids to grow up to be good & successful & happy. Of course I want my life to be happy & comfortable. But I totally don’t have a step-by-step plan: I’m an INTP, so I have a general idea, but how to get there I’m figuring out as I go along. My brain isn’t able to set up long-term strategies. I can see 1 or 2 steps ahead, & the rest of the path is foggy. Trying to imagine just where the next step leads into the fog, what may be encountered there, how to react, & how to remain on course through even further steps is overwhelming. Countless possible branches, too many of which seem plausible. Too many things to try to hold in my mind together in 1 spot. This is why I’m disastrous at chess. Prefer backgammon. Don’t have that strong drive for self-improvement. INTPs want to discover interesting things, find out ‘why’, go in deeper, obtain more truth… Most people gain knowledge & mental skills to get a job, & being useful at the job is the fulfilling part, but the INTP gets a job & is useful to gain the knowledge (or to fund hobbies in which he gains knowledge) & mental skills, & the knowledge & mental skills are the fulfilling parts. Also, INTP motivation is not the usual, enthusiastic motivation, just calm & logical.
Totally right about INTPs forgetting! ? No, we don’t have the patience or energy or space in our memories to devote to keeping score, e.g. I sent so-&-so a Christmas card last yr, but that person didn’t send me one, so this yr I will not send 1…who gives whom a present & for what holiday…so-&-so didn’t say ‘Hi’ to me, so he must hate me (or be plotting something, or whatever)…that silly idea that a guest at a wedding is supposed to spend on a present the same amount the food he eats cost (like it’s on the invitation? ‘Your plate will cost us $50! Plus interest on our loan!’ ? …wedding debt…that’s insane…) regardless of how much spending money either party might have… No: interpersonally complicated,petty, &dramatic.I had no idea if everyone brought a present at all to my wedding. Didn’t care either. Concentrated on producing a pile of thank-you notes. If, for instance, I’ve sent a Christmas card to relatives several yrs in a row & never have gotten 1 back or have heard from them all that time, OK, I won’t bother anymore. But I still love them & will treat them just as well when I see them again. And people whom we know have betrayed us, tearing apart our family, those are dead to us. People who have undermined our family, are cut off until they are at least normal to us again. Like that 1 ENTP, older relative-by-marriage—over the course of a couple yrs (w/o being asked his opinion) opposed our (successful) decision to home-school our kids, was invited over to our house but then badgered us about politics long enough to upset my calm ISTJ husband & make me leave the rm in exasperation, made a crude sexual joke w/ our son, when he was about 14—creepy!—& more. (Iwouldlike an apology for the undermining, b/c that’s pretty serious.) And some relatives have been too stressful, so I haven’t called them in a long time. (I have chronic mono, which they hardly acknowledge or remember, mono made worse by stress. So that’s on hold & someday I will probably be somewhat better & be able to negotiate to fix things w/ them.) But little details—hate them. Want to have fun & relax instead. Besides my having to put stressful relatives on hold, you are a friend so I forgive & forget everything, except if you have unmistakably demonstrated that you are an enemy, & then I have to try to forgive, & do try to forgetyou.?
If the conversation gets into a subject I like a lot & know more than a little about (e.g. certain areas of philosophy & theology) or I have an exciting (to an INTP) story to tell about the subject, I can talk (or write, obviously!) for alongtime. But chatting about other things…I’ll be really quiet. Just don’t have much meaningful to say about them. Maybe ENTPs, & maybe others, can a lot talk about everything.
Yeah, I don’t need anyone to tell super-personal feelings or embarrassing secrets. Ihateprying. I even felt awkward the other day when, after a lady at church, a slight acquaintance, asked me if we have to drive far to come & I said we came ½ hr from a small town outside the city, I reciprocally asked her where she came from (10 min. away in the city). I don’t like us all to be strangers, but just asking a slightly personal question is tough for me. Would much rather to pick everything up incidentally in natural conversations. But once someone asked me to never tell anyone about something horrible that happened to him, & I was sad & sympathetic about it, so was glad he had told me, but have never told the secret to anyone. Writing even this much, & w/ my real name, is too close to betrayal for comfort, but that’s the best example I have.
我好w /只有特定的危机。不是的w / that someone’s life is in immediate danger or there’s blood & gore—well, just gore—when you have to think fast. INTPs need to think slowly, to considereverything.或者如果有任何centipedes-those令人毛骨悚然地terrifying, the ones that come into houses—nightmare. Then I panic & tear out of the rm away from the centipedes so they won’t touch me. Or like when I tried to train my Rottweiler & she bit my hand & after the fact I realized I should have gotten several stitches (didn’t want to bother my husband to take me…I was sure he had thought dog-training was a bad idea…but hehadbought a breed-specific training book…). I was cleaning it & bandaging it, & kept feeling faint & sick & had to lie down & take breaks. (Hand is OK now, just some scars on the palm.) As you might surmise, I’m a HSP too, like physically a lot. And not emotionally but socially, of course. My oldest kids (ISTP son & ISFP daughter) are calm about those things. They could be EMTs or nurses easily. And my husband. He was once a nurse. But the kind of problems, like in the article, in which there’s time to sit back & be objective, & doresearch!(INTPsloveresearching. One of my specialties.) No or little time-pressure, no chaos around me. And right: please do not get me involved in drama, put me in between people at odds; I will shut down. I can help in those other situations. Will figure out the most logical thing to do.
Quirks are fun. INTPs are not big on formalities. Well, I go along w/ them for the sake of other people & for my church. I believe it’s logical & thus right, & I’d hate standing out anyway, being the only different person. But I’m pretty laid-back. People can be super-casual w/ me. Having fun is the main thing.
I drop off the radar myself a lot, maybe for a longer time. I still go to church whenever I’m not too sick for it though. Unless you go to coffee hr, there’s no social engagement, except for some formalities. I’m a Byzantine Catholic, so everything is stylized. Simple even when I don’t want to talk to people. I need to drop off radar b/c, e.g. I provide a thoroughly logical response in a discussion, but then other people might seemingly refuse to be logical, it seems we can’t have a discussion together, then I start to get exasperated. Can’t have any stress. So I give up on the discussion. Like somebody looking for a discussion posted an essay that tried to prove Christians cannot be demonically possessed. I posted an even longer point-by-point refutation w/ Scriptural references & logical conclusions. For example, when a person already accepted by all as a fellow Christian turns to the occult, some willthensay that person was never really a Christian in the 1st place. So I said that’s a No True Scotsman fallacy. I asked what do people expect to happen w/ such hubris as ‘Once Saved Always Saved’? But the response is just something like, ‘I did not engage in a No True Scotsman fallacy,’ & questioning my acceptance of the canonicity of Enoch 1 (on which the argument was partially based, w/ a deduction that the Sons of God were men who turned from God, & became possessed, & that was how demons were able to ‘have’ bodies), b/c supposedly Catholics rejected it. True, it’s not in theLatinCanon, but it’s in the Ethiopian Canon, & thus used by Ethiopian Catholics, making it Catholic Scripture, & besides, even Apocrypha are Scripture,hiddenScripture. The Eastern conception of Scripture is that there isn’t a sharp border, B & W, between the sacred & the profane. Lots of gradation. So I throw up my hands & drop off the radar. And feel embarrassingly like a special snowflake b/c I can’t keep hitting hard in these discussions until I demolish the opposition, like I used to be able to. ?
Greta (not verified)says...
This is good, thanks.