25 Struggles Only INTJs Will Understand: A Response to Thought Catalog, Part I

Hey, everyone.

So, in keeping with my hopes to reignite my interest in writing, as well as the fact that I'm sitting on several topics already, here's another response post. This one is to Thought Catalog on their article "25 Struggles Only INTJs Will Understand." Will these struggles be my struggles, or can I add these to the ways I buck the INTJ stereotype? FYI: this post will only cover struggles 1 through 8 because I get a little long-winded in some of these first ones and I get a lot long-winded with #8. So, Part II will be up next week. So, let's take a look at these struggles.

1. When you want to explain something concisely but instead end up giving a three-hour speech on the origins of this particular school of thought and the various opinions that surround it because you can’t bear to explain only part of the bigger picture.

Well, this isn't accurate to the letter, but the spirit/theme is. I try to explain things on my blog as concisely as possible, but I always feel the need to add a lot of specifying detail just so my audience knows exactly where I'm coming from and what I mean. I don't know if it's as much an INTJ thing as it is an English major thing; you know, "state your thesis and defend it." Yeah, English majors have to master that.
 

2. When someone tries to change the plan at the last minute, not understanding that you now have to re-construct the entire day (and all the corresponding scenarios you might encounter throughout it) mentally – which takes much more time than you’re being given.

Well, this overdramatizes the problem a bit, but it's partially true. I know I've made plans with friends and then at the last minute, they change them and I have difficulty adjusting to the new plan. This most often happens with my friend Mary.

One time I went to meet her for coffee, and when I got to the shop, she told me to get in her car and we went to a bar because she needed a drink. We then went to a sushi place; it was my first time--I wasn't impressed. She tried to further push the day by saying we should go to a hooka bar, but grazie a Dio, it was closed. She's also changed meeting times at the last minute too because she can't get her ass in gear and then my being anally-on-time turns into an extremely-anally-early.

 

 

3. Everyone assuming that you’re glaring at them when you’re really just concentrating intensely.

Well, sort of. When I concentrate, I make sure not to look at somebody so they don't think I'm staring at them. Truth is, if I'm looking/staring at you, I mean to stare at you.
 

4. Having the intelligence and decisiveness to be a revolutionary leader but completely lacking the patience to deal with the people you’d have to lead.

Yeah, that's definitely true. Except for me, the big issue would be the responsibility involved. Leadership comes with a lot of it, and that doesn't do me well as it means I can't just cut-and-run when I want to. Sometimes I get super anxious about certain decisions, like I'm locked-in to them. When that happens, I run and I run fast.
 

5. When friends or coworkers encourage you to ‘lighten up!’ or ‘smile!’ as though that is going to solve the problem that you’re working on.

Pretty much, except my problem with "lighten up" and "smile" is that if I think I'm smiling or lightening up artificially, I'm going to hate myself for it. I want such moments in my life to be genuine, not just because some assh*le told me to.

 

6. When you have no choice but to follow an inefficient rule and it makes you die a little inside every time.

Depends on how inefficient the rule is and whether or not I'm getting paid. If I'm getting paid, I can swallow my pride and do it. But if it's pro bono and it's super inefficient, like that time I tried to schedule an appointment to see my counselor at Wayne State when I was at the counseling office and they told me I had to call to schedule, yeah, I died a lot that day.
 

7. People constantly assuming you’re shy when really you just aren’t interested in wasting mental energy conversing about 90% of the topics that are brought up over the course of a day.

Yeah, more or less. Although, in my case, they don't assume I'm shy, they just assume I'm an assh*le.

 

8. Your brain’s tendency to mull over each social interaction for weeks after the fact, analyzing what you could have done or said differently.

Something like that. I do mull over social interactions long after they've happened, but it's not necessarily because I'm wondering what I could've done differently. It's usually because I'm wondering what the other person was thinking or why they were doing what they were doing. Would you like an example from my own life? Story time, kids!

So, years ago, I went to Stony Creek Metropark with my friend Mary to go kayaking. We did and we ended up kayaking a good distance across the lake. It turned out to be a super distance that I hadn't realized at the time because the current helped to take us out and then we had to fight it on our way back. Phew! Very tiring. Anyway...

We found a shady spot along the shore and got out of our kayaks. Suddenly, Mary looks over at me and says, "Oh! Now that we're in water, you can pick me up." I was terribly bewildered by this statement because she had said it as if this was something we had planned beforehand, and I had no memory of it. So for the first couple of minutes that I'm holding her, I'm terribly confused, trying to remember if this was something she had told me. Turns out she hadn't; she was just being spontaneous.

So, I'm standing in water in which I can still touch the bottom of the lake, I'm 6'4"-6'5" remember, and I'm holding her like you might hold a girl as you carry her over the threshold. Not a particularly sexual/intimate hold, but for some reason, I'm intensely and strangely sexually attracted to Mary--I don't know why. So, you can imagine what sort of physiological side effect this scenario has on me, and the whole time I'm thinking, "She has to be able to feel that. There's no way she can't." Anyway, because she can't stand in the depths we're in and I was curious to see if she was just as light if I held her the other way, I had to drop her legs from one arm, embraced her with both, and swept her legs up with the other arm. And then I did it back, and again, the whole time our bodies are touching and touching.

Skip ahead a few years, I'm thinking about this incident while I'm in the bathroom and I have the revelation "Hey!!! Was she flirting with me?! Did she want the D, or a kiss, or something?" because why else would a girl put herself into that position with a boy, right? I asked her about it, and while she said she didn't remember the incident, she said she reserved the right to flirt with me when the moment strikes her. And! She said another time that that's just how people flirt when swimming, which is news to me, and I'm pretty sure it's news to a lot of other people, too.

Since then, so that I don't look like a cuck or a beta male, I've instituted a new swimming rule that says whenever a girl gets so close to me that the only thing keeping me out of her is two very-thin-layers-of-whatever-they-make-swimsuits-from, I'm going to kiss her because I think that's what most girls are after in such a situation. And if the girl gets pissed, I'm going to tell her, "Look, honey: if you don't want to be treated like my girlfriend, don't act like my girlfriend."




Phew. That took up a lot of time. Anyway...

 

So, just as I said, that's where I'm going to halt things for this week. Look for Part II to come out on Tuesday night next week.

Keep writing, my friends.

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