INFJ Relationships
INFJs In Love
INFJs fall in love hard and fast. It’s different from almost all of the other personality types. We love with an intense passion that is unrivaled. We turn our whole world upside down for the one we desire. We want to know all the things about them and make sure that their life is as easy and happy as possible.
It’s a process for us to really let ourselves love someone though. We don’t take dating or getting to know someone lightly. We’ve been hurt before and we don’t want to go through that kind of pain again, if we can help it.
But when we do meet the right person, who shows us the same kind of love and attention as we give, the process is downright magical. It’s worth whatever pain that we’ve endured. It’s everything that our dreams are made of.
The guard is up
INFJs live with our guard up. We’ve been hurt before and we’ll do whatever we can to make sure it doesn’t happen again. This is true for friends as well as potential romantic partners. When we meet someone new, we instantly know things about them. Our intuition feeds us all kinds of information to sort through. But even if we have a good feeling about them, we are cautious to start with.
The list of requirements
Any INFJ will tell you that they have a plan, even for a potential romantic partner. We don’t date just to date. It’s not fun for us. We are very serious and know what we want well ahead of time. Most of us have a list, actual or mental, of things that we want in a partner. We think about our future in meticulous detail, especially the person that we want to spend our lives with.
We’ve thought of all of the scenarios, including personality type, alone time, where we want to live, finances, security, family life - everything you can possibly imagine, we’ve thought about it. We’re not willing to forgo this list for just anyone.
If we meet someone unexpected, who doesn’t meet every requirement on the list, they will certainly be considered, but they have to be really special in order to subvert the list completely.
Falling for someone
INFJs fall for people very quickly. We are probably the reason it’s called “falling” in love. It’s not something we can control or stop. When we meet someone who checks all of the boxes, it’s an intense and almost excruciating experience. We lose the ability to think straight around them and feel like breathing is impossible. The thought of this person not returning our feelings is actually physically painful.
If we shared even a fraction of these thoughts with our friends they’d call us crazy for sure, which is why we keep our feelings to ourselves. We know that this process is different for us and we don’t want to be ridiculed for our feelings. It’s bad enough that we have to work through them, we don’t need to be berated for them too.
Where we meet people
I did an informal survey on my Instagram account (@infjwoman). I asked my followers where they met their significant other. Out of 93 responses, here are the replies:
What I discovered is that I need better friends. Not one of them has tried to set me up with anyone. This is why I’m still single. That, and the fact that I hate dating apps.
If you’re like me and you didn’t meet someone in school or college, then maybe try doing an activity you like. The responses ranged from dancing to painting to learning how to take care of bees. Anything you like to do where there are other people around will work.
The type of people INFJs usually fall for
INFJs are extremely guarded when it comes to falling in love. We’ve all been hurt before, even before our first love, and we guard ourselves against that like our life depends on it. This can leave us very hesitant to fall in love.
We take dating very seriously. It’s not something we do for “fun.” We know what we want and we don’t want to play around or be toyed with.
The type INFJs should go out with
We should go for the person who makes us feel at home, someone who is our best friend. Our intuition will tell us everything we need to know, if we just slow down enough to listen.
There’s someone out there who will check all of the boxes on our list, who will make us feel at home in a world where we feel like an alien. There’s someone who will understand what no one else could. That’s the keeper. That’s the one you marry.
For more about which MBTI type we should go out with, check out this blog post.
The friend zone
When I meet someone I new I usually stick them firmly in the friend zone. I’m not one to rush into anything for any reason. I want to know all the things about them before I’ll even commit to going out with them. There’s only a small possibility of them being moved out of the friend zone to begin with, but they have to pass all the tests first.
INFJ CIA
We have to know all the details about anyone new that we’re considering letting into our life. We put the CIA to shame with our investigation skills. We’ll go to whatever lengths we have to go to to figure out all the things about someone we're interested in. Yes, it can be scary if you're not used to this level of investigation, but it's worth it.
One-sided love
INFJs love to live in our heads. This leaves us particularly vulnerable to the possibility of falling in love with someone that we don’t know or that we don’t tell our feelings to. We want to have things all figured out before we decide to share our feelings, so we start thinking about this person and dreaming about what life would be like with them. And before we know it, we’re head over heels in love without them even knowing.
It’s a dangerous and painful trap to fall into, especially if you don’t know the person you’re dreaming about. It’s meanly setting yourself up for a painful failure at some point when you decide you have to stop.
The other situation, if the person is real you just haven’t told them about your feelings, could be equally as bad. Once you do decide to tell them how you feel, you need to remember that you’ve had time to process your feelings. They haven’t had that time. Unless, of course, they have been thinking about you too.
