ENFP flakiness

ivory919 · Jul 19, 2020

Hello! I'm an INFJ who has recently been seeing an ENFP guy. We've had a couple of really great first dates and I really enjoy his company. He recently moved but we decided to still keep in touch and stay friends even if something romantic doesn't work.

The one thing that has started to bother me about him is that at times he seems to be very flaky. One day he will want to do something and be very excited about it and then when I actually text him about it, it seems like something else always comes up. He does have understandable excuses but it makes me feel a little hurt when he cancels things last minute. Sometimes I'm concerned he doesn't actually want to spend time with me and is loosing interest in me.

Any friends or partners of ENFPs deal with this?

secondpassing · Jul 19, 2020

My ENFP friend IRL has perfect attendance, never excuses himself, and is on time. He is 35 and very emotionally mature. My other ENFP (mistypes herself as INFJ, lol) friend is the same. She's 32 or something. I absolutely love being near them, as I can hear them passionately talk about ideas they care about for hours, but perhaps they are exceptions to the norm.

As an INFP, I can understand your plight from the other perspective. In the beginning, a couple ESFJs wanted additional time to hang out with me. I limited myself because I felt that I had enough human interaction for the day. (had already been with them for two or three hours by that point) They were understanding, but the disappointment on their face was clear. Eventually, I was able to push myself to spend more time with them.

I suggest voicing a clear invitation, even if it comes across that you're being pushy. That way, you can let him know you really want to spend time with him. Or perhaps, he does not feel that you want to do the activity he is suggesting. In that case, it may be helpful to signal to him how excited you are that or about spending time with him. In general, I think NFPs respond very favorably to expressed personal interest.

But yeah, maybe he doesn't want to spend time with you and is losing interest in you. I'm no dating expert, but if you want him, go get him!

ai.tran.75 · Jul 19, 2020

What J type describe as flakiness confuses me sometimes as a perceiver ( I’m not saying that you’re doing this ). Most of my friends and family members find me reliable - however I do notice some J type finds me flakey ( they talk about me behind my back out of confusion )

I’m pretty consistent in plans - never late and I don’t cancel last minutely unless something tragic or important occurs ( death of family members- work )
However when it comes to texting /emails /phone calls- I may not notice a text or phone call due to misplacing my phone or not checking it - so there are times that I’ll reply in paragraphs and other times there wouldn’t be any response at all. When I’m out with someone else /working or indulging in a book or writing something- my phone is turned off or put on silence bc I find it distracting.

I’ve had people having panic attacks about offending me ( when the reality is I haven’t checked my phone for a while) or others thinking that I’m purposely avoiding them . I’m pretty straightforward- if I don’t like someone - they’ll know .

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Stevester · Jul 20, 2020

I can totally relate to this, it's called ''Shadow attraction'' in the MBTI. I'm ISTJ and I always fall for ESTPs but then get super mad at them for breaking promises, not giving news and just generally not being there for me.

IxxJ types are all extremely loyal to anyone who plucks their heartstrings and they just naturally expect that devotion to be a two way street. But the very sad fact is ExxP types just love freedom too much, they don't want to be bogged down by one person because it's suffocating to them. This causes IJ types to lose their shit because expectations from their loyalty are not being reciprocated.

It comes down to ''If you love someone, set them free and if they really like you, they'll come back''. I know it's not much consolation, but it sums it up perfectly.

Zeri · Jul 21, 2020

I know an Enfp guy who is very scattered. He's involved in a million different nothing's and has lots of great ideas and is a good talker, but doesn't really follow through on anything. I once requested something of him and he agreed - but he was nowhere to be found when it was time to fulfill. I contacted him after the time passed and he just gave me these really fickle/lame answers about not coming through, and never apologized either. People think he's the best because he's charming, but...

islandlight · Jul 21, 2020

I have a friend who I'm pretty sure is ENFP. She blows hot and cold on who she likes or not, and what's the greatest thing ever and a year later it's evil (then it's the greatest again).

Or we'll make an appointment for coffee or to work on something important. I take it very seriously that this is our time to talk or to work. But if someone else shows up, she'll ignore me and talk to the other person.

Often she gives some excuse--like the other person is having problems, or they haven't seen each other for a while, or there's something urgent they need to discuss. Sure, but can't she arrange to talk to the other person later? "Hi, third person! I really want to catch up with you but I'm busy now. Can I call you in a couple of hours?"

