Hi there, newbie here who's been with someone who defines himself as an ENTJ for about 2 1/2 years. Thought it would be interesting to get some input from you all on how our relationship has panned out so far. I'm new to these tests so I hope you'll be patient with me if I don't understand your replies 100%.
We got together after meeting up a few times through a club that we both belong to. My first impression was "Who is that lanky nerd?" But I instinctively knew that we'd be an item sooner or later. And it was wonderful in the beginning, although I did hear some alarm bells when he was extremely gushy and told me he loved me after about two weeks. We were in contact several times a day, mostly initiated by him. We never argued about anything because we seemed to agree on almost everything. This was the situation for almost a year.
Then, things changed. We started to argue. The daily contact waned unless I initiated it. The arguments got worse and worse and most of them were due to misunderstandings or arose from poor communication or both. Or they came out of me feeling trampled over or neglected in some way. I was periodically depressed. He felt powerless to "fix" things. We had some quiet periods but they were interspersed by full-on bust-ups. I questioned my sanity. He questioned my sanity. I sought therapy. I'm still in therapy and we're still an item. Despite everything we still both think it's worth it.
I've read some of the posts here about ENTJs to try to work out how I can best deal with my man. I appreciate that he's a lot more complex than a type test can describe. One thing I've noticed is that his feeling side comes to the fore when everything's calm and both he and I are relatively content. When he's stressed or when I'm unhappy, he seems to fall hard into type. So I guess I need to use my INFJ skills to discern when he's stressed (not difficult in general) and just step outside the situation and see it for what it is instead of going ballistic. Not sure how to deal with it when it's me who's out of sorts though - much harder to be objective in that case.
I guess some will say that I'm doing all the adapting here, but from what I've read, ENTJs respond far better to carrots than sticks (I've tried sticks and can safely say they don't work). So if I behave in a way that's acceptable to him, maybe he'll be more receptive when I tell him what I need. He's not completely unreasonable, even if he has a hard time accepting joint responsibility for what goes on in our relationship (I do recognise that whole supervisor/supervisee thing). I've tried to make him aware of what he brings to the table but I seem to have gone about it the wrong way and just caused more arguments. And as you can probably appreciate, I just want peace and quiet!
Sorry about the long post but I hope to get some constructive feedback so I felt it necessary to give as much detail as possible.