These are, of course, very specific experiences of very specific persons, but I hope they offer some interesting or helpful perspectives on personality dynamics nonetheless. It might also be important to know that, for me, weaknesses don’t make a person bad any more than strengths make a person good, so anything in these descriptions that comes across as critical or negative is truly not meant in that way: the differences between myself and others are fascinating, even if they prompt conflict or frustration. I’ve tried to present that to the best of my ability, but if I’ve failed to do so, please know that nothing of what I’ve written is intended as an attack on another type.
INTP: My father was an INTP and one of my very favorite people in the world. His Ti and Ne stoked a desire to know and understand anything and everything: he could find something fascinating in any conversation with any person from any walk of life or background. Because of our shared Ne, and his depth and breadth of knowledge, conversations I had with him made me feel as if I were flying, soaring breathless from one idea to the next, delighting in connections and patterns, coming anew to a shared awed wonder at the world. He encouraged my curiosity and creativity and offered himself as ally in any undertaking. I could ask him anything—no matter how embarrassing or personal—and he would ponder and reply with complete seriousness and respect. His Fe found primary expression through his Ti, where he sifted through his observations of people and formed his own conclusions about why they did the things they did. He was a psychologist and one of the most insightful people I’ve known. As such, he was therapist and life coach just as much as my parent: he taught me how to see myself with honesty and forgiveness and how to grow even when it was frightening, and I knew he never lied to me about my faults or my triumphs. If he told me I was good at something, I knew I was. And if he told me I needed to work on something, I knew I did. His Ti could make him harsh and judgmental under stress the same way my Fi can, but he knew that about himself and fought it, and watching him do that taught me how to do the same. I think he struggled sometimes to understand how emotional I could be, but he also taught me how to articulate and investigate that emotion, for myself and others, and how to hold myself to an internal consistency. In a way, he taught me how to mimic his Ti in my Fi: maybe every INFP learns to do this, I don’t know, but I learned it with his aid and feel myself better able to balance my emotions with logic, to evaluate my emotions for inconsistency/double-standards, than I think I would’ve otherwise. He was my strongest champion and my greatest teacher and what I’ve just written is honestly only the merest sliver of what he gave me.
ESFJ: My mother is an ESFJ and I think the fact that she leads with Fe and I lead with Fi and that she’s my mother, and therefore tasked with rearing me to become a decent human being, has made for a rather challenging relationship. We both love, and have always loved, one another fiercely, but she’s found me petulant and self-indulgent for much the same reasons that I’ve found her pushy and inflexible: we process people and ourselves in completely opposite directions. I’ve always seen her as someone remarkable and amazing, and on more than one occasion, I’ve borrowed her ability to be unapologetically and very publicly herself when I’ve needed the bravado to fake it ‘til I make/become it, but she’s also always been a kind of foreign or alien entity. I could see who and how she was, but I couldn’t see how I could be anything like that, except when I played pretend. As we’ve both gotten older, though—and especially since my dad died—we’ve started to share and trade stories and perspectives and experiences of the world. And I’ve found, to my great surprise, that we have a lot in common and a lot more to offer one another than I ever expected. I can interpret my siblings for her when she struggles to understand them at times, and she can simplify the way people, as a whole, behave when I baffle and intimidate myself with all their idiosyncrasies and unique needs. She empowers me to be nothing but myself when I fret about not being enough for all those disparate people, and I think I give her the knowledge she needs to better tailor her expressions of love for each family member. Not that she does that badly now, but she’s always looking for new ways to do so. That’s one of the things I love and admire most about her ESFJ self.
ENFP: Both my younger sisters are ENFPs, and if I ever doubted that sharing cognitive functions doesn’t necessarily mean sharing behaviors, they’d put paid to that notion in a heartbeat. My youngest sister’s Ne manifests in ambition: she finds a fascination with something and pounces on it, pursuing it until she’s conquered it and then looking around, hungry for something new. My other sister, the one closest to me in age, however, has an Ne that sifts for patterns and unerringly pulls together a conclusion that is both accurate and wise. That’s not to say that she doesn’t also seek novelty and new ideas—she does, just as my youngest sister notices patterns and comes to her own insightful conclusions—but the ways in which they focus and facilitate their Ne are very different. As such, my youngest sister and I do a lot more whimsical playing with ideas, especially as they pertain to people. The sister closer to me in age, on the other hand, engages me (as I engage her) in more serious, intellectually intense explorations of ideas. Our shared Fi (and, I suspect, a shared environment) means we all speak frankly and honestly about our values and emotional struggles, and while my youngest sister’s extreme extraversion makes her an amazing wingwoman and partner in hijinks, my other sister’s more moderate extraversion and long-term sisterly closeness challenge me to become more like her. Both expand my world, showing me aspects I never would’ve thought to look at on my own, even as they assure and reassure me that I could not possibly be any more amazing than I already am. (Sisterly bias, I suppose, but since I think the same about them, I’ll take them at their word.)
