Read Part 1 – Intentional Separation (Us-vs-Them Mentality)

The three reasons I think INFPs are lonely are:

1. We separate ourselves.
2. We exclude ourselves.
3. We refuse to be compared to others.

Part One was about how we separate ourselves. Part Two is about exclusion.

In my early 20′s, I was looking for Us people who thought our problems were what made us individuals. What I attracted were depressed, angry and angsty people who blamed society for our woes. I saw myself in them and realized this wasn’t who I wanted to be. I felt more alienated and alone than ever.

My attitude changed when I started dancing. By some fluke, I was good and people would say hi. Over time it became easier to talk to people who I would have avoided before. In talking to Them, I realized that they weren’t that amorphous blob of shallow and compromise that I had invented Them to be. They were individuals going through their own problems and dealing the best they knew how.

That’s when I became “accepting” of other people or so I’d thought. I kept my eye out for potential friends. My friendship was an exclusive club and only the like-minded need apply.

Reason 2: Exclusivity (No-Compromise Syndrome)

The Problem with Exclusivity

I’ve never liked gated communities with their nitpicky rules. The Homeowner Association’s covenants are Russian novel thick and single spaced. The grass can only be so high. These are the only approved colors for your house. The rationale is that covenants keeps relationships orderly. Everyone has the same pages.

With the INFP gated community of friendship, we don’t pass out a rule book. Those rules are a set of expectations of how we feel we should be treated by a friend. Some rules are set in stone. Some we make up as we go along because we see that as being “flexible”. Friends have to call us back within X amount of time. Friends can only make plans without us under specific circumstances as defined in Appendix B subsection A of our mental manual of friendship. If anyone breaks the rules, we’ll keep a running tally until they go over some undefined limit and then we’ll stop talking to them without explanation.

When we start letting people into our gated community, we lavish attention on them since they’re one of the few. We go out of our way to make our newly minted friend feel special. But if we notice that they’re not returning our attention with the same amount of care, we feel taken for granted.

Next comes the small conversations like, I know you didn’t mean to do this on purpose, but you hurt my feelings doing these things and not doing these as stipulated in Addendum 1, 3, 4a and 666. Those small conversations become more frequent.

We feel better being so generous in our forgiveness of our friends’ little foibles, but our friends are wondering how many more Addendums there are. Friends start treading lightly so the don’t break another Rule that’s part of our value system. They can only be themselves as long it doesn’t break our rules. Is it any wonder our friends choose to move on to less restrictive relationships?

How Accepting Are We Really?

When INFPs say we’re open-minded and accepting of other peoples values, we’re talking about big ticket items like religion or politics. We hold up examples of how we’re friends with people of different world views. We hold up our live-and-let-live ideals. We say we don’t try to impose our values onto others. However, big tickets items don’t affect relationships in the day-to-day. What if the values of our friends affect us more personally? How easy going and accepting would we really be.

Here are 2 examples:

Example 1. You have Good Friend A who you consider a close friend that you spend much of your time with. You meet New Person B who you think might become a good friend eventually. So you introduce New Person B to Good Friend A, they really connect. Good Friend A and New Person B start spending all their time together. They begin leaving you out of activities.

Would you consider Good Friend A disloyal or would you live and let live? You would never exclude a good friend from activities. But that’s just it, that’s your value not theirs. Maybe with their friendship values, Good Friend A doesn’t feel obligated to include you in everything especially in the getting to know each other period. How easy going and accepting would you be?

Example 2. You are good friends with Friend A. Friend A is good friends with Person B whom you don’t care for. You’ve been having a bad patch and you’ve been a downer lately. You hear through the grapevine that Friend A has been telling person B that you’ve been a real bummer and it’s getting to the point where it’s starting to be a burden being around you.

Friend A’s decision to tell Person B this comes from two of Friend’s A values: 1. You go to good friends when you need support. 2. Don’t crap on someone when they’re down. And that’s why Friend A didn’t go to you about your current behavior.

Would you feel betrayed? Or would you think, what goes on between Friend A and Person B is none of my business? If you feel betrayed, how can you be mad at someone for sticking to their values?

Open-minded and accepting also means accepting of other peoples values on loyalty, friendship and interpersonal relationships.

Our Rules Make Us Lonely

Of course we don’t want to be treated badly, to feel taken for granted or taken advantaged of. However, we have to ask ourselves if those rules are really about protecting ourselves or expecting friendship to be fair. Since INFPs tend towards fewer friendships, we have more expectation on each friend to fill our emotional needs. Our ideals of friendships creates expectations of behavior and reciprocation. We only want what’s fair.

In our mind’s we see ourselves as forgiving of possible wrongs that might occur someday. If someday, our friend crashed our car or ruined our favorite piece of clothing we lent them, we would forgive. At the very least in the present, we should be able to expect that they call us back in a timely matter. That trade off mentality makes us constant watchdogs waiting for the HOA of our friendship to be broken.

