Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another installment of My Life and Hard Times. I
recently saw a couple videos here on YouTube by my boy Bryant Chambers. He
makes a lot of videos about MBTI. I like him because he's wearing that Nationals
hat all the time... Man I love those Nationals. He made a couple videos called
why INFJs suck at relationships. I just wanted to make a response video because
I think Bryant makes a lot of really good videos about INFJs, and you should
check him out. He himself is not INFJ and so he maybe doesn't have
that extra perspective that yours truly, your boy FJ, can give about why
relationships can be difficult for us, why we can suck at it, why they can be
torturous experiences that make you wonder why you tried to do this, and
while you're dragging yourself through this ordeal. He also said a lot of stuff
that I really agreed with about... I can't remember the exact wording now! Shoot... now
I feel really underprepared. But, you know, it's okay guys cuz I just got this book
"Gifts Differing" by our girl Isabel Briggs Myers.
She says intuitive types "frequently make errors of fact," so basically that's my
pass if I say stuff that's incorrect. I can say, "Hey guys it's because I'm an
intuitive!" So the things that he said I find no fault with, but there's a few
other things I want to add to it to round out the answer to the question
"Why INFJs suck at relationships." It seems like those of us with introverted
intuition... it seems like we're never fully satisfied with our understanding
of things. And we realize that our interpretation of reality, it has many
subjective elements to it; and I think we're always trying to refine that and
come to something better--to come closer to the truth, maybe knowing that we'll
never actually reach the truth. In doing so, we're always changing on sometimes a
deep level. We're always seeking to improve ourselves in deep ways. Because of
that we can sometimes outgrow relationships if we're not with someone
else who is also actively trying to grow and improve themselves. We can find
ourselves in a situation where we're like, "Wow, I'm not really the same person
I was before, but this person I'm with is the same, and now this arrangement
doesn't seem so compatible as it used to be."
That's framing it in kind of a nice way like, oh man we're just always
self-improving and this other person is crappy and won't self improve, but it
can also just be like... we change, good bad or neutral, I think we're pretty
prone to changing ourselves. I mean there are things about us that won't change.
But we're not like certain types that have a very defined set of core values
of who they are. That doesn't mean we don't have values, but I think that a lot of
who we are is kind of up for internal debate. And I don't know if this this is
getting a little more personal, I don't know if this is something that you all
can relate to but sometimes it just feels like I am... Alright so before I go
into this I don't want this to sound like a weird backwards way of me trying
to present myself as some kind of complex, complicated person, and that's
why you know it's so difficult to have a relationship because I'm just that
special, man. That's not what I'm going for with this next point. For me at least,
and this is what I discovered in my last relationship and what has, you know,
propelled me more toward an interest in spirituality, is that I started
to realize that there were these things inside of me that I could not control, I
had no control over, but they were and are like immovable. And
there's nothing I can do about it. And they were things that affected the
relationship. I mean specifically just parts of my person
that I didn't know we're there, or didn't think we're that important, and then all
of a sudden when you add this other person there, there's this clash, and it
started to make me feel... perhaps I did not even
recognize this clash in a conscious way, but intuitively I was sensing some kind
of conflict. And you can look back on my videos because I talked about it.
I felt like physically ill from it. And what really was crappy about it was that
I felt like these were not things that were really problems on a conscious
level, but things within me that I couldn't control were rebelling, and they
were saying, "No, don't do this." And I couldn't even really put words to why.
And in retrospect I tried to put words to it, and I've found a way to
make concrete sense out of it, rather than some kind of abstract "it was
just a feeling." It was a sort of an awakening to realize that this intuition
within me which I have no control over was now calling the shots, and was sort
of saying, "You must follow this path, you must get out of this relationship, or I'm
not going to allow you to be happy." Which sounds kind of weird, like I have
multiple the personalities or something, but it's sort of just like, I am me, I the
real me is not really part of that. Does this make any sense? Does this make any
sense whatsoever? And so it felt like if my personality is a river, and another
person is a boat, there are these like submerged stones
that I didn't even know were there. And then, you know, the boat gets wrecked upon
them. Sometimes I know they're there and they're coming, and other times it's like,
"Whoa, where did that come from?" And so I had to come to this place of
just accepting that I don't always have total say in how I feel, what I think,
what I want to do, the decisions I make... I'm not really--this is not a way of
abdicating responsibility by the way. It's just sort of like... you know, I wanted
to... I felt like I wanted to go one direction, but then this stuff within me
wanted to go a different direction; and I could have kept going in the direction
that I wanted to go. but the other part of me would have made me miserable, and it
would have just been a waste of time. And so I was like okay,
well, I'll just go along with this. Now, which part of me, which thing there, was
the real me; and which part of me was an illusion, which part of me was the ego,
which part of me was fear? That's the other thing: even if fear is not
warranted, if you have it you can't get rid of it. You can't just tell fear to go
away. You can do something in spite of fear, but then that still doesn't mean
it's gonna go away. It may seem like I've gotten a little sidetracked from the
topic at hand but... I don't know if you've ever felt like that where, I don't know
if it's just the intuition part but, you have these things going on inside of you
that you can't really explain, and they call the shots from time to time. And if
you try to go against them it's like, "Watch out." I think also just generally, if
we can take it back to a broader view... we are kind of weird
people... we just are. And so I don't know... I don't know what's best. Do we need
a really kind of bland person who kind of absorbs the weirdness? Or do
we need another weird person who just perfectly interlocks with our weirdness?
I'm not sure what is the best solution here. So then what's the answer? I mean
clearly there are many INFJs who get married and stuff so it's not like this
is some curse or anything. But it feels for me like right now I'm more focused
on spiritual things, and trying to... I don't know what I'm trying to do. I'm
trying to find some kind of... you know what this hand motion means. I'm trying
to like make everything inside me be going in the same direction because I
really didn't like that feeling of conflict within myself. It made me
realize how I'm not truly as in control as perhaps I thought it was. So if you
have any ideas about why it might be difficult for an INFJ to have success in
relationships, leave your comments below, let me know what you think. I'd especially
be interested to hear how often it feels like your intuition is kind of like this
separate thing from you that you don't always want to follow. That sounds almost
sacrilegious, doesn't it? "INFJ, he doesn't want to follow his intuition?!"
I also want to thank Bryant Chambers for making those videos and giving me
something to bounce my brain waves off of. So if you like the video you know
what to do: give me a like. If you're new here and you want to see more videos,
subscribe. Thank you to all the new subscribers, I'm so happy to see your
smiling faces here... because I know you've just got a big fat smile plastered on
your face as you watch this video. Although I see some of you did change
seats. If you get marked off for attendance,
what can I say? It's your fault. Also, lastly, I've just kind of leafed through
this book. And if you're INFJ, which I assume you are, why else would you be
watching this? It's a little disappointing because it's sort of like...
the INFJ is like barely talked about. So like, "oh yeah, INFJs, they're whatever..."
They're not glorified in here, like they are elsewhere in the internet
world. They're not some magical unicorn in here. But anyway I look forward to
reading this maybe one day, and telling you what I think about it. Until then it
will stay on the floor under my bed. Alright, well this has been your boy FJ,
until next time keep sucking at relationships!