I have expressed my disappointment, and the past few times I just got up and left. She is making an effort now.

ivory919 · Jul 23, 2020

Stevester said:
I can totally relate to this, it's called ''Shadow attraction'' in the MBTI. I'm ISTJ and I always fall for ESTPs but then get super mad at them for breaking promises, not giving news and just generally not being there for me.

IxxJ types are all extremely loyal to anyone who plucks their heartstrings and they just naturally expect that devotion to be a two way street. But the very sad fact is ExxP types just love freedom too much, they don't want to be bogged down by one person because it's suffocating to them. This causes IJ types to lose their shit because expectations from their loyalty are not being reciprocated.

It comes down to ''If you love someone, set them free and if they really like you, they'll come back''. I know it's not much consolation, but it sums it up perfectly.

Yeah, I think you make a great point. I've basically got to the point where I have decided not to expect to ever hear from him again and go from there. I assume if he is really interested he will come back and take initiative, but if not then that's that I suppose.

ivory919 · Jul 23, 2020

Zeri said:
I know an Enfp guy who is very scattered. He's involved in a million different nothing's and has lots of great ideas and is a good talker, but doesn't really follow through on anything. I once requested something of him and he agreed - but he was nowhere to be found when it was time to fulfill. I contacted him after the time passed and he just gave me these really fickle/lame answers about not coming through, and never apologized either. People think he's the best because he's charming, but...

Yeah its frustrating because there are a lot of things I really like about the guy, (including the charm) and in many ways we seem very compatible but its hard for me to deal with inconsistency and unreliability. especially if there doesn't seem to be much effort in wanting to change that side of himself either.

tanstaafl28 · Jul 23, 2020

ivory919 said:
Hello! I'm an INFJ who has recently been seeing an ENFP guy. We've had a couple of really great first dates and I really enjoy his company. He recently moved but we decided to still keep in touch and stay friends even if something romantic doesn't work.

The one thing that has started to bother me about him is that at times he seems to be very flaky. One day he will want to do something and be very excited about it and then when I actually text him about it, it seems like something else always comes up. He does have understandable excuses but it makes me feel a little hurt when he cancels things last minute. Sometimes I'm concerned he doesn't actually want to spend time with me and is loosing interest in me.

Any friends or partners of ENFPs deal with this?

I was married to an ISTJ for 15 years and what I noticed is that they expected clear and consistent communication and that's just not something ENxP types are good at. We are just busy chasing our various tasks and ideas on a daily basis that we don't think about it. I had to "retrain" myself to realize my ex-wife needed me to touch base with her, and she needed me to keep plans with her. I loved her enough that I made the adjustments for her. I realized our communication styles often clashed. She felt the need to include EVERY EXCRUCIATING DETAIL of something that happened to her. My finely tuned intuition could infer a great deal of what she was telling me without needing all that exposition, but she NEEDED to include it. That was just a part of who she is. I learned to bite my tongue when she was telling me about her day even though I was already several paragraphs ahead of her. It wasn't that she was dumber or smarter than me, she just needs to convey the details because they are important to her. That's how her mind works (still to this day).

So how does your friends mind work? How can you work with him to let him know what your needs are without feeling uncomfortable and him feeling like you're threatening his freedom? I strongly believe you both can find a way for both of you to get your needs met.

ivory919 · Jul 23, 2020

tanstaafl28 said:
I was married to an ISTJ for 15 years and what I noticed is that they expected clear and consistent communication and that's just not something ENxP types are good at. We are just busy chasing our various tasks and ideas on a daily basis that we don't think about it. I had to "retrain" myself to realize my ex-wife needed me to touch base with her, and she needed me to keep plans with her. I loved her enough that I made the adjustments for her. I realized our communication styles often clashed. She felt the need to include EVERY EXCRUCIATING DETAIL of something that happened to her. My finely tuned intuition could infer a great deal of what she was telling me without needing all that exposition, but she NEEDED to include it. That was just a part of who she is. I learned to bite my tongue when she was telling me about her day even though I was already several paragraphs ahead of her. It wasn't that she was dumber or smarter than me, she just needs to convey the details because they are important to her. That's how her mind works (still to this day).

So how does your friends mind work? How can you work with him to let him know what your needs are without feeling uncomfortable and him feeling like you're threatening his freedom? I strongly believe you both can find a way for both of you to get your needs met.