What you need in a relationship
INFJs need understanding more than anything. We live in a world where we understand everyone so well and we feel like no one understands us or even tries to understand. We need someone who really listens and wants to know more about us.
INFJs want a partner to share their insights with and support them in what they are doing. Most people dismiss our intuition and fortune-telling abilities without even considering it. INFJs want a partner who is not dismissive of their insights, and they need someone to understand them. A person must take time to get to know an INFJ because it takes some work from both parties in order for these types of connections to be made.
Things we need in a partner:
-
Respects space and alone time
-
Willing to spend quality time
-
Understanding
-
Gentile with feelings
-
Likes deep conversations
-
Loyal
-
Honest
-
Listens attentively
-
Interested in intellectual pursuits
Things we can’t stand:
-
Talking down to us
-
Being inconsiderate of others
-
Socializing all the time
-
Pressure to make a decision right away
-
Passive-aggressive people
-
Yelling or slamming doors
-
Dismiss our feelings and insights
Intimacy in relationships
That craving for connection and depth carries over into our relationships. We strive to become better people day by day and we take that desire with us into our relationship as well. We want to have a connection and to keep it. It’s not a destination, but the journey of constantly learning and adjusting and growing that we enjoy.
Our love and care is deep and intense for our significant other. It’s not for the faint of heart. We are enthusiastic and open to learning new things, going where we haven’t been before. We are passionate about our love on a level that is not easily matched.
Why your relationships keep falling apart
You want to know your partner down to their absolute core—but you rarely, if ever, let yourself be seen in the same way. You’re afraid that when they see how much of a mess you are and see all of the unresolved parts of yourself that you are still struggling with - then they will realize that there is no point loving or being around you anymore. Instead of opening up about what's going on inside of you at those times where it would mean so much for someone else (your better half) - you keep things hidden away.
We hide ourselves away from our partners when we should open up. Intimacy is what helps heal those wounds.
Being in a bad relationship
INFJs are not good at being the person to leave. We try and try and try some more to make things work. We put up with a lot from the people we love. We make exceptions to our rules for them and go out of our way to make sure they have every single thing they need. Everything.
Breakups are hard to do
But there does come a point where we know that it’s not going to work. Our intuition has been telling us this for weeks, months, years even. We kept thinking we could fix it, but then we realize that it’s just not true. There is nothing left that we can do. The only thing that we have left is to save ourselves.
From this point on, we don’t hate our partner… we’re past that. We just don’t feel anything anymore. We’re indifferent to them. We nothing them. We don’t want anything to do with them anymore.
Depending on how they treat us is exactly how we treat them. If our partner is horrible to us, we may just disappear into the night, never to be heard from again. We’re great at covering our tracks, that CIA action coming into play again.
However we go, it will be peacefully and without a show. We don’t like confrontation, so we’ll make it as painless as possible for everyone involved.
Recovery
We’ll walk away from a relationship when we’re done, but the recovery process for us can be slow and excruciating. The experts say it takes you half the time you were together to recover, so if you were in a 2 year relationship it will take a year to recover. That’s certainly true for us, maybe even longer.
For INFJs, it takes us a while to recognize our emotions. We’re all about handling things for everyone else. We can name exactly what you’re going through and tell you what to do to help. But for ourselves? It’s a process. It might take 6 months to a year just for us to understand how we are feeling about something, especially something big like a breakup. Even if it was our choice to leave, we just can’t even name our emotions quickly. So processing them is delayed too.
The last time I dealt with a breakup I seriously thought I wasn’t going to make it. I thought there was no way that I would ever stop thinking about this particular guy. He consumed my whole life, my whole being.
Once I realized that I had to let him go, which took a year, I made an effort to put him out of my mind. And I was able to do it. It was slow at first and then all at once.
That’s exactly what you should expect: slow at first and then all at once.
The INFJ door slam (and why it’s a good thing)
So many people want to be friends after they break up. But here’s the thing - anyone who still wants to be friends isn’t over the relationship. They still have feelings and are hoping to reignite the relationship at some point in the future.
If you’re truly done, then you should be done and put it behind you. Move on to something else, even if it’s uncomfortable and painful. Even if you’re scared you’ll never have another relationship again. Move on.
For INFJs who are done, we use the door slam. We act like you don’t exist anymore. We’ll block you on every device we have and make sure you don’t have our new address. We need time for healing and the first step is to get you out of our lives.
Learn more about INFJs in my book, The INFJ User Guide.
