Before I start, this article comes with two health warnings. First of all it’s not an article about marriage in general...just my marriage. I’ve only been married once and I’m certainly no psychologist so expect no expertise of any sort. Secondly I’ve only just happened upon “typology” and my place in it; INFP with only slight bias toward introversion.
Up until now I hade always considered that there was an “ideal” personality (more or less corresponding to ESTJ) and that I was merely a defective version of that standard model, with only my lack of courage and willpower holding me back from what a man should be (oh yes...I’m a man by the way). Now whether or not this lack of self acceptance came from my parents or peers or alien abduction I’m not too sure but I set about my own ‘Pygmalion project’ with avengance from about the age of eight. I tried to ‘toughen up’ I tried to ‘fit in’ I tried to make a new start every day. To be honest I still do.
By the time I was in my mid-twenties I had forced my way in to a fairly macho and supposedly heroic job, determined to be ‘all things to all men’. To be honest women were a problem to me. I had no heart for shopping around or sowing my wild oats. I wanted to find that special someone to be my equal (not hard), my soul-mate, someone I could respect and look after, and certainly not someone to mother me. We were going to be different, you know, grow together “come live with me, the best is yet to be” that kind of thing. Oh and sex as well. I definitely knew that was important. Playful, intimate, an experience of bonding, yes all that and more. In other words I was a complete pain in the arse.
Well I did find a woman. She seemed to see in me all the things I wanted to be. Knowledgeable, brave, logical, decisive, level-headed and sensible. Sound like an INFP to you?...no... and therein lies a problem.
I couldn’t wait to get married. It made me part of the mainstream. Look at me I’m married, I’m normal, I live with a woman, I’m not gay or anything look! And I threw myself into marriage determined that was going to make it work. I washed up and dried up and hoovered and cooked and ran around like a blue arsed fly. Regardless of what my wife wanted (she didn’t say much, she seemed pretty happy) I was going to be the best husband ever, she couldn’t fail to love me right back, and in just the same way I loved her. After all, we are all the same aren’t we? Capable of being perfected through effort and right-thinking?
Problem was it all started to become a one-way street. I did all the housework, the cooking, the caring. There was hardly any conversation, less-and-less sex, more soap opera watching and early nights. More “why-do-you-need-to-go-out-with-your-friends-I-don’t- need-to-go-out-with-mine-aren’t-I-enough-for-you?” to which my reaction was “OK, you’re right. What would you like for tea?” So I carried on doing a lot of stuff. But now I was doing it in a spirit of martyrdom, a spirit of “look at what a good man I am”.
And I suppose I got more and more angry because things weren’t living up to my expectations. How could anyone fail to appreciate me? We all want the all-out dedicated passionate, playful, adventurous love don’t we? Did I feel like leaving? Yes and no. I saw my job as making it work, making someone happy, or more accurately trying to stop them being unhappy, that was the kind and honourable thing to do. Leaving was too cruel, and besides, who would look after the dog?
Well pretty soon we found ourselves with a beautiful son, who soon turned out to be as ill as he was beautiful (very). Incidentally my reaction to his illness was oddly instructive for students of typology. I remember telling my mum “I’m not surprised he is ill, everything I touch turns to shit”. Hard times and we got through them. Kind of together but not getting closer if you see what I mean. Our son got better and by the time he was two I was in need of medication for an all pervasive depression. My ‘happy pills’ as my wife called them. I should ‘count my blessings’ and ‘look at (insert here the name of someone with a genuinely heart-breaking problem) they have a right to be depressed’. So on and off the happy pills for 4 years or so. Occasional requests to talk to someone about our relationship were met with replies such as “You always think the grass is greener” or “you expect too much from a relationship” (both true enough) and eventually “If you don’t like it you know where the door is” to which I replied “ummm...Ok....what would you like for tea?”
Meanwhile I was advancing at work. Not really excelling at the tough things that needed doing, but popular and intelligent enough to bull-shit my way to the pay-scale I needed to be on to pay the bills.
