INFJs are, by definition, rare, reserved, and unlikely to initiate anything, which means that many of them can end up alone and misunderstood. To help with things, I’ve compiled a list of points which I think would be of great use to anyone considering dating someone who identifies as an INFJ.

For most INFJs, omitting or distorting information is equivalent to lying, and at the very least will rouse their suspicion.

INFJs have an acute sensitivity for stories which don’t quite fit. At the same time, INFJs also like to assume the best and can be extremely gullible.

INFJs are adept at nonverbal communication (eye gaze, touching, body language, etc.). Just because they’re not speaking doesn’t mean they’re not saying something.

INFJs have an extremely complex internal value system. An INFJ will see if you ‘fit’ into their world, and they’ll bend their own rules if they really like you. INFJs tend to have very high standards, but are also very accepting once they trust you and know you’re safe.

INFJs can be pretty intense emotionally. This isn’t to say that they can get into a heated argument, in fact INFJs avoid conflict, however they are easily hurt and feel very deeply. It’s not uncommon for INFJs to cry if they feel something very deeply.

INFJs are weird / odd / strange / extremely rare and they very much know it. They yearn to be understood and want to be accepted as they are (as most people do, of course). An INFJ is incredibly complex, so complex they confuse even themselves. They almost always feel misunderstood and ‘hidden’. They will be offended if you pass them off as ‘simple’ or ‘average’. Getting to know an INFJ takes work, so be prepared for that. A lot of gentle enquiry is required.

INFJs can often mimic other types.

INFJs are typically better in writing than in verbal communication. If you want to know an INFJ’s true feelings, ask them to write out what they think and feel.

INFJs don’t typically engage in casual relationships. Most of them will become too attached for it to be possible. If your intentions aren’t serious then you should probably steer clear of an INFJ unless it’s very obvious beforehand that they aren’t interested in a serious relationship.

An INFJ’s allegiance is no trifle. If an INFJ wants to stick by you, it means they really like you. Do not violate that gift.
INFJs consciously choose the people that are close to them. They would rather have a few very close friendships as opposed to numerous superficial ones.

They open up at a dinosauric pace. They typically hold themselves back and consider that behaviour to be part of their nature. They’ve been described as having ‘layers’ which only a select few people are privy to, the closer the layer to their heart, the fewer people are granted access. Do not expect to find yourself in the ‘top tier’ overnight. It often takes months or years to access the deepest recesses.

INFJs, like other idealists, love harmony. While an INFJ is relatively adept at conflict resolution, they do not appreciate the unneeded creation of conflict. An INFJ will strive for harmony.

The ‘N’ combined with the ‘J’ in INFJ means that they are future oriented. Do everything you can to make yourself seem like a long-term option. If you become destructively impulsive, an INFJ will lose the ability to see you as a long-term mate, and will become unhappy as a result. INFJs are future-oriented and have powerful imaginations and superb insight.

INFJs are extremely sensitive. Make sure that criticism is handed as lightly as possible and constructively. At the same time, INFJs love to please their partner, and will work on an issue if presented in the right way. When to be blunt with an INFJ: never. Be honest and direct, but there’s a fine line between direct and insensitive.

INFJs love helping people. If you’re bad at accepting help (yes, accepting help is a skill), then get ready to have problems. To reject an INFJ’s help is to reject their love, and one of the things they hold nearest to their hearts.
An INFJ’s ability to help people goes hand-in-hand with their ability to destroy people. Their keen knowledge of people’s weaknessess means they can either help you incredibly or destroy you, however the latter is extremely rare and is only reserved for people they believe have done serious harm to them or others.

They need patience, but they give patience in return.

They’re curious about other people. To their friends, they are very accepting. However, the closer one gets to an INFJ’s heart, the more their standards will apply to the other person, which can sometimes create issues.

They often have darker periods where they close up. They can become monk-like and reclusive. It doesn’t mean they don’t like you, it just means they need to recharge.

They can be stubborn once they believe they’re in the right, especially if it has to do with their values.

INFJs hardly ever initiate anything. They like it when the other person initiates a conversation, contact, etc.

INFJs need 2 things to thrive: trust and safety. Trusting you is about knowing that you’re ethically and morally upstanding (or at least in accordance with their values), and feeling safe is knowing that you’ll stick by them. INFJs don’t want to open up to people who might disappear overnight. If an INFJ feels they can trust you and feels safe with you, they’ll be very happy. The only added bonus is to tell them how much you appreciate them.