Thank you for your insight!
At this point, I've decided to let him take the initiative in communicating with me that way its on his terms and his choice in talking to me rather than me putting expectations on him. I'm willing to be flexible with changing plans and being more spontaneous for his sake, but at the same time I guess I know I also need some validation every now and then that the person is still interested in having a relationship in me regardless of their personality type.

grace_greanleaf · Aug 11, 2020

I can totally understand how that could hurt you and frustrate you. I definitely have been told by my many of my friends that they got hurt by my tendencies to cancel plans or not respond to a text. Enfps are definitely scatterbrained, spontaneous, and usually make plans without even thinking. We care a lot and care a lot about other people. Often we are forgetful and unorganized. So making plans is very difficult. Your boyfriend loves hanging out with you from what I hear he is just an enfp with a mind with not so much order. I wouldn’t take it personally but I can understand how that would affect you. I would try talking about how it hurt you and although he may not know how to fix it maybe try to help him organize his plans? I have always hated flaky people who do it out of laziness but with Enfps it’s like our brains and hearts are going everywhere and there’s so many ideas and plans and people etc. Hopefully this helps I do this with school, family, friends, everything honestly and have always been shocked that they got hurt by me because I never see my actions as cruel and try constantly to make sure I can commit.

grace_greanleaf · Aug 11, 2020

ivory919 said:
Thank you for your insight!
At this point, I've decided to let him take the initiative in communicating with me that way its on his terms and his choice in talking to me rather than me putting expectations on him. I'm willing to be flexible with changing plans and being more spontaneous for his sake, but at the same time I guess I know I also need some validation every now and then that the person is still interested in having a relationship in me

ivory919 said:
Thank you for your insight!
At this point, I've decided to let him take the initiative in communicating with me that way its on his terms and his choice in talking to me rather than me putting expectations on him. I'm willing to be flexible with changing plans and being more spontaneous for his sake, but at the same time I guess I know I also need some validation every now and then that the person is still interested in having a relationship in me regardless of their personality type.

Maybe just talk about where your coming from and coming up with ways to organize his plans. Of course spontaneity is always good to have especially in a relationship with an enfp but sometimes we do want to change but just don’t know how. My mom helps me continently with that and certain things worked and others didn’t. Also i don’t know if he is or isn’t interested but if it is becuase of his flakiness it is not you but just his personality. But if there are other reasons it might be possible or it’s just a big misunderstanding. Just say to him hey I need validation that you are interested in me and his response will give you the answer.

ivory919 · Aug 12, 2020

grace_greanleaf said:
I can totally understand how that could hurt you and frustrate you. I definitely have been told by my many of my friends that they got hurt by my tendencies to cancel plans or not respond to a text. Enfps are definitely scatterbrained, spontaneous, and usually make plans without even thinking. We care a lot and care a lot about other people. Often we are forgetful and unorganized. So making plans is very difficult. Your boyfriend loves hanging out with you from what I hear he is just an enfp with a mind with not so much order. I wouldn’t take it personally but I can understand how that would affect you. I would try talking about how it hurt you and although he may not know how to fix it maybe try to help him organize his plans? I have always hated flaky people who do it out of laziness but with Enfps it’s like our brains and hearts are going everywhere and there’s so many ideas and plans and people etc. Hopefully this helps I do this with school, family, friends, everything honestly and have always been shocked that they got hurt by me because I never see my actions as cruel and try constantly to make sure I can commit.

Thank you for sharing your experience! Its good to know that his behavior might be from more of a scatterbrained nature rather than a deliberate avoidance to make plans or spend time with me. I guess from my perspective its a little hard to understand because I am typically very careful with being organized and making plans and keeping other people's schedule in mind and I hardly ever even suggest making plans unless its something I know I can for sure do. In some ways, it also comes across as if I'm not important or a priority to him when stuff like that happens but I know that's not necessarily true.

grace_greanleaf · Aug 12, 2020

ivory919 said:
Thank you for sharing your experience! Its good to know that his behavior might be from more of a scatterbrained nature rather than a deliberate avoidance to make plans or spend time with me. I guess from my perspective its a little hard to understand because I am typically very careful with being organized and making plans and keeping other people's schedule in mind and I hardly ever even suggest making plans unless its something I know I can for sure do. In some ways, it also comes across as if I'm not important or a priority to him when stuff like that happens but I know that's not necessarily true.

Yeah I’m sorry that you feel that way and it is highly likely that it is not deliberate at all. For ex: my friend asked to go to the beach for a few days and hotel and everything and I said yes becuase at that time I would love to and and didn’t have any other plans. Until a week later my coach told me we had to go to practice and if we didn’t we would be kicked off. And I said sorry to her and then next year we replanned and something came up again so I really don’t think it’s deliberate because from my story it definitely looks like I don’t want to hang out but that is the completely opposite I would have loved to go! So just keep communicating well and just enjoy the plans that do work and hopefully his long term actions weigh out the small actions. But I honestly don’t know him or you so this I just me basing it off of me and his personality lol

hope everything goes well!