INTJ: My younger brother is an INTJ and I love how he and I complement one another. Our shared Fi and Te mean we speak the same language in a lot of ways. I have very well-developed Te, but it can be exhausting constantly being the one to consider the logistics, make the plans, ensure everyone is safe and accounted for. By the same token, while my brother’s Fi is well-exercised, he finds conversing about emotions and ethics to be overwrought and frustrating with some people. My approach to emotions—ask questions, don’t push, listen, proffer solutions or alternate perspectives, don’t judge, validate others’ experiences—creates a kind of calm, safe space for him to explore his own. And his aux-Te means he, too, is thinking about logistics, plans, safety, which allows me to relax my vigilance and actually enjoy myself when he’s around. His Se prompts occasional eagerness for new experiences, something with which my Ne falls in line with enthusiasm. I know I can trust him to take care of whatever details need addressing; he’s one of the only people with whom I feel completely safe doing something frightening or intimidating. And his Ni makes him one of the only people I actually enjoy arguing with. It allows him to be patient as I struggle to shape my gut feelings into logic, and since he actually enjoys my occasional Ne-driven tangent (it presents him something new to dissect with his Ni), I feel comfortable taking a step back from the intensity of our discussion with a momentary sidetrack. One of the greatest compliments I’ve ever received was when he told me that he both hates and loves arguing with me because I don’t let my emotions divert me from the points I want to make. As for him, I think him one of the best men I know, tough but not hard, tender but not weak.
ISTJ: My oldest brother-in-law is an ISTJ and many of the things that I enjoy most about my INTJ brother are the same things I love in my ISTJ brother-in-law. His dom-Si and aux-Te make him incredibly calm and peaceful to be around. His Ne means we can chat about almost anything, but those chats always have this lovely anchored, restful stillness to them. I don’t mean they’re boring—they’re never boring—but somehow they’re always easy and reassuring and empowering. He doesn’t generally talk about his emotions, but he shows his support and belief in me every time we talk. And his ability to problem-solve and troubleshoot astonishes me. I can spend ages turning something over and over in my mind, searching for that one thing that’ll allow me to leverage a solution, and all it takes is one conversation with him, and he produces that weak spot from thin air, often with an extemporaneously designed solution attached. And he’s never unwilling to show me how he does things; I’ve learned so much about how to take my time, how to watch and wait and pull a situation apart until I see how it works. I’m not sure I’ll ever develop anything like his patience, but he inspires me to try.
ISTP: My youngest brother-in-law is an ISTP and while I’m still slowly getting to know him, I think I have some function-based observations to offer. In some ways his Ti-Fe is reminiscent of my dad. But where my dad had years to shape his understanding of his Fe through his Ti, my brother-in-law is just beginning that process. His Fe is largely silent, his emotional reactions often surprising him with their intensity, but all the women on my side of the family are vividly emotional, and he’s fascinated (and occasionally frustrated) by that. So we talk about how I experience emotion and art versus how he does. Just as my INTJ brother’s Ni makes him someone I can argue with, my ISTP brother-in-law’s Ni makes it easy for me to discuss very personal and important things without fear that he’ll rush me through my logic or explanation. In fact, his Ni (and Ti, I think) really enjoys the process of taking the information I present with my big-picture Ne tendencies and breaking it down into its essence. And since I really appreciate the challenge of just such a careful drawing forth of What I Really Mean, we have a lot of fun.
ESFP: A coworker and friend of mine is an ESFP and while we’ve had our share of conflicts, especially as we both struggled to mature not just as ESFP/INFP but as holistic human beings, I really appreciate where our relationship is right now. Her Fi makes her a fellow seeker of personal truth, and while our personal truths go in different directions sometimes, we both enjoy discussing those philosophies and spiritual journeys. In fact, her Ni to my Ne make those discussions extremely satisfying for us both. She loves that I can spot patterns in her many, varied explorations of who she is, and I love that she, like my ISTP brother-in-law, can tease out the deepest kernel of truth in my big picture Ne conclusions. The fact that both of those things allows us to spend hours discussing the philosophies and personal truths that matter the most to us? Awesome! Our shared Te allows us to work seamlessly on various organizational projects: we both see how a task needs to get accomplished and tackle it, sometimes without even needing to discuss a game plan beforehand. Her Se-driven confidence and courage in the face of new experiences encourages me to try new things, and she’s found that my Fi-driven confidence and courage in the face of my darker, less pleasant emotions has empowered her to be more accepting of those same things in herself.
ISFP: A friend (and as-good-as-adopted sister) is an ISFP I got to know here on tumblr and have since met in real life. Because both of us are Fi-doms, we greet the world with a shared intention to find the emotions, the values, the art, the meaning that really matter to us. But what cognitive functions don’t determine is what those things are, and this ISFP seeks a life of grace, humility, and generosity that humbles and astonishes me every day. I’m a much more intense and prideful person than she, but her way of living her Fi encourages me to try harder to find my own grace, humility, and generosity. Her Se, though…she has a way of interpreting people and the world through her senses that makes them beautiful. And her Ni-driven attention to the essences of things, to the way those essences interact and connect, makes discussing anything a fascinating adventure. I feel as if any conversation we have is a revelation of the vivid richness of her self, and that self is so wonderful that I feel blessed to know her.
INFP: I’ve known a few INFPs and while it’s always interesting to talk to them, I find that if their weaknesses are too much like my own or their opinions too divergent from my own, I struggle to accept them. That’s not their fault; that’s mine. It’s as if the similarity in cognitive functions opens them up to the same critical assessment I level at myself. If they share my weaknesses, those weaknesses frustrate me. If they don’t share my opinions, I can’t possibly understand WHY NOT. One of my best friends is an INFP and when we talk, we talk for hours and we’re so on the same wavelength that it almost feels as if we’re telepathic. Sharing cognitive functions with her is amazing! But then there’s that INFP friend whose conversation sounds just like me at my most poncy, judgmental, and self-indulgent. I know he’s no more flawed than anyone else, but to see my worst self reflected in him makes it difficult for me to want to spend time in his company. So INFPs can be amazing, but they can also invite my most scathing criticism. Again, that’s my fault, but I do wonder how many other types experience the same push-pull when they encounter others of their same type.
I’ve known others of other types but without full confidence in their types or a relationship deep enough to analyze, I’ve left them off this list.