Their energy drains when around others. They will need time alone to ‘feel like themselves’.

Your energy will easily affect them. If you seem unstable, etc., it will seep into them and poison them. It has often been said that an INFJ’s partner has to be strong, and this is generally true.

INFJs live in a world of fantasy. They can have problems consolidating their idealism with the reality of the world.

Yesterday

She's sitting there talking to me about A's friend, whom she is describing as being a mean spirited bully.  She says "I just don't understand because she's such a cute kid." 

You don't understand how she could possibly have a negative trait.....because she's CUTE? SERIOUSLY? 

Pitiful. 

People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is light from within. ~Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

The Man Who Didn’t Believe in Love
by don Miguel Ruiz (from The Mastery of Love)

There was once a man who didn’t believe in love. This was an ordinary man just like you and me, but what made this man special was his way of thinking: He thought love doesn’t exist. Of course, he had a lot of experience trying to find love, and he observed the people around him. Much of his life had been spent searching for love, only to find that love didn’t exist.

Wherever this man went, he would tell people of his thoughts and opinions on love. This man was highly intelligent, and he was very convincing. What he said was the love is just like a drug; it makes you very high, but it creates a strong need. You can become highly addicted to love, but what happens when you don’t receive your daily doses of love? Just like a drug, you need your everyday doses.

He used to say that most relationships between lovers are just like a relationship between a drug addict and the one who provides the drugs. The one who has the biggest need is like the drug addict; the one who has a little need is like the provider. The one who has the little need is the one who controls the whole relationship. You can see this dynamic so clearly because usually in every relationship there is one who loves the most and the other who doesn’t love as much. You can see the way they manipulate each other, their actions and reactions, and they are just like the provider and the drug addict.

The drug addict, the one who has the biggest need, lives in constant fear that perhaps he will not be able to get the next dosage of love, or the drug. The drug addict thinks, “What am I going to do if she leaves me?” That fear makes the drug addict very possessive. “That’s mine!” The addict becomes jealous and demanding, because the fear of not having the next dosage. The provider can control and manipulate the one who needs the drug by giving more doses, fewer doses, or no doses at all. The one who has the biggest need completely surrenders and will whatever he can to avoid being abandoned.

The man went on explain to everyone why love doesn’t exist, and how what humans call ‘love’ is nothing but a fear relationship based on control. So many promises are made to each other: to live together forever, to love and respect each other, through the good times and the bad times but after marriage, you can see that none of these promises are kept.

What you find is a war of control to see who will manipulate whom. Who will be the provider? And who will have the addiction. You find that a few months later, the respect that they swear to have for each other is gone. You can see the resentment, the emotional poison, how they hurt each other, little by little, and it grows and grows, until they don’t know when the love stops. They stay together because they are afraid to be alone, afraid of the opinions and judgments of others, and also afraid of their judgments and opinions. But where is the love?

The man went on and on about all the reasons why he believed love doesn’t exist.

The one day this man was walking in a park, and there on a bench was a beautiful lady who was crying. When he saw her crying, felt curiosity. Sitting beside her, he asked if he could help her. He asked why she was crying. You can imagine his surprise when she told him she was crying because love doesn’t exist. “This is amazing—a woman who believes that love doesn’t exist!” Of course he wanted to know more about her.

He asked her why she felt that love doesn’t exist and she told him about her marriage and how she and her husband had both lost respect for each other. She told him about how they hurt each other, and at a certain point she discovered that she didn’t love him and that he didn’t love her either. ‘But the children need a father, and that was my excuse to stay and to do whatever I could to support him. Now the children are grown up and they have left. I no longer have any excuse to stay with him….There is no sense to look around for something that doesn’t exist. That is why I am crying.’

Understand her very well, he embraced her and said, “You are right; love doesn’t exist. We look for love, we open our heart and we become vulnerable, just to find selfishness. That hurts us even if we don’t think we will be hurt. It doesn’t matter how many relationships we have; the same thing happens again and again. Why even search for love any longer?”

They were so much alike, and they became the best friends ever. It was a wonderful relationship. They respected each other, and they never put each other down. With every step they took together, they were happy. There was no envy or jealousy, there was no control, and there was no possessiveness. The relationship kept growing and growing. They loved to be together, because when they were together, they had a lot of fun. When they were not together, they missed each other.

