Married INTP's, I need help!
I'm an INTP and Enneagram Type 7w6. Being an INTP I have very poor awareness and understanding of my own feelings (Fi as I understand?) and thus have extreme difficulty in knowing / deciding whether a girl is "the right one" when I'm dating them. As an INTP I have difficulty deciding and over-analyse everything and as a 7 I always think there is someone better for me out there. (I would like to marry and have kids some time. I'm 30...)
Women tend to like me and very quickly want to initiate a long term relationship with me (I also try my best to make them like me to be fair): this seems to always put me in the position where I have to make the decision whether or not to continue the relationship. Damnit. It also leaves a trail of broken hearts which really bothers me (so I have Fe).
My general advice for marriage here is that make sure it's someone you like being with, every day, for the rest of your life. Yes, there may be equivalent or even "more compatible" -- but stop thinking about the faceless possibilities for a moment. Would you be happy with this person, would you look forward to meeting each new day with them in your life and being your primary relationship in many respects? Could you support them and offer them support? Do you make a good team?
The thing about love that people might not get up front is that the initial attraction and connection is half the picture. Yes, it's important. But connection is also built by a shared life together. You start depending on each other, you do things together, you build shared memories and a shared timeline. At some point, that becomes a point of love in itself. So even if you meet someone in, let's say, eight years or something, who you have a STRONGER "initial" attraction to or might be more compatible if you were not married and were just going through the grocery mart of potential partners, at that stage this stranger who you might have a stronger initial attraction to than you had with your partner still can't match up to this person you are intimately familiar with and who you have channeled yourself into loving.
So is this person someone you can love and would be happy to face each day with? You want a foundation to build on, and then marriage / LTR builds on that foundation.
Issues happen more when you get involved with someone you don't really mesh well with and there are fundamental problems or differences that prevent a sturdy "shared life" being built together.
Think of it like careers too, it's all similar. There's probably a number of careers you can enjoy, and you will only focus on one or two in your life. Not that you wouldn't have liked or enjoyed the others, but you just choose, and then you build this career and commit yourself to it, and acquire all that knowledge, and you love it even if you could have also done other things.
I was engaged to a beautiful girl with a golden heart once, but called it off before the wedding. I spent 2 years with internal conflict whether I should marry her before asking her at last. I was physically very attracted and everything was almost perfect, except I didn't get the intellectual stimulation I would have liked. My internal dialogue was something like this: "I love her too much to leave her. I don't have a deep intellectual connection. How important is that for me? You can get the stimulation at work. You just have commitment issues (which I have), fuckit at least one of us seems content, etc". I had sleepless nights and started to feel really depressed and trapped. So we broke it off to the confusion of my parents and friends etc.
Intellectual stimulation for certain types of people is very important. I was very unhappy with my partner for years because I wasn't getting intellectual stimulation. It was a huge deal for me, NOT a huge deal for my partner because our needs were different. I need to feel that connection. I did eventually get to a point where I built on a different foundation and tried to have the intellectual need fulfilled through other channels, and so my relationship still had value, but it was a huge disappointment to me and caused a lot of strife/discontent.
So I'm saying it's possible you could have found that stimulation elsewhere eventually and built your marriage on other foundations, but it would have been painful and hard for you and not easy for her either to work through it with you. Did you do the "wrong" thing? I don't know if there is a "wrong," it just would have been difficult and taken a lot of energy. The relationship might have succeeded in the end, but instead you chose to not invest that intense level of energy for an indefinite amount of time. There are no answers, just choices.
Recently (after studying Enneagram type 7) I started thinking that I just have commitment issues and should have just bitten the bullet. Then I spent this weekend in the company of my ex-fiance (1st time in almost 3 years) as part of a group of friends going away (she is married now) and I realised that it was the right decision not to marry her, as I think she would have bored me to death. Now I am completely confused to how to approach future relationships. How do one KNOW!?
I think then you can take that to heart -- that it wouldn't have been happy for you. But each relationship is taken on its own terms.
I think 7's are "smorgasbord" thinkers in the Thinker triad -- they get excited exploring new options and trying everything out. You have to have a way to separate that zest from an actual attraction that is enduring versus transient.
Now for my current dilemma... I dated a girl for 2 months while she was on a trip to my country at the beginning of the year. I enjoyed the relationship like I've basically never enjoyed one before (not the least of the reasons being that I thought I could totally open up, as I didn't have to worry about commitment, because she would soon be leaving again anyway. And the relationship was exciting due to it being taboo (different race, and I'm from a very conservative community)). She told me that she would marry me (slightly tongue-in-cheek) but could see I am not ready to commit, so she will give me an open marriage offer which I may accept within a year (again, not TOTALLY seriously obviously). Now I haven't really stopped thinking about her, even though I have cut off communication with her 5 months ago. By a strange twist of fate it turns out I'm flying to the city she lives (different continent) in December (I didn't arrange the trip, my friends did, without any knowledge of her whereabouts). So I contacted her again yesterday (FB) and it looks like we are going to meet up again. Now, the costs column on my figurative cost-benefit analysis sheet is full of negative marks and I'm also scared I just like her because she is "dangerous" and intriguing and taboo: so this is now again a battle between my head and heart. She's also in a long distance relationship with her old boyfriend. I'm confident I will be able to win her back if I go all out and she is convinced I'm serious about it. But this will obviously cause carnage if I just hit and run again (ruin her relationship etc), so I feel I must be reasonable certain I would want a serious relationship with her. Thing is: I'm not. But my heart (or is this my penis) tells me to go for it, or so I think. Confused. This seems like a reoccurring situation in my life. How do I change this? Any advice as fellow INTP (with also an underdeveloped Fi)?
My advice on that one -- you two months, while she was over here. You have ulterior motives for it being enticing for you, and you're not sure whether they are cosmetic ones or substantial ones. There are lots of problems that have to be worked out for long-distance relationships involving two different countries (including family concerns and where you will locate if you get together) -- it impacts a lot.
You cut off communication 5 months ago and are only picking it up because you 'happen' to be flying out there unexpectedly. To me, that says you're not really invested in her. I know that sounds cold, but if this trip wasn't happening, you wouldn't be talking. Why are you thinking love and marriage now?
if I had to guess, I think you're just not sure about how to find love but want a relationship, and this person does entice you, and now you have this surprise visit that is very exciting... but I'm not sure you really are into her and everything that entails.
Fedor, thanks for your input, but I probably should have realised that other INTP's would probably not give my the totally different perspective to which I was blind... But before I come to that, my view on marriage: the paperwork doesn't mean much to me as well, but I would like to be with someone who is devoted to me and visa versa. I've been in a 6 year relationship and I have experienced many benefits, which would be amplified when both people are committed for life. But that is another discussion.
Yeah, I see the point in "no one needing to have a piece of paper."
But the thing is, if it's someone I love, I actually get a thrill from making it official. I don't understand myself sometimes, as I kind of just "ignore" social expectations and think they're all arbitrary in some way or another, but I don't have any problem in entering that kind of arrangement and accepting signifiers (like changing my last name and wearing a ring) associated with females in Western culture; in fact, I'd kind of thrill to it... for someone I love, anyway, and want to be with.
I do think it's caused issues though when people make that kind of legal bond with someone they actually can't or won't stay committed to, and then it just becomes crazy trying to rescind it.