Our friends aren’t gifted in reading our minds to know what’s really important to us even if we want them to be. So they tread lightly as not to hurt our feelings. Before they realize it, they’ve quit being themselves and have become this paranoid person who’s ever vigilant in getting on our bad side because they didn’t fuss over some gift that we spent weeks hand-making for their birthday. We feel our friend’s thoughtfulness should equal our efforts. That’s an expectation of fairness.

The quest of fairness always makes one person the rule enforcer and the other person the potential rule breaker. This attitude creates a barrier in relationships that keeps people from letting down their guard. It’s a reason why we feel disconnected and lonely because we can’t cross that barrier without lowering it and risking to be hurt.

I think the most important thing that I’ve learned about relationships is that when you enter into them from a place of giving, you receive in return but usually not from the person you’re giving to and not in the form that you expected.

My issue with seeking fairness is that we will only get back what we put in. But being giving and open with no expectation of reciprocation opens up the possibility that universe will give us more then we had hoped.

Simple Guidelines

My friendships have stopped being so exclusive and the guidelines have simplified.

1. Does knowing me help someone I know become a better person?
2. Am I becoming a better person knowing someone?

Here’s how I know a relationship is working. When I’m with that person, I am happy. I look forward to seeing that person. I’m not afraid that that person will hurt me intentionally. I’m not hesitant to speak up if I do feel hurt. Knowing that person, challenges me to grow. Being around that person gives me comfort when I feel sad. That person is someone I want to celebrate with when things are great.

I’ve let go of expecting people to behave a certain way or to treat me a certain way. However, I feel I’m more idealistic about my relationships than I’ve ever been. I want the most difficult thing you can ask a person and that is for them to be themselves, the good and the bad. I want authenticity where many find it hard to be authentic with themselves. It’s from our authentic selves where true connections are made.

It’s from those true connections where I finally feel understood.

A boy goes to his mom and says, “I’m bored.” The mom replies, “Then you should stop being boring.”

This lesson applies in different variations. If I’m lonely, then I stop being alone.

In my early 20′s, I thought loneliness stemmed from feeling disconnected, and that disconnection was caused by having no people in my life who really understood me. So fixing my loneliness was about fixing the disconnection. I spent years finding people who understood me. However, when I did find a handful of people who I felt really got me, I still felt lonely.

It took me a decade before I realized that we don’t feel lonely because we’re disconnected. We feel lonely because we’ve made a habit of being alone. We can stand alone amongst other people. However, standing alone keeps us from connecting to those around us.

I was trying to fix the wrong problem. I was working on the disconnection when I should have been working on what kept me alone.

How We Become Alone

Being alone comes from separating our Self from others. It’s not about taking alone time in order to recharge. It’s the difference between “I’m alone” vs “I need some time alone”.

Introverts can take alone time in a crowded bookstore full of strangers. Being alone comes from a state of emotional separation. It’s that wall we place between us and the external. We can do this while having the physical presence of another person or having people in our lives. People who have many friends can still feel alone.

The Miriam-Webster dictionary gives three definitions for alone.

1. separated from others : I want be alone
2. exclusive of anyone or anything else : she alone knows why
3. incomparable, unique : alone among their contemporaries in this respect

People who feel the most alone consistently hold attitudes and take actions that separate themselves, exclude themselves and hold themselves incomparable to others.

Part 1: Intentional Separation (Us-vs-Them Mentality)

A Basis for Friendship

To see how we separate, we first have to examine how we get together.

Friendships begin with interest. We talk to someone. They say something interesting and we have a conversation about it. However, common interests don’t create lasting bonds. Otherwise, we would become friends with everyone with whom we had a good conversation. Similar interests as a basis for friendship doesn’t explain why we become friends with people who have completely different interests than we do.

In time, we discover common values and ideals. However, friendship through common values and ideals doesn’t explain why atheists and those devout in their faith become friends. Vegans wouldn’t have non-vegan friends. In the real world, we see examples of friendships between people with diametrically opposed views. At the same time, we see cliques form in churches and small organizations dedicated to a particular cause, and it’s not uncommon to have cliques inside a particular belief system dislike each other.

So how do people bond if common interests and common values don’t seem to be the catalyst for lasting friendships?

I find that people build lasting connections through common problems and people grow apart when their problems no longer coincide. This is why couples especially those with children tend to lose their married friends. Their primary problems have become vastly different. The married person’s problems revolve around family and children. The single person’s problem revolves around relationships with others and themselves.

When the single person talks about their latest dating disaster, the married person is thinking I’ve already solved this problem. When the married person talks about finding good daycare, the single person is thinking how boring the problems of married life can be. Eventually marrieds and singles lose their connection because they don’t have common problems.

I look back at friends I had in junior high and high school. We didn’t become friends because of long nights playing D&D. That came later. We were all loners and outcasts in our own way. We had one shared problem that bound us together: how to make friends and relate to others while feeling so “different”. That was the problem that made us friends. Over the years as we found our own answers and went to different problems, we grew apart.