One day when the man was out of town, he had the weirdest idea. He was thinking, ‘Hmm, maybe what I feel for her is love. But this is so different from what I have ever felt before. It’s not what the poets say it is, it’s not what religion says it is, because I am not responsible for her. I don’t take anything from her; I don’t have the need for her to take care of me; I don’t need to blame her for my difficulties or to take my dramas to her. We have the best time together; we enjoy each other. I respect the way she thinks, the way she feels. She doesn’t embarrass me; she doesn’t bother me at all. I don’t feel jealous when she’s with other people; I don’t feel envy when she is successful. Perhaps love does exist, but it’s not what everyone thinks love is.’

He could hardly wait to go back home and talk to her, to let her know about his weird idea. As soon as he started talking, she knew exactly what he was talking about. She felt the same way. They decided to become lovers and to live together, and it was amazing that things didn’t change. They still respected each other, they were still supportive of each other, and the love grew more and more.

The man’s heart was so full with all the love he felt that one night a great miracle happened. He was looking at the stars and he found the most beautiful one, and his love was so big that the star started coming down from the sky and soon that star was in his hands. Then a second miracle happened, and his soul merged with that star. He was intensely happy, and he could hardly wait to go to the woman and put that star in her hands to prove his love for her. As soon as he put the star in her hands, she felt a moment of doubt. This love was overwhelming, and in that moment, the star fell from her hands and broke in a million little pieces.

Now there is an old man walking around the world swearing that love doesn’t exist. And there is a beautiful old woman at home waiting for a man, shedding a tear for a paradise that once she had in her hands, but for one moment of doubt, she let it go. This is the story about the man who didn’t believe in love.

Who made the mistake? Do you want to guess what went wrong? The mistake was on the man’s part in thinking he could give the woman his happiness. The star was his happiness, and his mistake was to put his happiness in her hands. Happiness never comes from outside of us. He was happy because of the love coming out of him; she was happy because of the love coming out of her. But as soon as he made her responsible for his happiness, she broke the star because she could not be responsible for his happiness.

No matter how much the woman loved him, she could never make him happy because she could never know what he had in his mind. She could never know what his expectations were, because she could not know his dreams.

If you take your happiness, and put it in someone’s hands, sooner or later, she is going to break it. If you give your happiness to someone else, she can always take it away. Then if happiness can only come from inside of you and is the result of your love, you are responsible for your own happiness. We can never make anyone responsible for our own happiness, but when we go to the church to get married, the first thing we do is exchange rings. We put our star in each other’s hands, expecting that she is going to make you happy, and you are going to make her happy. It doesn’t matter how much you love someone, you are never going to be what that person wants you to be.

That is the mistake most of us make right from the beginning. We base our happiness on our partner and it doesn’t work that way. We make all those promises that we cannot keep, and we set ourselves up to fail.

INFJ

INFJs are gentle, caring, complex and highly intuitive individuals. Artistic and creative, they live in a world of hidden meanings and possibilities. Only one percent of the population has an INFJ Personality Type, making it the most rare of all the types.

INFJs place great importance on havings things orderly and systematic in their outer world. They put a lot of energy into identifying the best system for getting things done, and constantly define and re-define the priorities in their lives. On the other hand, INFJs operate within themselves on an intuitive basis which is entirely spontaneous. They know things intuitively, without being able to pinpoint why, and without detailed knowledge of the subject at hand. They are usually right, and they usually know it. Consequently, INFJs put a tremendous amount of faith into their instincts and intuitions. This is something of a conflict between the inner and outer worlds, and may result in the INFJ not being as organized as other Judging types tend to be. Or we may see some signs of disarray in an otherwise orderly tendency, such as a consistently messy desk.

INFJs have uncanny insight into people and situations. They get "feelings" about things and intuitively understand them. As an extreme example, some INFJs report experiences of a psychic nature, such as getting strong feelings about there being a problem with a loved one, and discovering later that they were in a car accident. This is the sort of thing that other types may scorn and scoff at, and the INFJ themself does not really understand their intuition at a level which can be verbalized. Consequently, most INFJs are protective of their inner selves, sharing only what they choose to share when they choose to share it. They are deep, complex individuals, who are quite private and typically difficult to understand. INFJs hold back part of themselves, and can be secretive.

But the INFJ is as genuinely warm as they are complex. INFJs hold a special place in the heart of people who they are close to, who are able to see their special gifts and depth of caring. INFJs are concerned for people's feelings, and try to be gentle to avoid hurting anyone. They are very sensitive to conflict, and cannot tolerate it very well. Situations which are charged with conflict may drive the normally peaceful INFJ into a state of agitation or charged anger. They may tend to internalize conflict into their bodies, and experience health problems when under a lot of stress.