I found myself becoming like a land locked version of the Flying-Dutchman. Not at home in my work and it wasn’t really working at home either. But the journey in between...my own choice of music, solitude, changing scenery. Ideal. Pity it only lasted half an hour at a time.
It wasn’t all bad at home, we both love our son to bits, we shared a sense of humour, and we weren’t nasty to each other. Well that’s not strictly true. I’d long ago started to use sarcasm to break through the communication barrier and score some emotional hits on my partner. How soul destroying must that have been? I know I couldn’t have stood it for five minutes. And of course I needed to be on my own now and then. As ‘now and then’ became ‘more and more’ my wife couldn’t understand. Solitude and silence were and are as much of an anathema to her as they were vital to me. Walks on my own, being chased (not literally) around the house while I tried to be alone and read a book while my wife wanted to talk about ‘things’. Things, arrangements, lists, soaps, more lists. We always seem to talk ‘at’ each other instead of ‘with’.
Anyway back to me. I’d cracked up couple of times at work. Not in front of people but I think it probably showed. Any failure at work was a failure of my character and reinforced my (self imposed) sense of imperfection. Still at least at home I was champion martyr. I’d come to regard my wife as a child-minder, who just watched over our son until I got home and could take over. She had a new job that she loved and a new circle of friends that got her out of the house and socialising four nights a week. I was glad for her. She looked fantastic; she obviously had fun with people who liked her for herself and weren’t working on her as part of a soul destroying death-grip relationship. I was reading up on Buddhism, Stoicism, Vedanta, Christianity, and evolutionary psychology and meditating and convincing myself that I suffered from myself and all my dissatisfaction was illusion (or was it delusion, I forget). Oh and still doing the house husband stuff.... what would you like for tea?
And then it happened.
I’d say I didn’t want it to happen but I think that would be a lie. I lived and still live in a whirl of imagined possibilities and what I really didn’t want was one of them to come true so I’d have to deal with it.
I was out with my brother in law when I met someone. Ok...you can stop reading now if you already hate me. I know I do. It was poetry that did it you see. We must be the only two people in that particular night club who ever spent five hours talking about what makes a poem a poem and not an “application for the job of poet”, and art, and relationships and comedy and travel and food (What do you want for tea?). I went to sleep feeling strangely euphoric (no not for that reason). I woke up with a start and suddenly realised that I was in trouble.
What had happened? Well I hadn’t met my ideal woman. She doesn’t exist of course, and I knew that even back then. I hadn’t met the answer to all my problems. Quite the opposite in fact. What had happened was I had met a woman who I liked, and eventually loved, for what she really was, and not what I thought I could make her. And she felt the same about me for what I really was and not what I could do for her (nothing) or what I pretended to be.
The effect was like a dam burst of emotion and had the most profound effect on how I see myself (not good) the world (much more complicated) and everyone in it (different). But the tension of the opposites, two equally untenable solutions, one I didn’t want to take the other completely cruel and unethical, led me to really start working on myself. A couple of apparent examples of “synchronicity” led me to Jung’s work and from there to typology and from there...well, as Edwin Muir wrote “the road leads on”.
So was it a happy ending? Was the sleeping prince awakened by the princess? Was I rescued from myself by the ‘Magical other’?
Of course not. I’m an INFP remember. I drove (and still do) myself mad, I howled and cried and stared in to space. More importantly I began to make my wife every bit as miserable as I had been, just for the crime of being herself and not what I imagined. I cannot be with the other person (ENFJ) I couldn’t find an ethical and non-hurtful way to do it. And I try to live as well as I can with someone who (she’s an ISTJ by the way) is a valuable and loveable human being but who speaks a different language to me and can’t live up to my expectation. But then again she doesn’t have to.
People are people and not grist to my mill.