Stick two people with completely different values and belief systems on a deserted island where they have to cooperate to survive. Then stick two people with the same values and interests together at a party. Which pair do you think will form the stronger bond?

When I was 20, I was living on my own. I didn’t have many friends who were in college because I couldn’t relate to them. I was worrying about how to pay rent and trying to stretch my last few dollars for food at the end of the month. They were worried about term papers.

In my life now, the people I spend the most time with have kids, have careers, are thinking about retirement and are figuring out their changing roles and values as they get older. These are problems that I relate to. We solve them in different ways because our values though compatible aren’t similar. I feel connected hearing about how they’ve chosen to solve those issues in a way that works for them.

Problems Make Us Feel Alone

It seems that often we create problems that isolate us. Here a few common ones:

1. I’m feel strongly about my values and don’t ever want to compromise them to make my life easier.
   
   Translation: Other people compromise easily and therefore don’t understand my problems of trying to live a life that matches my values.
2. I can’t understand how people can ignore the suffering around the world.
   
   Translation: Other people are callous or oblivious and can’t understand my problems because of how deeply I feel about the inequalities in the world.
3. Society is so materialistic and I can’t relate to that.
   
   Translation: Being poor is more spiritually evolved and since I’m more spiritually evolved, other people can’t understand my problems.

These were my views in my early 20′s and kept me separate from those around me. Those views were all about making myself feel significant by bringing other people down. I thought having special problems made me special. Problems don’t make people special. Solving them does.

My views created an Us-vs-Them perspective of the world. Solving my problem required finding more Us people and to avoid Them. I wanted a special club of Us people. The problem was that all the Us people I found thought that their problems were more unique than the other Us people. We never bonded. We were still separating ourselves by one-upping each other about the uniqueness of our problems.

The Downside Us-Vs-Them

The upside to Us-Vs-Them is that we feel special being Us. Unfortunately feeling special doesn’t outweigh the significant downside.

There will always be more Us than Them

There has to be. Otherwise, the exclusively club of Us wouldn’t be exclusive. So to maintain the exclusivity, we make more rules in our head to keep others out. We become more dependent on less people and are devastated when those people don’t reciprocate by valuing our friendship with the same mindfulness.

Finding more people to connect with seems beyond our control because we automatically put everyone in the Them column and wait for people to work their way into the Us column. The problem is no one wants to have to prove themselves in order to become friends. We end up waiting and waiting.

Us-vs-Them limits opportunities

The most successful people in the world get along with the widest range of people. It doesn’t necessarily mean they like everyone, but they get along with everyone.

It’s incredibly hard to get along with people if we view them as our inferior. That’s what an Us-vs-Them mentality cultivates. We tend to ignore Them and sometimes openly dislike Them.

However, it’s from Them that most opportunities arise. Since we run in the same circle as our Us people, any opportunities they know, we know about. Any new opportunities come from Them. That dream job you’ve always wanted, that book agent you wanted to meet will most likely be an acquaintance of Them.

It takes longer to solve problems

If we view our problems as completely unique then we can’t try what others have tried. We feel their solutions can’t be applied. Unfortunately, all the Us people we know seem to be stuck with the same problem. An Us-Vs-Them mentality forces us to solve our problems by trial and error. Trial and error is time consuming.

Being Them

I’ve been one of Them for decades now. Being Them is a state of mind. It didn’t happen all at once and the process occurred over many years.

Here’s the main tenets of being Them.

1. Everyone is trying to get by the best they can.

No one wants to compromise their values. No one wants to work at a job they don’t like in order to pay rent. Everyone feels a bit isolated in their own way. Everyone does what they can to get by while avoiding doing things that make them feel bad about themselves in the morning.

2. My way of being happy is just my way of being happy.

I’m not a toy person. I like playing with toys but I find the maintenance of toys inconvenient. I have friends who love their toys. And I’m grateful they share their toys when I’m around them. I get all the benefits and none of the downside. They’re very happy acquiring more toys. I’m very happy playing with their toys. I’m not in any position to judge which way is better.

There’s no right way to be happy. There’s no such thing as a more meaningful happiness. Just because someone is doing something that would make us unhappy and unfulfilled doesn’t mean they’re unhappy or unfulfilled.

People play the society-is-too-whatever card (too materialistic, too apathetic, too whatever) too often. I have a favorite quote by Rabbi Israel Salanter, “Most men worry about their own bellies, and other people’s souls, when we all ought to be worried about our own souls, and other people’s bellies.”

3. Everyone is special.

The object of meeting people is finding out what makes each person special. For me, everyone is a Cracker Jack box with a toy surprise at the bottom. The fun is digging for the prize.

Connecting

These beliefs keep me connected to others. They keep me from being alone. They keep my problems ordinary. Raising kids, too much work, not enough fun, car making funny noises, boring yard work are ordinary problems. They’re the same problems as others in my life have. We don’t get together and talk about problems because that’s not the point of relationships. Other people aren’t there to solve our problems.

