INTJ (UPDATED) – BFFs? Don’t Be Delusional…I Have No Friends

***UPDATED 23/11/16***

WARNING! MEMES WILL BE TAKING OVER THIS POST :)

(Reason for the INTJ friendship summed up in one meme!)

Just kidding (or am I?), if you have read my previous blog The INTJ Female , then it should not come as a surprise to you that the INTJ female, or any INTJ in general, have high difficulty forming friendships, let alone forming deep friendships or BFFs (Best Friends Forever).

I will be covering the INTJ female, maybe majority of the content also applies for the INTJ males too – male INTJs, if you so happen to stumble upon this blog post and think that the following content does not apply 90% – feel free to let me know via the comment section below (*_*)b <— thumbs up.

Now, for INTJ females, making friends are exceptionally hard, which may be weird to acknowledge, especially since a lot of females are the “feeling” types or the “extroverted” types and being the social creature that they are, if a female lack in either one of these natural qualities then either their “extroversion” or “emotions” would substitute each other. After all, these are what you call “feminine” qualities which allows females to still display and feel compassion, build rapport or simply just talk about topics regarding shopping and…love? I don’t know.

Now that is not to say that the INTJ female cannot display or feel the above feminine qualities, it is just that, it is in our nature to lean more on the side of masculinity if you will. Sure we are very capable of talking about “girlie” topics but at the same time, we do not mind, at all, talking about other logical, powerful and competitive topics such as life, possibilities, social sciences, sports, blood…poop etc. Having just stated that, the INTJ female are fine discussing taboo or twisted topics too – you know, “hard to stomach” kind of topics.

Also, for those INTJ females with advanced empathy qualities, when faced with someones’ conversation about dramas in their lives, the INTJ female can become quite cold-hearted because we can instantly see the logic and remedy to a given scenario. If we have given you the answer to what you should do then why are you NOT taking action on it? Why waste our care and time when you are just going to ignore our advise? Our empathetic side understands and feels your emotion (when we care enough) and to an extent, we invest our empathy into you in order to find a logical solution – the more that we care about you or emphasize with you the more cold-hearted we will be in order to cut through sugar-coating the solution.

Advanced empathy does not always equate to showing empathy (for us anyway). We just want to solve your problems practically.

Masculinity is where our inclination lies – granted, not every INTJ female are like this because everyone has the ability to morph and adapt to different social groups, norms etc. Not every INTJ are the textbook INTJ – which makes things fun since you can never be 100% sure someone is INTJ (that goes for any personality types).

Nonetheless, I guess that is why most INTJ female have the tendencies to look like a tomboy or they look like they just crawled out from under a rock because they have not seen sunlight in eons… we are just at home surfing the internet for weird stuff…or working on our projects or deciphering our feelings.

(Exhibit A)

(Yups)

So, since the INTJ female would pretty much acknowledge the fact that they are…erm “weird”, we are very conscious that our friendship circle seems to be dwindling down to between 2 – 0, and so, once in a while, we do feel the need to (or want to) hang out with people, to have a social life – from time to time, we too want human interaction dammit.

Although we do not feel pressured to make friends (if you do, you shouldn’t) – so what if someone have a million friends? An INTJ friendship is not a competition to see who can “collect” the most people and call them friends. Nope, we are very picky.

(Yeah…like no.)

That being said, the INTJ do not have much trouble making friends, because on the surface, they might look friendly, or are friendly after saying the initial “hi”; the difference is that, we would only focus our time and energy on certain individuals – thus only calling these selected individuals “friends”; this makes us sound really egotistical, but we are not, we just know what we want in a person to build up that initial friendship.

Anyways, when an INTJ say that they have no friends, it means that they know people but not bothered enough about them to actually call them friends. Basically, if an INTJ do not go out of their way to get to know you, call you, text you, talk to you or initiate any social norms with you then…well, it just means that you are someone who they know, you’re just not in the “friend” category. We do this to almost everyone so don’t be offended.