And what’s my advice to others on marriage? Well I’ve no advice for those married but unhappy. But if you aren’t married yet and you are an INFP I’d say the following:
- Have a loooonnnng courtship(s)
- Don’t look for perfection, let the connection make itself, or not as the case may be.
- If you find yourself trying so hard to make someone happy that it starts to make you miserable, then the chances are you’re not really trying to help that person at all.
- Don’t always offer to make the tea.
If you would like to write an article about marriage to introverts, please email me. It can be an introvert writing, or someone writing about their introverted spouse.
WHAT NANCY'S READER HAVE SAID:
I have read your article entitled “Marrying an INFP”.
A MARRIAGE RELATIONSHIP IS NOT ABOUT COMING UP TO EXPECTATIONS. IT IS FUNDAMENTALLY ABOUT MEETING EACH OTHERS MOST IMPORTANT EMOTIONAL NEEDS.
WE DO NOT MARRY BAD PEOPLE. WE MARRY THE WRONG PEOPLE.
MANY PEOPLE MOVE FROM RELATIONSHIP TO RELATIONSHIP, FAILING EACH TIME BECAUSE THEY DO NOY KNOW WHAT THEIR BEST MATCH IS IE WHAT THEY SHOULD BE LOOKING FOR.
I am an INFJ man married to an ISTJ woman and have pretty much the same issues as you. There is no deep connection at a soul/emotional level. I now have 3 grown up happy daughters and am thinking of leaving my marriage as I am not happy.
I spent decades operating on the principle “if my wife and family were not happy, then I could not be happy”, so I did absolutely everything I could do to make them happy. There is joy in giving, but you have to also have your needs met to be happy. About 5 years ago, I approached my wife and said that all I want out of the rest of my life is to have a passionate love affair with my wife till the day I die. Her response was stunned silence. About 4 years ago, I approached my wife again saying I had some issues with our relationship that I would like to talk about. She told me I was being “precious”. After that, the rose coloured glasses fell off and the idealised love I had for my wife evaporated. I still loved and cared for her, but I was no longer in love.
Over the recent years, intense conflict developed between me and my wife over some family issues. This was compounded late last year (2008), when I got retrenched. I ended up in some sort of post traumatic stress disorder and accidently met an ENFJ woman and fell into an affair. Like you, this meeting of souls had a profound affect on me, it was like an “emotional dam bursting”. I had found by complete accident my “twin flame”, my EVE. It was like she was just made for me. The meeting of mind and feeling was so profound and intense, it was like we had a psychic connection.
I was however completely uncomfortable with the affair since it broke my moral code, beliefs and values. It was also unfair to the woman, her needs were never going to be adequately met. She needed a proper loving relationship 24/7. And I was deeply in love with her (and she with me). So I did the “right thing”. I broke it off, confessed the truth to my wife with a view to either fix up the relationship or break it/separate. I went to a counsellor for help, my wife would not go but agreed to wipe the slate clean and start again.
I used the relationship management approach of Dr Harley ...see website..
http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi3550_summary.html
This is an amazing website showing you how to have a successful marriage . Love is a behaviour and it shows what needs to happen in this regard. Essentially, the spouses have to ...
1. Remove love busters and practice the “policy of joint agreement”
2. Meet each others most important emotional needs
3. Practice the policy of undivided attention.....making sure you spend 15 hours a week together giving each other undivided attention
4. Practice radical honesty....about everything including how you feel about things your spouse does.
The upshot was , however, that I ended up doing most of the relationship management to restore the marriage. Dr Harley says that the spouse who had the affair fell out of love due at least in part to neglect etc from the other spouse. The other spouse has to do a lot of work to build the love bank units up again in the unfaithful spouse to bring them back into love. Instead, my wife claimed she was the injured party and I had to do the reparation work. She got everything she asked for. I haven’t to date.