We get together to enjoy the company of people who share and understand our day-to-day issues and want to get away from them for a bit. The company of friends is our reward for trying to solve our problems. We talk movies or books. We reminisce. We talk about relationships and goals. But in the end, we realize that we all have to go back to those same day-to-day issues. When we part, I silently wish each of them all the best and hope to see them soon.

This is how I feel connected.

Almost every Friday for the last 13 years, I’ve gone dancing at the same dance club. Last Friday, I met Ryan. I wouldn’t have noticed him if my friend Rebecca hadn’t pointed him out as someone she considered cute. I asked her why she didn’t go over and say hi, but she’s a shy ENFJ. It’s hard to put yourself out there when you’re single and a corner mouse. I was that shy in my early 20′s. Since I wasn’t anymore, I decided that by the end of that night, I’d meet him and introduce him to her.

I told Ryan how Rebecca and I noticed that he was a good dancer. I asked him how often he went to this club. He said he’d been dancing for years, but he kept to himself. I proceeded to introduce him to all the regulars who are hubs (i.e. people that others flocked around). Ryan does SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism), graduated from one of the top engineering colleges in the country (School of Mines) and plays D&D. I use to go swing dancing with a guy who did SCA so I know little about it. My sister went to School of Mines and I use to play D&D. So I kept my small talk to those three topics.

This is how I met Rebecca 3 years ago. She was a dance club regular, sitting in the corner. I said hi and introduced her to all the hubs. I discovered she was a teacher and we ended up talking about teaching and school districts. Three years later, she’s one of my strong ties.

I wrote in my first post on friendship about how I decided to stop having friends. Because of that I have more people in my life now than I did before.

Before I stopped having friends

INFPs have a tendency to call friends just those people who are strong ties, people who we feel connected to. Everyone else is an acquaintance.

The problems with the friend/acquaintance model are:

1. INFPs become too dependent on a small group of friends to fill all their emotional needs.

My friends are busy. They have lives outside of their friendship with me. When we heavily depend on a small group of people to fills our need for connectedness and those people are not available, we feel hurt that they’re not making their time with us more important.

2. INFPs become needy and desperate when we feel we’re losing a friend we’ve invested so much energy into.

When our friends are too busy to see us we interpret it as a sign that we aren’t important in their lives. We set time out of our schedule to accommodate them. We make that extra effort to align our schedule with theirs to have time together. However when our friends don’t do the same in return and cancel on us, INFPs grow resentful.

3. INFPs develop expectations of their friends based on their INFP ideal of friendship

We assume that if we put extra effort into a friendship then our friends should do the same. INFPs have this ideal for friendship that we want others to adhere to. INFPs become demanding in our passive-aggressive way because we only want what we think is “fair” which only serves to drive our friends away.

4. INFPs get stuck in their friendships

We tell ourselves that those people weren’t really our friends and we somehow just misinterpreted our feelings. We seek out new people to become close friends. And with those new close friends, we rehash the same thoughts and ideas. We start the cycle all over and wonder why we haven’t grown emotionally in our friendships.

Strong ties and Weak ties

I finally got exasperated with myself and gave up trying to seek out friends. I meet people to see if I find them interesting.

For me, people fall into two categories: people I like spending time with and people I avoid. The people that I enjoy spending time with fall into two categories: strong ties and weak ties.

Strong ties are the people I feel connected to in some aspect of my personality. Weak ties are people who’s company I enjoy but don’t feel any sort of deep connection towards. My “friends” fall into both categories. Most of the people I see out dancing are weak ties. Basically we have similar interests but I don’t feel any strong connection towards. My strong ties and I have similar problems, but only a two or three have similar interests.

I treat my weak ties and strong ties equally. I won’t cancel lunch with a weak tie because a strong tie calls up and wants to do something. If a strong tie is late, I won’t wait any longer than I would with a weak tie. The difference between strong ties and weak ties is that I go to my strong ties to bounce thoughts and ideas off of when I have problems.

INFPs want all their friends to be strong ties, however people change. We can’t make the assumption that a person who’s a strong tie will always be a strong tie. People go on to a different set a problems that we can no longer relate to and that’s the big reason why strong ties grow apart. We can see this when we get married and have kids. Our single friends can’t relate to our problems of diapers and picking the right school. We’ve already gone through the single-life drama of someone we like not calling us back.

The biggest issue with only having strong ties is that we get stuck. I known my strong ties for years so I know what they think about life, religion, free will, World of Warcraft and what movies they’re looking forward to seeing next year. I know what we agree on and what we disagree on. No new ideas get introduced.

Weak ties are where new ideas and inspirations come from. Also, it’s weak ties where we find new opportunities. We run in most of the same circles as our strong ties so all the opportunities that they know about, we know about. It’s from my weak ties that I’ve found all my jobs. It’s my weak ties that I get recommendations for people and services I need in my life. It’s also weak ties that challenge us to grow our relationship skills because we don’t sync with them as well as we do with strong ties.