DanausPapillon · Aug 13, 2020

Hi!.

I am an ENFP ^____^

This has happened to me dozens of times. It usually is because we are completely scattered. Everything is so uplifting and enjoyable for us that we tend to have LOADS of people around us. In my case, sometimes I forget about the plans I've made with a friend because somebody comes over with something shiny and exciting, and here I am facepalming myself for the 90th time for being so overly scattered. Other times, we simply need to recover and hibernate for a day or two in our shells (I still don't understand this, but I definitely need to), but quite frankly, if you guys have already met each other for a couple times and everything has been awesome, chances are you are still just as awesome!!

Definitely give him a "whack" for being so scattered/spread too thin and let him know about your shiny plans together. We are loving fuzzballs, just let us know what we are doing wrong, because we really hate hurting others ^___^

I love my cake!!

ivory919 · Aug 13, 2020

DanausPapillon said:
Hi!.

I am an ENFP ^____^

This has happened to me dozens of times. It usually is because we are completely scattered. Everything is so uplifting and enjoyable for us that we tend to have LOADS of people around us. In my case, sometimes I forget about the plans I've made with a friend because somebody comes over with something shiny and exciting, and here I am facepalming myself for the 90th time for being so overly scattered. Other times, we simply need to recover and hibernate for a day or two in our shells (I still don't understand this, but I definitely need to), but quite frankly, if you guys have already met each other for a couple times and everything has been awesome, chances are you are still just as awesome!!

Definitely give him a "whack" for being so scattered/spread too thin and let him know about your shiny plans together. We are loving fuzzballs, just let us know what we are doing wrong, because we really hate hurting others ^___^

I love my cake!!

Can I ask if this scatterbrained quality has ever caused tension or friction between you and friends or partners?

DanausPapillon · Aug 21, 2020

ivory919 said:
Can I ask if this scatterbrained quality has ever caused tension or friction between you and friends or partners?

Hi!!

Sorry, I absolutely forgot I posted this... Shame on me.

Definitely, yes. It happened last week with a lovely friend of mine. Being so flaky and also feeling so attracted to the lovely companion I had during those days, I completely messed up while trying to arrange a meeting with this friend and caused him to be stuck in public transport for two hours straight...

So yeah, it DOES get us in problems TT______TT

strawberryLola · Aug 24, 2020

ivory919 said:
Hello! I'm an INFJ who has recently been seeing an ENFP guy. We've had a couple of really great first dates and I really enjoy his company. He recently moved but we decided to still keep in touch and stay friends even if something romantic doesn't work.

The one thing that has started to bother me about him is that at times he seems to be very flaky. One day he will want to do something and be very excited about it and then when I actually text him about it, it seems like something else always comes up. He does have understandable excuses but it makes me feel a little hurt when he cancels things last minute. Sometimes I'm concerned he doesn't actually want to spend time with me and is loosing interest in me.

Any friends or partners of ENFPs deal with this?

Some ENFPs can get this way, definitely- they get so absorbed, chatty, hyped up, and then fail to follow through. Maybe he's a bit young? People get all sorts of in a head space for things. They blow steam in the moment, and then they cancel or get flaky at the last minute. Half of the times, things come up, and it's not personal.

However, sounds like you're more emotionally invested in the relationship. ENFPs can commit, when they truly want to.

Perhaps, it's a blessing in disguise you're finding out subtle things about him you don't like. It's all a part of the process. And other times, it's a gentle let down (slow ghosting, perhaps). Still- not personal. Just not committed. And thank your lucky stars that you know now. Could be worse. And at least he didn't take advantage of the situation (long-distance and all).

counterintuitive · Aug 24, 2020

ExxP types in general tend to live life moment to moment. In the case of Ne, one's actions in any given moment are usually determined by the ideas/inspiration of that moment. Which can lead to what you described in the first post--being very excited about something in one moment, only to forget about it or not want to pursue it in anymore in the next moment. In the span of a day, it's entirely possible that something he was very excited about is now not a focus at all.

However, I do also think he sounds young or at least immature--I think as people mature, they're more likely to stick to the plans they make, and not cancel last minute.

ENFP flakiness

ivory919

secondpassing

ai.tran.75

Stevester

Zeri

islandlight

ivory919

ivory919

tanstaafl28

ivory919

grace_greanleaf

grace_greanleaf

ivory919

grace_greanleaf

DanausPapillon

ivory919

DanausPapillon

strawberryLola

counterintuitive

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