***Side story: I remember that during my College years, I had 3 distinct groups of friends throughout campus, for some moronic reason, 2 out of the 3 group of friends did not get along with each other (I was really the only one “linking” them up), so knowing that they do not get along, I would hang out with the different groups (I felt like I was drifting from group to group because I had no real identity yet) – which one day, one of my friend called me a “traitor” – now that hurt a bit, because, this person was who I would consider a friend and to be told that I am a traitor for hanging with other people was…uncalled for.***

Our way of defining “friends” are weird in itself, whereas most people are instantly friend this and friend that – we are more like, “this is just a random person”, which means it is okay if we are friends or not, or “this is an interesting individual”, which means that we have finally actually noticed you and would like to understand you more.

To break it down, we have two main category that we shuffle people into; the ‘friends’ category or the ‘acquaintance’ category…notice how there is no ‘best friend’ category? I’ll get to that in a moment. As stated above, our definition of friend or acquaintance do not come in the initial process of meeting someone, however, overtime, if we know (or actually remember) your name or enough of your personality then you are considered a friend, we most probably will not initiate any contact with you though; the key is that we must remember you. Whereas acquaintances means that we know you extremely well but you don’t know much about us (not the important stuff anyway); with acquaintances, we will now and again contact you to see how you are doing…like once every 2 months (that’s pretty good considering its’ us okay? XD).

For us to say someone is a ‘best friend’ then that is another level to be reached. If you can bounce off our vibes and personalities or we just enjoy hanging around you then the potential of being close friends is heightened. Moreover, if we even willingly open ourselves up to you with stories from our lives as well as being just a little bit moody around you instead of hiding the emotions (if we are having a bad day) then we consider you as a ‘best friend’…you may have just tipped the scale and crossed the boundaries from acquaintances to BFF because INTJs don’t typically display their emotions or inner personality on the surface to just about anyone. Another level from the BFF is when we see forever in you.

As you have seen, we are picky when forming friendships as we have an uneccessary vetting process whereby you can turn us on or turn us off instantly which I will mention later. When an INTJ finally have a handful of friends, it means that at least hundreds of people have come and gone in our life. It is also interesting to note that, we do not intentionally seek out friendships and therefore most people that we know are probably our family or people who came upon us accidentally.

In a sense, we are writing off possible friendships based on our initial judgement (the vetting process) – yes, we do go in to meet/understand people with an open mind, but if the first thing that comes out of your mouth is talking about what someone looks like or what a celebrity is wearing then majority of the time, the INTJ mind would just go

(aaayyyyy giiirls~)

EVEN, yes, even though we know that some initial topic conversation does not define a person, we still get put off. Yes, the vetting process can be short lived depending on what we hear.

Since we have this unnecessary sifting process (may I say that it is stupidly self-inflicted – which we cannot help), the world can seem like a lonely place for us as (since we are not male), people would not tend to understand or want to take the time to understand the INTJ female thought processes. However, if you so happen to take your time to want to understand us, thus getting enough information out of us then…you might just regret it because…

(Did you get a whiplash? It’s hilarious right? XD)

Yups, the moment that you know too much about us is the moment when we might admit that we have found a friend with the ability to become “best friends”. Not..not just purely because you know us too well…no…

Okay, maybe it is. We claim you as a “best friend” because you are probably 1 in a million that can open up our mind and heart – it’s a great revelation for us but for you, you might just be creeped out because of these memes hahaha! Don’t worry, we are not this intense. WE OWN YOUR A$$…or maybe it’s the other way round. Hmmms.

Since I am nearing the end of this post, I shall include a few remedies as to how any INTJs can make friends:

1. Do not dismiss people on the first encounter, instead, be patient and open-mind about the differences that you and your potential friend share. You can erase them later if the friendship is “unbearable”.
2. Go and take up your favorite interests! I tell this to people all the time (yes, I am slowly but surely carrying out my advice too – what good is my advice if I don’t act on it?)
3. Although this step may feel like a burden on yourself and others, ask them to hang out. Go do a sport or shop together as opposed to having an “intimate”/ “full-on” meal. You know, keep things light and…normal haha.

I guess to sum up an INTJ friendship with someone would be like the following:

(Got your back bro ^-^)

 

Ah~ Friendship, fragile, interesting little norms aren’t they?

Geomeun Goyangi

Also guys! I’ve just started a new INTJ series :D Happy watching~

 

***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.***