Because the INFJ has such strong intuitive capabilities, they trust their own instincts above all else. This may result in an INFJ stubborness and tendency to ignore other people's opinions. They believe that they're right. On the other hand, INFJ is a perfectionist who doubts that they are living up to their full potential. INFJs are rarely at complete peace with themselves - there's always something else they should be doing to improve themselves and the world around them. They believe in constant growth, and don't often take time to revel in their accomplishments. They have strong value systems, and need to live their lives in accordance with what they feel is right. In deference to the Feeling aspect of their personalities, INFJs are in some ways gentle and easy going. Conversely, they have very high expectations of themselves, and frequently of their families. They don't believe in compromising their ideals.

INFJ is a natural nurturer; patient, devoted and protective. They make loving parents and usually have strong bonds with their offspring. They have high expectations of their children, and push them to be the best that they can be. This can sometimes manifest itself in the INFJ being hard-nosed and stubborn. But generally, children of an INFJ get devoted and sincere parental guidance, combined with deep caring.

In the workplace, the INFJ usually shows up in areas where they can be creative and somewhat independent. They have a natural affinity for art, and many excel in the sciences, where they make use of their intuition. INFJs can also be found in service-oriented professions. They are not good at dealing with minutia or very detailed tasks. The INFJ will either avoid such things, or else go to the other extreme and become enveloped in the details to the extent that they can no longer see the big picture. An INFJ who has gone the route of becoming meticulous about details may be highly critical of other individuals who are not.

The INFJ individual is gifted in ways that other types are not. Life is not necessarily easy for the INFJ, but they are capable of great depth of feeling and personal achievement.

Pretty dead on. Find your temperment here: http://www.keirsey.com/sorter/instruments2.aspx?partid=0

The introverted child

She says "Nathan sure doesn't say a lot. It's a Grisop trait. A lot of those boys are weird like that. Melissa said his teacher wrote on his report card that he needs to speak up and participate more in class."

Too me, It's always been obvious that young Nathan is an introvert, and i always thought that was pretty cool. But to everyone else, he's "weird like that" and apparently his teacher thinks he needs to be more extroverted.

Because being an introvert is a bad thing, right?

Introversion is not a bad thing. It is not a defect. It's not something to be cured. It's simply a different personality type, a different way of interacting with the world that has its own set of advantages and disadvantages.

I was one such child. Just like Nathan. I was extremely empathetic. I didn't care for making a lot of friends. I preferred to play alone, making up imaginary scenarios in which to play with my toys. I hardly ever needed to be disciplined; a stern word was enough to make me cry. I'd ask questions with the sort of sincerity you’d expect from a philosopher.

My Mother and step father thought there was something wrong with me. Because I liked to play alone in my room. Because I didn't talk a lot. Because I was so sensitive and I cried a lot. And it was hard for me because I, in turn, thought there was something wrong with me. I spent a lot of my youth trying to fit in and be like everyone else. To be more extroverted. And it was hard for me. Really hard. It wasnt until I learned about introversion in my high school psychology class that I was able to start understanding myself, and to start learning how to be okay with being "different."

It's important for the parent to understand their child so they can help their child understand themselves. This can be difficult for some parents, especially those toward the far end of the extrovert scale, as they have to understand that introverts simply experience the world in a different way.

But never expect them to be something they are not. The great analyst Karl Jung makes it very clear that the way for introverts to win is to become more consciously introverted rather than to try and be something they are not. Every spiritual teaching in the world would agree ... find yourself and be yourself.

Here's what looks to be the ultimate In trophy wives. It's a rug featuring a submissive woman for the male chauvinist in her life to walk all over.

trapped in their own concept of "pretty"

These are the standards of our fragmented and denatured society.

In The Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf argues that women in Western culture are pressured to conform to ideal (often unattainable) standards of beauty, and that this ideal is politicized - it is a way of keeping women under control by the weight of their own insecurities.

Travelers

I soon realized that no journey carries one far unless, as it extends into the world around us, it goes an equal distance into the world within. ~Lillian Smith

We are unlettered in that which is true beauty, hampered by hypnotic multi-media imagery, and blinded by sight - our most obtrusive sense. With passivity and unexplored ambivalence we accept ersatz interpretations of beauty, that have been spooned to us by various unnamable sponsors and organizations.

Lost in inner space

"When the superficial wearies me, it wearies me so much that I need an abyss in order to rest." ~Antonio Porchia