Similarities and Differences between INTP's and INFP's

daydreamingsince1992 said:

This year I had a wild experience of rooming in college with a fellow INFP. When I first met her I thought we had crazy similarities, we loved the same music, enjoyed the same classes, shared the same major, both liked photography, and were into writing. However, I soon found that our the way we perceived things was completely different. She based her opinions and made decisions solely on feelings (Strong Feeler) and everything I did was revolved around my thinking analysis of things (Strong Thinker). Although these differences caused a cross in communication and understanding at some points, after some time we came to know and understand how the other functioned and became quite the dynamic duo. We became best friends and did everything together, the only time spent apart was when we had to go to classes. With this being said, we would have the same exact day which would lead to us ultimately thinking about the same things, so much sometimes it was almost creepy. One of us would bring up something on their mind that had occurred and the other would confess to thinking about the same thing.. the only difference was the way we interpreted those thoughts. It's as if we were on parallel train tracks, the only difference being the energy fueling our trains.


..I thought it would be interesting to get some feedback from other INFP's who have been friends with INTP's or vice versa. Input would be lovely!

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It's pretty crazy..... we perceive the world the exact same way but make judgements on it differently. I find it extremely complimentary (though when we fight it's scary lol).

daydreamingsince1992 said:

..I thought it would be interesting to get some feedback from other INFP's who have been friends with INTP's or vice versa. Input would be lovely!

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What an awesome relationship. Are you two still best friends?

That I'm aware of, I've had two INTP friendships, both female. The first was an attempt at being close but I was intimidated by her judgments of my competency, so I never did "open up" to her. The friendship eventually petered out.
The second, I'm still friends with. We've known eachother for about four years but it's a long distance friendship and the getting to know eachother process is slow. I did get her turned on to this site recently though.
I find it funny you posted this. I was just thinking about the similarities/differences between her and me yesterday. Basically I was noticing the same things you described... we share SO many of the same interests, really the only difference is how we process and make decisions. We even seem to have the same insecurities.

INFPs are eerily similar. The one I knew could go every bit as deep into philosophy as I – the difference was will. She let life get her down sometimes and wasn't as willing to go into philosophy. We had similar viewpoints on a lot of things, but different viewpoints on a lot of things. Our fights were E-P-I-C beyond epic. :tongue:

I started with the intent to be friends but developed feelings for her. Even though it was a few months ago, I still have those feelings. :frustrating:

Yep, that sounds like me and my INTP fiancee. We understand each other deeper than any other friendship I've ever had. We laugh at all the same things, even when no one else laughs. We listen to the same oddball music. We like the same food, even. We are just on the same brain wave. But yeah, when we differ it's often because I'm in a crazy mood and he remains calm as a statue. For example, I will plan our annual road trip or something I find incredibly exciting and I'll ask him "AREN'T YOU SOOO EXCITED?!?!?" jumping up and down, shaking him and he will just mock me or nod sheepishly. He doesn't get that excited about anything but apparently he likes it when I express strong emotions like this because he says it helps him have a better experience or something along those lines. He is always reading books and looking things up when we don't know something. I made fun of him once for how he simply cannot let himself sit there when he has a burning question about some fact and he must find out immediately. that was one of the only times I think I really offended him. Never again will I pick on him for that. I don't know why I made fun of him, I really do find it endearing, especially because I really don't care about facts that much. I'm always amazed by his vast knowledge of all things and I think he's amazed by my ability to empathize and express my deep emotions with ease. We have a lot to teach each other!