Now vs Then

Having strong and weak ties has made all the difference in my life. Here are the biggest:

1. I’m not possessive of my friends anymore.

I’m more than willing to introduce new people to other people in my life. Mostly, it’s just a nice thing to do especially for introverts who have problems meeting new people. This new person might end up being a life love of someone I’ve introduced them to. This new person could end up helping a friend in someone way that I couldn’t. This new person might make a friend’s life better.

2. I no longer wait for people.

If someone is suppose to show up to lunch and they don’t. Oh well. I’ll catch them the next time. I always have a book with me. I don’t view it as someone not showing up. I view as much needed time away from the kids with a good book.

When I have many people in my life that I can have a good conversation over lunch, missing out on one isn’t that big of a deal. I don’t end up giving off that needy vibe which in turns attracts more people into my life. People want friendships that are easy and not full of expectation and pressure.

3. I’m more generous, but I say no more often.

I use to stress myself out trying to help out my close friends. I would ignore helping out acquaintances unless I could see some advantage to it. That wasn’t the type person I wanted to be.

This weekend I gave away an old Christmas tree to a weak tie. It will be her first Christmas tree with her boyfriend that just moved in. Last week, I fixed a laptop for a strong tie. This week I’m helping my brother design a logo for his new company. I’m always doing something for someone. However, it’s all stuff I want to do.

I don’t feel guilty turning down requests for help. If someone gets mad and stops talking to me (which has never happened), I have other people in my life.

4. I’m less emotionally demanding.

I have more people to pick and choose from when I feel social. Sometimes I want to talk nerd. Sometimes I want to talk about raising kids. I have different people that I go to for each. I don’t have one or two people that I have many things in common with. I have one or two things in common with many different people. It’s easier on the people in my lives. They know they can turn me down without having to feel guilty.

The Distributed Model of Friendship

The downside is that I don’t have one best friend. The upside is that I don’t have one best friend.

Single dependencies leave much out of our control and can drastically affect our life if that dependency is no longer there. If a best friend is busy, we have to wait. If we have a falling out with a best friend, they have a lot of ammunition to negatively impact our lives.

If I have many different people that I share different parts of my life and different aspects of my personality then I only need to compensate for that part if something goes awry. If a regular poker group moves away, I find other poker players. If one group is overloaded with their day-to-day, I go to a different group.

No one person knows everything about me. I don’t think a single person ever could. However, many people know important parts about me. The parts I think they’ll get.

With Ryan, I now have another person to speak nerd with or if I ever have any questions about materials engineering or SCA. Perhaps, we become “good friends” but that’s not the point. I don’t form weak ties in order to build them into strong ties.

I build weak ties because that’s another person who could make my life more interesting.

I waited a year before taking the time to design my blog. The first iteration took me 15 minutes to throw together from a template I found. This version, I spent roughly 60 hours designing and coding over the last 2 weeks. Even before I started design, my two questions were “so what?” followed by “who cares?”.

Amanda Linehan, an INFP who writes a self awareness blog, Look Far, wrote about asking the right questions. For me, “So what?” and “Who cares?” are my most important questions. They give me perspective. They moderate my need for validation. “So what” reminds me that even though I think I’m unique and special, the universe is under no obligation to acknowledge this in anyway.

INFP Blog is my third blog. The first two failed. I forgot that the fundamental objective of any blog is building a relationship with your reader. Anyone who says that they write blogs for themselves needs reminding that if a person wants to write something no one reads, it’s easier to keep a diary under the bed. Pen and paper have smaller learning curves than WordPress or Blogspot.

My first two blogs looked cool. I spent weeks with the design. My objective was to express myself by creating something that reflected me. If I asked myself “so what” at the start, I could have saved myself the trouble. After all the hours designing and coding those first blogs, no one read them. After the launch, I was too burnt out and too disappointed to get to the real work of building relationships.

Those failed blogs represent a bigger picture of how I formed relationships in my real life. I thought that if learned something really well and expressed myself with it, I’d be cool and people would be naturally be attracted. My self-worth would be validated by the awesomeness of my skills. Yeah, that didn’t work.

Here’s one thing I’ve learned about relationships. People don’t like us for who we are. For the most part, few really know who we are. And perhaps since we’re INFPs, most never will. People like us because of who they are when they’re around us.

A common complaint on INFP forums is how INFPs are shy and a little bit lonely because we find it difficult to meet people with whom we connect. So instead, INFPs focus on self-development. However, if our goal is finding meaningful relationships, why are we so focused on something we aren’t going to readily share with someone we don’t already know?

