For the past blog posts, I have been hounding on about how respect influences most of INTJs’ actions and demeanor – having to explain our view on the subject of ‘respect’ alone gives off the impressions that INTJs have an off-putting superiority complex.
Truth be told, INTJs treat everybody with the same level of respect that we want to have reciprocated (although sometimes it may not seem like it), respect is a two-way street right? Just like meeting someone new, INTJs will approach someone with an open mind… that is until that person screwed something up.
Although if we were “warned” beforehand of having to meet someone new then of course it would be awesome if we can have a low-down on whether the person is nice, what you should call them (by their first name? call them uncle or auntie? shall I just say “hi” and call them nothing? Like…”heeeey you~….”. We need to know the basics okay?), how old they are, do they have children, what they are doing. Actually, to be honest, finding out these things beforehand would not really influence our actions and our thought process immensely but it is comforting to have some form of background knowledge about a stranger that you will inevitably meet – we got to give off the vibe of being a pleasant person whereby within the next 3 hours we have to pretend to be interested in them. Best friend for life…nah just kidding.
On a serious note, our ‘respect radar’ approach to everyone starts at neutral in the beginning.
Okay, as hinted before, once a person screws up…as a person or that their mentality and decisions are demeaning or moronic; we automatically dismiss this person (what is this “respect for you” that you speak of?). When we lose respect of someone, we will not find any reason to try to re-respect them again, because in our mind, they are already a write-off. As stated in previous blogs, the INTJ will just go and never initiate anything with this person in the hope of saving our brain cells and time. However, we will put in effort to re-respect you if you are worth it – see, this here sounds like we have a superiority complex, I am not a fan of this mentality but it keeps INTJs sane and rational, for me at least.
How do people screw up? Some examples;
- People who ignore sound and logical advice from us or from other logical people or resource on several occasions will annoy us.
- People who just ‘hit us up’ for when they need advice or help will make us question our friendship – I get it, INTJs can provide good advice but when you only contact us to vent your problems then we are going to become distant with you. We are patient, but we are not that patient. We are good listeners, but we don’t want a relationship built on you crying and getting all emotional on us whereby we now have to think of several solutions for your problems. Like nah uh, we don’t have time for that.
- People who repeatedly carry out the same action/ choice which will repeatedly (and obviously) result in the same negative consequences – these people here will make an INTJ question your sanity as well as our own sanity regarding why the hell we are still helping you.
- People who speak before they think makes us want to cringe because these are the people who cannot see a problem with what they have just said. Where is the logic in your statement? WHERE?
- People who sh*t stir, back-stab or put up a fake front will make us back away even more quickly than you saying the vowel ‘O‘;
The Annoying person: “C…”
The INTJ: ・ ・ ・ ・ ・・・~~~-⌒⌒ ⌒⌒ ⌒ =͟͟͞ =͟͟͞͞ ε=ε=ε=ε=┏ (>ω<)┛
The Running INTJ: “…….I THINK YOU WERE GOING TO SHOUT THE VOWEL ‘O’ BUT I SHOT OUT OF THERE SO FAST THAT YOUR VOWEL ‘O’ LOOKS LIKE THE LETTER ‘C’!”
- People who refuses to try to solve their own problems or are stuck in their own WRONG ways of thinking makes us want to stop helping you after telling you that “there is a better way, it doesn’t have to be or end this way” for the 20th times. ***calmly flips a table*** (/¯◡ ‿ ◡)/¯ ~ ┻━┻
- In the case of forcing us to respect you or if you expect an INTJ to respect you, don’t, we will most likely to show you no respect…on the sly that is. We won’t plainly come up to you and say that we don’t respect you (who does that?), we will just very silently slink away…or just stay silent. If you read somewhere that INTJs only bow down to rationality and NOT authority, well, that is true. So do not be thinking that if an authoritative figure with a false rightful sense of entitlement regarding respect that goes with their title, status or job means that they have gained unanimous respect from everyone – well, it means NOTHING to us.
(Well, INTJs anyways)
There are several ways to gain our respect, but we would rather you be you than trying to look up tips on how to get an INTJ to trust you – as said, we’ll form our own judgement about someone over time; if someone is putting on a fake mask then the mask will crack sooner or later, but if you are a good person in-and-out then we will come to that conclusion in due time.
I will however, highlight what the INTJ respects in a person.
Most INTJ respects people who manages to maintain their morals and ethics without being blindly led into doing something or into believing something. If you are sincere and have logic radiating from your voice then you have our respect. Also, INTJs tend to respect people’s capabilities and abilities/ skills that are underdeveloped in ourselves; although we respect some capabilities of a person, that does not mean that their whole person is worth respecting – when someones’ cons outweighs their pros then that means we will have a high chance of dismissing that person as a whole (personally, I will try to find something good about a person to counteract their cons – if there is any).
Our respect (along with trust which is always a bonus) comes naturally when you accept us for who we are – granted, some of us are kind of hard to accept. Since we know this, we are not really that bothered if we are respected of not – although, just like you, some of us have people who we want to respect us too, but if it doesn’t happen, we are fine with that. The person that we need to win over is ourselves.
It is not like we don’t need respect, it is more of the fact that our mentality is on the lines of “I am comfortable enough with myself and respect myself enough that if I am respected then it is an added bonus – if I am not respected then that is fine as I don’t need anyone to clap for me, to congratulate me or to even like me”. We want respect, but we won’t seek it – if respect comes from a place of sincerity then that one respect alone blows thousands of the other fake respects out of the water.
Respect and trust goes hand in hand for INTJs, so if a person manages to screw up magnificently; an INTJ will remove themselves from a room/ place etc where that someone they dislike are present – if this is the only way to get away from someone or a situation that we cannot control then we have no problem going somewhere else. As a sign of respect to ourselves and not because we are “scared” or “intimidated”. There is always a reason why we act like this – mostly because you did something major that unhinged our trust and respect in you. I don’t know if this is a “childish behavior” when we remove ourselves from someone who we don’t like. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
We do not know why our actions are hard to understand though; if you don’t like someone then why would you stay around them? Do you really have to force yourself to put up a facade? Who are you trying to please?
For example; if a person was drunk (drunk = metaphor for someone with a distasteful personality) and they were about to vomit (vomit = metaphor for incessant mindless talking, deceitfulness etc etc); would you not want to get away from the ‘firing’ line? Remove yourself from a foreseeable drama and hassle?
(Any stare longer than 2 seconds will be awkward which require a weird half-smile or the word “hi” on our behalf)
Although it sounds like some INTJs have unconsciously blown the word ‘respect’ way out of proportion; in reality, our respect in someone is very influential to how we will behave around them. It is nothing new, majority of people these days treat other people the way that they are treated, bad or good. The only difference between majority of the population and the INTJ is that, even when people know that they don’t like someone or someone don’t like them, they would still stick around; whereas us INTJs just disappear, purely based on our lack of respect for some people.
Nonetheless, once you have our respect and the resulting trust that hopefully follows; you will find INTJs respecting and acknowledging your ideas/ thoughts/ opinions regardless of whether we agree with them or not – our respect means that we acknowledge you as an individual whereby we very rarely crush your ideas, dreams and believes (that is if there is no hard truth that you need to know); most important of all, we will listen to you with unconditional respect. Just don’t screw up repeatedly please.
Geomeun Goyangi
P.s – I had waaay too much fun with these emojis, they took longer to assemble than I thought haha!
***Please note that these blogs should NOT influence you to generalize that all INTJs, as a niche group, are all the same – because we are not; a lot of other factors shapes and individualizes a person.***
INTJ:Break-The-Chain 
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