I'm married to an INTP.
We're soulmates and have a deep friendship.
We have the same interests and values.
The downside is that our bad sides are the same.
We're disorganized and a bit moody sometimes, and we tend to isolate ourselves from others.
And I'm impulsive and playful, and he's not... :mellow:
And I have to explain in great detail why I am upset about things sometimes... :blushed:
Other than that, we're great together!
My brother in law is also an INTP, and we're really good friends. :happy:

my best friend is an INFP. We clicked really well right off the bat. I was always amazed at how much she seemed like me. But later I realized the differences... I get along better with her than anyone else, but also clashed more with her than any other friend. But I've learned what her buttons are, and how not to push them, and things have improved.

unleashthehounds said:

my best friend is an INFP. We clicked really well right off the bat. I was always amazed at how much she seemed like me. But later I realized the differences... I get along better with her than anyone else, but also clashed more with her than any other friend. But I've learned what her buttons are, and how not to push them, and things have improved.

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Glad to hear things are going better between you guys. :happy:

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The OP describes my experience with INTPs well, except the trains went off the tracks & collided at some point :crazy:. The INTPs could be emotional clods with a belligerent side, which does not come across as intelligent nor logical to me, and my sensitivity was too much at times for them to navigate (probably because they could not pick up on the early signals that they'd gone too far, & so they kept digging the hole deeper...).

OrangeAppled said:

The OP describes my experience with INTPs well, except the trains went off the tracks & collided at some point :crazy:. The INTPs could be emotional clods with a belligerent side, which does not come across as intelligent nor logical to me, and my sensitivity was too much at times for them to navigate (probably because they could not pick up on the early signals that they'd gone too far, & so they kept digging the hole deeper...).

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How young? I relate to that, but I've also gotten better at being more sensitive, learning the signals and not going too far. But I look back when I started dating, and am amazed at the mistakes I made. LOL

unleashthehounds said:

How young? I relate to that, but I've also gotten better at being more sensitive, learning the signals and not going too far. But I look back when I started dating, and am amazed at the mistakes I made. LOL

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They were in their mid to late 20s, and one was emotionally unstable (and went off medication he very much needed). I realize not all INTPs are that way, and I only keep mentioning it because I really liked them otherwise :crazy:.

I love infps <333333 I've been friends with three infps in the past four years, we're all similar in that we're quiet, introspective, literary, observers of human behaviour, social retards, tendency to procrastinate, at times overly sensitive to other people's actions.

Infp #1
When I first met him he was in shy reserved mode, and I was in excited hyper mode, so I just totally sprang on him with an endless flurry of chatter, not minding that I wasn't getting much response. We both eventually realized, and talked about, how we thought we were really similar to each other -- that was way before we'd discovered mbti. But I don't think either of us ever completely opened up to each other. In the sense that neither of us talked about our feelings to each other, though we talked about everything else under the sun like random things we'd observed in school and all that. May have been due by the fact that we once got into this... godawful long... fight about religion. I wasn't too affected by it afterwards, but following that incident he probably couldn't trust me not to violate his values or something, hence his withdrawing. We prioritized different things -- his defense of his religion was value-based, while my criticism of it was logic-based. (though this was three years ago and I have since learnt to be more considerate of other's views)

Infp #2
The only female infp I've met. At first ours was a friendship of convenience -- we were in a class of 15 guys and 3 girls -- but we soon realized that there was more to our friendship than convenience. We were both in the debating society, and obsessed over argumentation techniques and amusing turns of logic. We both brought two books with us wherever we went, so if we got bored of one book we could read another. We hung out everyday after school.

I couldn't understand her on an emotional level though. I tried to sympathize and be considerate of what I knew were her sensitive issues, but I couldn't completely empathize. Also at that time I didn't have any awareness of exactly how sensitive infps are, and I didn't have a clue as to the depth of feeling she harboured -- I just assumed she was like me, and the only difference was our life experiences. (which is why mbti is such an amazing thing!!!) So it came as a surprise when in a fit of anger I said something to her that I myself wouldn't have taken literally, and she ended up withdrawing into herself... well the friendship kind of spiralled down from there. T vs. F, gah.