INFPs learn and improve on skills and knowledge that make us unique whether it’s Tarot, Vogon poetry, speaking Elvish or the MBTI. We get awesome at these skills and wouldn’t mind being recognized by the like-minded for the time and energy spent. However, the only people who recognize the dedication are others with the same interest who also spent time and energy and would also like to be recognized for their awesomeness. For me, mutual back patting has never been a solid foundation to build meaningful relationships. As for the ones who aren’t like-minded, they don’t care if we know the meaning of moons in certain Houses or about Risings and Cusps. People only care what we know once they know that we care.

The question of “so what?” takes me outside of my head. So I redesign my blog, lots of people redesign their blogs every day. What makes me doing it so special? My answer was nothing. This leads to better questions:

Will my traffic increase because I redesigned?
Nope. I have 12 years of web experience to know that’s untrue.

Will it make me feel better if the site looks prettier?
A little. I like shiny.

Will it make me feel better if the site is pretty and no one reads my site?
No

Is the reason for creating the site to make myself feel better?
No.

So what’s a good reason to spend all this effort redesigning if feeling better was the reason for the site in the first place?
Because I can’t find anything. Whenever I want to link to an old post, I have to go digging for it. If I have this much problem navigating my site, it’s probably worse for someone else.

These are the same questions that went through my head a year ago when I first created the site. I couldn’t find a good reason to spend hours on design so I put up something simple and focused on writing and building relationships instead. Now that I have a modest readership, I redesigned for usefulness to improve relationships. People are attracted to usefulness.

Yes, I could have redesigned to feel better. INFPs do that all the time. We do things to make ourselves feel better, but feeling better usually isn’t the primary purpose. Feeling better is the consolation prize so we aren’t too hurt if we fail at our primary goal. Feeling better is 2nd place. INFPs spend a lot of time and energy trying to reach 2nd place instead of focusing on our primary goals.

I could have redesigned to just express myself. Expressing oneself is necessary and essential for INFPs. However, when we do something that only benefits ourselves, no one else cares. Doing things to make ourselves feel better falls under the same category because it only benefits us. Why should anyone else care?

Here’s a secret. Even though the new design is shiny, it’s not my preferred design style. However, the navigation is cleaner. Using serif fonts and increasing the white space make long text easier to read. Also the new layout, lets me scale the the site into a resource. I have a space for book recommendations that a reader asked for 3 months ago. In short, it’s more useful. Useful builds relationships.

If you haven’t read Part 1, you missed the other types of Tweeters.

The Reciprocal Tweeter

Tweet: @ToWhomEver I thought your new blog post was great. Here’s a link to mine.

To be fair, it’s sucks to give without getting. But that’s not how Twitter works. That’s not how relationships work. Nowhere does it say if I like you, you have to automatically like me back. Reciprocal Tweeters thinks a Rule of Reciprocation should exists. If they follow you, you should follow them. If you don’t reply when they reply, if you don’t retweet if they retweet, if you don’t comment when they comment, they’ll consider it a slight. Enough slights added up and they unfollow you.

Reciprocal Tweeters are the it’s-not-me-it’s-you people in relationships. They can’t understand how they end up dating so many jerks. What they don’t realize is that the quid pro quo approach to relationships ends up creating heavy expectations. When those expections go unmet, then it’s never them being wrong for having expectations of another person’s behavior, it’s the other person not changing into someone more suitable.

Jerks have always been jerks. It’s not their fault that they’re a jerk to you because they’re a jerk to everyone. Who’s fault is it really to decide to try to have a relationships with one in the first place?

The Common Interest Tweeter

Tweet: I’m an INFP, what about you?

Common interest tweets are the most common tweets. It could be about INFP or it could be tweets about favorite films or favorite poems. Common tweets can be associated with topic hashtags. Unfortunately, common interest is only the start of relationships.

Common Interest Tweeters are the ones that join the latest Facebook fan page and takes the latest test. They join clubs and attend social activities whether it be ballroom dancing or coed naked slam poetry readings. They hangout with buddies as much as they can, but they can’t understand why they aren’t forming more meaningful relationships.

I can talk all about INFP and geek stuff, but if that other person stalks their ex as a hobby, I don’t think the friendship will be going anywhere. Having lots of common interests doesn’t really denote compatible values. Common Interest Tweeters seem endlessly surprised that a mutual love for 19th century Romantic poetry doesn’t preclude someone from being an axe-murderer.

Relationships Begin With You

It’s not looking to meet the right people.

In Twitter, whether people follow or unfollow really starts with us. Friends, acquaintances and Twitter followers are a reflection of us because these are the people that we attract into our life.

I have so much to give to the right person is a wonderful in theory.

However, if all the baggage and all the things currently going wrong in our life leaves us a bit broken and we don’t fix it first, we’re a crappy gift. What we’re basically saying is, “hey, this doesn’t work right, but I want you to have it anyway.” Gee, thanks.

Someone who love me should love me for who I am even slightly broken is also wonderful in theory.

