First of all, I'd like to start by saying this: being an INFJ is exhausting. It's mentally taxing and never-ending. My mind is racing twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, no matter if I'm awake or if I'm sleeping. During the waking hours, I'm constantly thinking, obsessing, analyzing, feeling, wondering about my future, reflecting on my past and, in general, contemplating the world and why it is the way it is. Some of these thoughts are grounded in reality, but many of them are daydreams, especially when I'm driving or if I have some downtime at work. I'm usually off in my own little world, creating little imaginary scenarios, like what it would be like to play shortstop for the Oakland Athletics or what it would be like to live in Iceland. And that's when I'm awake. When I'm asleep, there's no telling what my mind will come up with.
It's a 24/7 endeavor being an INFJ. You can't turn it off.
In some ways, I really like this about myself. I'm always 100-percent invested in whatever I'm working on. Always full-speed ahead, one hundred miles per hour, because it's so rewarding to be so invested in a work project or a hobby and know everything there is to know about a particular topic. I've seen every episode of my favorite sitcom at least 10 times. I've read my favorite book six times. I have a photographic and encyclopedia-like memory of my favorite sports teams. It's fun to be like this, because I feel so connected to things and take personal ownership of them.
But at the same time, I've found this to be a double-edged sword. My tendency to daydream, mixed with my emotional intensity, is an absolutely lethal and self-destructing combination when it comes to the dating game. As males, we're constantly bombarded with the same dating cliches and advice. "Play it cool," you're told. "Don't get too invested," or, "the person who cares least has the upper hand in the relationship." And in a sense, although a lot of these tidbits of advice come straight from How I Met Your Mother or He's Just Not That Into You or any of the other thousands of shows and movies in Hollywood that deal with these topics, I think there's a bit of truth to it. At first, when you meet someone new, you do need to play it cool a little bit, at least in my opinion. You need to try to take it slow, get to know her a little bit, and let everything play out naturally. In theory, this sounds like a great plan. You don't want to scare a girl off before you two even know each other on a serious level. You can't get too intense too fast.
And, as the saying goes, "therein lies the problem" for a straight INFJ male such as myself. It is impossible to "play it cool." I can't do it. I'm 23 years old, and I've tried and tried and tried, and constantly remind myself not to get too attached too fast with women, but I just can't. Just as I always daydreaming about playing Major League Baseball and could tell you on command which player won the American League MVP every year since 1966, the exact same thing happens when I meet a girl and either want to date her or have started dating her. There's no in-between, no such thing as "she seems cool, let's see where this goes" sort of thing for me. Right off the bat, if I'm attracted to you and want to get to know you, I immediately want to know everything about you. I'm immediately thinking about what the future would look like for us, what your family is like, whether you'd get along with my brothers when you come to visit the family, that sort of thing. The daydreams start, the idealization starts, and, honestly, it scares the living crap out of me. I hate it, hate it, hate it that I can't slow myself down, but I get lost in this fantasy land. And here's the biggest problem: I have to go to great lengths to hide this little fantasy world of mine. As a guy, this isn't how I'm supposed to act (although you could argue that nobody's ever really "supposed" to act a certain way). But to me, it's creepy to be this intense. I fully admit that and understand that, so I hide it. I show the outer mask of "playing it cool." I'm so worried that I'm going to screw up something perfect, and I turn into a shell of my former self. I'm not "me" anymore. Because while my "normal self" gets along terrific with women I'm not attracted to, or female friends of mine who have long-term boyfriends or are off-limits for one reason or another, the obsessive, intense alter ego version of myself clams up around women I'm attracted to. All of the sudden, it's like I'm that 14-year-old kid again who doesn't want the girl from my math class to know that I like her. Even though I'm an adult now, it's almost like I'm petrified that I'll leak my true feelings, and she'll be weirded out.
In the end, it's a nasty cycle. I meet a girl, immediately fall head over heels, then feel so afraid of coming on too strong that the opposite happens-- I don't come on strong enough. Then, things fizzle out, and I'm left overanalyzing and endlessly obsessing about what went wrong. This will go on for months sometimes. I went on a couple of dates with a girl I was really into back in the fall, and I'm still kicking myself for screwing it up. It's May! It's been months! I can't move on from things, and because it is so awful to carry this emotional crap with me on a daily basis, I sometimes find myself not even trying. Because, you know, what's the point of getting invested in someone romantically, if it's going to end up leaving me feeling horrible?
I think my INFJ qualities would make me a good person to be with in a relationship... you know how they always say we're intensely loyal, and that sort of thing. But first, I have to get past those initial stages in a relationship, and get over that paralyzing fear of rejection that I have, which is just not easy. The "fear of rejection" thing is kind of a cliched, unoriginal cop-out, but I don't know how else to describe it. I get into a dangerous mindset where I'd rather stay in my comfort zone than risk feeling like a fool, and obsessing for months and months how I could have possibly screwed things up with a girl I hardly even got to know (and probably idealized mostly based on my unrealistic fantasy world).
Like I said in the beginning: being an INFJ is mentally exhausting! Sometimes I wish I could be in a constant dream state. Things would be a lot easier that way!
