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.
CAROLE'S REPLY
WHAT NANCY'S READER HAVE SAID:
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