I have a slightly broken dryer who’s timer I doesn’t work. So I have to wait and manually turn it off. I can’t just set it and go to bed or leave the house. That’s the problem with slightly broken things. It creates an unbalance in the relationships because whatever is slightly broken requires more time and resources. Unbalanced relationships fail.

INFP is behavior. Behavior is self-similar. In other words, how you do anything is how you do everything. This applies to Twitter.

Since Twitter is a communication platform, I think INFPs believe their objective on Twitter is to share information. If you’re an INFP who thinks the end goal of Twitter is the act of sharing, you’ll soon be bored and quit.

INFPs in 3D interaction don’t share information to strangers as a goal. We don’t tell the guy who takes our money for gas that we write poetry. We don’t tell the hostess that seats us at a restaurant what we ate this morning. So why do we do this on Twitter?

Because Twitter allows INFPs a platform to form relationships.

INFPs are all about relationships. INFPs on Twitter are looking for connection. Otherwise what’s the point of telling someone that you got a new job, unless you’re looking to connect with someone kind enough to say congratulations. Twitter is a microcosm of relationships being created and dissolved at internet speed all with a click of Follow or Unfollow.

Our behavior on Twitter is quite telling of our relationships if you choose to pay attention.

The Vague Tweeter

Tweet: I’m not sure what my problem is today.

In any healthy relationship, good communication is the key. Vague tweets don’t communicate anything because there’s no context.

Vague Tweeters are the reserved ones who believe that being mysterious offsets being shy. They wait for others to initiate new relationships. Being mysterious is their defense mechanism. It’s also just another hoop that strangers have to jump through in order to get to know the “real” them.

In away-from-keyboard relationships, Vague Tweeters don’t realize that maybe the other person just doesn’t get it and never will. This is what kills most Vague Tweeter relationships where the INFP thinks their significant other doesn’t see there’s a problem when it should be obvious. Since that significant other doesn’t even recognize the problem that must mean the significant other never really understood them in the first place. So the Vague Tweeter ends the relationships. Luckily unfollows are much less complicated than break-ups.

The Esoteric Tweeter

Tweet: Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

Of course, no attribute to Ferris Bueller’s Day off anywhere in the tweet. It’s the lack of attribution that’s the key. INFPs use esoteric tweets ars testers and anyone who gets it, passed the test for potential follow or at least a stay from being unfollowed.

Esoteric Tweeters in daily life feel that the kiss-a-lot-of-frogs approach to relationships is for suckers. So they test people for potential relationship material. It could be references to little known indie flicks that have personal meaning. The thought behind this is that if another has seen the movie and liked it enough to remember the reference then this person is someone that shares similar sensibilities and a candidate for potential friendship.

Or that person could just have an excellent memory for pop culture trivia. This isn’t usually a one time occurrence. Esoteric Tweeters will test in various areas important to them to get a sense of that person overall.

What surprises Esoteric Tweeter is that when the other person passes their tests, that person chooses to go their own way anyway. The Esoteric Tweeter is wondering how someone can walk away from all the clear signals for compatibility after they’ve passed with flying colors.

Assume that the other person knows they’re being tested. No one likes it. It’s impolite. Most of all, testing is complicated and time-consuming. If someone had to choose between a relationship that’s easy or complicated, which do you think they’ll choose?

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Part 2: Common Interest Tweeter, Reciprocal Tweeter, Relationships being with you

Have you ever notice that for INFPs, a description of soulmate is like a shopping list that takes 15 minutes to describe when they’re 20 and single, and still takes 15 minutes when they’re 40 and single?

INFPs everywhere are protesting that we aren’t that shallow. I can’t believe how many times I’ve heard that my soulmate is just someone who “gets” me.

My response is this: do you have to be physically attracted to your soulmate for them to be your soulmate?

What if he’s bald and noticeably shorter than you? What if she has bad teeth and a laugh that scares off harpies? Can they be your soulmate if they have horrendous hygiene and you find them disgusting?

Have you even looked? Perhaps that urine smelling homeless man that’s old enough to be your father that you pass every day on the way to work is the one person in the whole world who understands you and will accept you completely. You’re never going to find out by giving him the occasional dollar bill as you walk by.

INFPs seem offended by the notion that there’s a minimum attractiveness quotient before someone can really understand why some days we’re on the verge of tears for no apparent reason.

Here’s some bad news for you. If you believe there’s only one soulmate, that one person who’s just perfect for you, given that there’s 6 billion people, is statistically in a different country and most likely married or dead depending on the age. That’s a depressing thought so INFPs with Soulmate Syndrome have an additional condition called Destiny Delerium, the belief that the universe will make sure that their paths will cross.

Did you meet your one true love already and didn’t recognize that person as your true love? Maybe, you thought someone was your one true love until the really nasty divorce and now you’re realizing that your soulmate is someone who gets you and someone who doesn’t play World of Warcraft all day and picks up after themselves every once in a while.

Maybe, you won’t meet your one true love until your 70. Fate isn’t time bounded and has a wicked sense of humor.