I also believe in unconditional love ie giving without expecting something in return. This is the highest form of love as Christians say. In fact, Dr Harley says you can ask but not demand in a love relationship. Love is a free gift. Since the affair, relations with my wife have returned to a pleasant state although deep inside I have a big hole. We have sex almost every day and are pleasant companions. We fulfil again our duty to each other as spouses. We truly care for each other like old friends. IS THIS ENOUGH FOR HAPPINESS WHEN WHAT YOU NEED IS A PASSIONATE LOVE AFFAIR/DEEP CONNECTION WITH THE ONE YOU LOVE FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE?
But for me the deep soul/emotional connection is absent as it always has been. My wife does little that I ask for spontaneously. Synchronicity is largely absent.
I can continue with my duty oriented, caring “old friends” relationship into old age. Or seek my natural love type ie an ENFJ best fit, followed by INFJ, for a passionate, twin flame relationship for the rest of our lives. The emotional case is to exit, the business case is to stay, the ethics case is uncertain..
The ethics from my point of view is that, if you have done everything you can possibly do to make a relationship work over a very long time, and one or both spouses are unhappy, and the children have grown up and left, then there is no point in staying together. You can only make your spouse happy, if you are happy and vice versa. Its a SYMBIOTIC RELATIONSHIP. In fact, the only reason you should marry in the first place is because you can make your future spouse happy and you want to because you are in love.
Ultimately, with duty done with respect to children, if one or both of you are unhappy and no efforts can fix the situation, then you will ultimately make each other miserable by staying together. The initial pain of breakup will pass and each party will have the opportunity to seek the best partner next time.
AND THIS BEGS THE QUESTION, “WHO S THE BEST PARTNER”. Some say men often marry for looks and sex. Women for security/status/wealth.
My theory is as follows....for finding the right partner..
1. The must be physical attraction
2. There must be personality matching. It has now been shown that people who have the last 3 factors of the Myer Brigg indicator the same are natural “love types” and are happiest in a relationship. So for an INFP , their love type is ENFP best fit, them INFP. For an INFJ, their love type is an ENFJ best fit, then INFJ.
3. Next you need comparable intelligence and values alignment
4. And finally, a must, is also relationship management skills (ie as per Dr Harley approach) or capacity and willingness to develop such.
I note that you have at the bottom of your article a statement by an ENFJ saying their relationship with an ISTJ was miserable with no deep connection at all. I know quite a few ENFJs in this situation with ISTJ partners! We tend to get attracted to people who are largely opposite to us in personality, but over time, the differences become sources of conflict. Eg the J is always trying to organise and focus the Ps. The S just cannot understand the thinking of the N. For an ENFJ woman, their best fit is an INFJ man...but such men are the rarest type at 0.5% of men. So the ENFJ woman may find an ENFJ man more easily. The E vs I difference does not matter that much and in fact adds diversity. Its the last 3 factors that need to be the same for a deep connection soul mate.
It is interesting that Jesus Christ (an INFJ for sure) described marriage between a man and a woman as a soul union.....one in the sight of God. And he said that divorce was allowed by Moses because people were so hard hearted.
SOMEONE SAID THAT MOST MEN LEAD LIVES OF QUIET DESPERATION FOR ONE REASON OR ANOTHER. I DO NOT WANT TO DO THIS ANYMORE.
Anonymous INFJ Man
CAROLE'S REPLY
Anonymous REPLY:
As an INFP woman married to an ISTJ man for 23 years now, comments+I'd have to say that I can't think of any "type" I'd rather be married to...he's great! (Methodical -- but great.)
Anon 3.15.2006
As an infp married to an esfj I could relate to it. I thank the author for writing so openly about his relationships. It is good to know I am not alone.
One more thing: even if he didn't marry that woman he fell in love with, it is so wonderful that he at least met her, and knew it was possible.
2.16.2006 Sherry
I won't go into detail................... but BOY... do we have alot in common. I am an ENFJ male .....married to an ISTJ woman........................... I love her to death for who she is and the mother of my children....but..........absolutely no deep connection at all...................misery inside............. good article by the way........................................
9.21.2005 ... i understand ...
-- giorgi