I don’t know why so many INFPs choose to hold onto the belief of the one true love. It’s counterproductive because long term relationships have little to do with love. Love doesn’t conquer all. There’s a reason why our divorce rate is 50%. It’s from the belief that love fixes everything and when it doesn’t then you aren’t in love anymore.

For example, many couples break up over infidelity. Infidelity has very little to do with love and more to do with one partner looking outside the relationship to find whatever they think is missing in the current relationship. It’s not as if one person stopped loving the other. It’s about a breakdown in the relationship and differing values. Love has very little to do with maintaining long-term relationships.

Most INFPs I know want a loving, lasting relationship. Great relationships come from similar values, communication, mutual effort and timing. So why do INFPs focus so hard on finding that one person that “gets” them and not the person that picks up after themselves? I’m not saying that those traits are mutually exclusive. I’m just saying that finding someone who picks up after themselves is easier and contributes more to a lasting relationship than someone who understands your soul.

As of Friday last week, I’ve been married to an INTJ for 13 years. I attribute most of that success to finding someone who was willing to put up with me. That and the fact that I’ve never expected her to make me happy. Your personal happiness is a big burden to place on another person.

I’ve always believed that if my life was crap, burdening someone else with the responsibility to relieve the crappiness is just a crappy thing to do someone. They have their own crap to deal with.

For my part, I don’t try to make her happy. She finds that on her own. I just make it easier for her which mostly entails doing dishes, cooking and keeping my mess confined to my office.

I don’t agree that there’s an ideal MBTI pairing for potential mates because lasting relationship are built on similar values. If one INFP is a vegan and the other INFP is a vegan axe-murderer, I don’t think that relationship is going to work out.

However, certain MBTI pairings make it easier with the day-to-day. Here’s why I think things have worked so well being with an INTJ:

1. We’re both I’s so neither of us needs to be the center of attention. I love E’s but being with outgoing E’s can be draining.
2. Her J balances my P. One of us has to remember to pay the bills on time.
3. Her J keeps us moving ahead. It’s good that at least one of us knows what they want. I can tag along until I figure out what I want.
4. Being N’s helps us both recognize that we’re heading into rough waters before the problems blow up.
5. My wife being an NTJ makes her driven which makes me want to get my act together. I can’t be a dilettante forever.
6. Being NTJ and NFP, we approach problem solving differently which increases the chances of finding a solution.
7. Being a P tends to make me more easy going which balances your her J need to make things happen right away. Life doesn’t always want to do things by our schedule.
8. Being INT and INF, we’re pretty strong in our sense of ourselves and our values which is the basis of any relationship.
9. Her NTJ keeps me grounded and focused when the NFP side makes me flighty trying to do a too many projects at once.
10. As a P, I don’t mind when she changes her mind later. I’ve managed to adapt.

My friend Sam messaged me last Monday and asked if I wanted to go see Nine Inch Nails. I’m a Trent fan. I like Trent’s business models but the last time I loved his music, Def Leppard was still getting airplay. Also, I’m broke.

Sam promptly replied that he asked me if I wanted to go, not whether I had money. Because apparently, that’s what friends do. It suddenly hit me that I have friends. It was bound to happen after spending years of free time with the same people.

I don’t like the word friend. I decided to stop having friends in my mid-20′s. Without friends, it’s easier to people fit into two categories: People I like being around and the people I avoided. INFPs idealize friendship. The word friend has subtext.

When I said that a person was my friend, I meant they were my close friend who I could tell about the body secrets to. Everyone else wandered this vast limbo of acquaintance-hood outside the door of my secret club of friends.

My friends were only those who could understand who I really was as a person. Pledging my club included figuring out their MBTI. We’re they INFPs because only INFPs or maybe an INT/J or P could understand me. INFPs use all sorts of initiation rituals for friendship. Astrology is quite popular as an INFP form of hazing.

I stopped making friends because people couldn’t quite live up to my idealization of them. People disappointed me. I felt hurt and betrayed because they should have known me better than that. Looking back at it now, I can tell you the most important thing I learned about friendship:

Friends are there to be your friend, not to make you feel less lonely.

I’ve known Sam for 7 years. I don’t know how long we’ve been friends. I never expected us to be friends and that’s probably why we are. I didn’t “go INFP”* on him.

Today, I call friends those people who’s company I enjoy and I spend time with. The other requirements I’ve learned to let go of. They don’t have to return messages in a timely manner. They don’t have to show up on time. They don’t have to learn the secret handshake and I’ve eliminated the blood sacrifice completely.

I don’t expect anything from my friends except for them to be who they are. They have lives that they’re trying to muddle through also. I’m almost a grown up now. I can deal with it.

As for the those deep dark secrets I was saving to tell close friends. They don’t need to know where the bodies are buried. Isn’t that what blogging is for?

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* I’m formally coining the phrase “going INFP”. Going INFP is when an INFP projects an ideal onto a person or a situation which results in disappointment due to unmet expectations.