Infp #3
The most recent infp I've met is the one I'm the least similar to. (and possibly hence the most attracted to) The other two infps were equally if not more reserved than me, but this one is more loud, jokey, extroverted and Ne-ish. Possibly his relative extroversion arises as a result of needing to people-please, but this is just a theory. He seems to be a people-pleaser to some extent, actively seeking out activities that involve helping people, and getting terribly guilty when he thinks he's imposed on others. Personally I could never devote that much energy into helping others >< He's also not as into intellectual pursuits as me or the other two infps are - people/experiences, rather than ideas alone, are his thing. For him, ideas and philosophy seem to be a byproduct of life, rather than ends in themselves. (all this is half speculation though)

Weirdly he also seems to be more guarded about his private life than the other two were. He seems to be addicted to using humor and light-heartedness as a way to deflect me, throw me off his scent so to speak. Or he just doesn't directly talk about his own thoughts/feelings much. I get access to all his outward charm and humor, which is intoxicating, but his innermost self remains sealed off. I am kind of amazed at how he can hang out with a person regularly for months, be nice and charming and friendly, but still keep them at a distance. For me to even hang out with a person that much and exchange regular text messages and everything, I'd first have to consider that person extremely close to my heart.

okay I shall stop before this turns into an autobiography detailing all my experiences with infps :laughing:

I thought my husband was INFP until he took the MBTI and came out INTP. This really is the cause of most of our disagreements-- he uses his head and I use my heart. Emotional arguments don't really do much to sway his opinion, and his values on smaller things are not as strong as mine. In general, while we reach conclusions on subjects in a different way, our conclusions are usually very similar.

Man, that relationship sounds like the relationship between me and myself.

I'm an obvious I, a pretty obvious N, and an obvious P. But the T/F scale is almost balanced (more often, I come out F, but not by a big margin at all).

I really don't try to type my friends a lot, and the few whose personalities I know aren't INFP or INTP. I have some friends who I think are both of those, but they're not really into psychology, so I don't try to make them take the tests.

Still, the scenario makes a lot of sense.

icicle84 said:

Man, that relationship sounds like the relationship between me and myself.

I'm an obvious I, a pretty obvious N, and an obvious P. But the T/F scale is almost balanced (more often, I come out F, but not by a big margin at all).

I really don't try to type my friends a lot, and the few whose personalities I know aren't INFP or INTP. I have some friends who I think are both of those, but they're not really into psychology, so I don't try to make them take the tests.

Still, the scenario makes a lot of sense.

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Wow, a kindred spirit. Years ago I took the MBTI and came up INTP. I recently retook the test and came up INFP. The last test I took I came up 50% T and 50% F. I went through a brief period not certain if I am P or J, but now believe I am a P. I now truly believe I am a hybrid type, INFP/INTP...

I have a best friend I only know through the internet (we met on a political blog), who identifies himself as an INFP. This in itself is pretty darned funny because he is an architect...no, I don't mean the archetypical label for an INTP. I mean that is what he does for a living. But he is much more comfortable in the world of metaphor and poetry than I am, though I'd argue that we are equally good writers.

I actually suspect we both are of the same mixed type. He once wrote that we possess the keys to unlock something in the other, that we seem to be destined to discover things within ourselves that we would never have found if we had never met. He openly admires me for my ability to reason and research; I equally admire him for the poetic power of his writing. I see the both of us trying to emulate what the other does so well. In T and F, we perfectly complement each other; in my view, T and F are the keys he envisioned.

On the other hand, he's also complained that I think too much. I have only obliquely complained that I don't always understand his metaphors. He probably gets a real charge out of the thought that he can stump a person with an advanced degree in English literature...wtf, he probably SHOULD get a kick out of it...

Still, it is a blessing to meet someone who understands me. And it was the biggest compliment when he told me that I was one of the few people he had ever met who understands him.

OrangeAppled said:

Glad to hear things are going better between you guys. :happy:

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The OP describes my experience with INTPs well, except the trains went off the tracks & collided at some point :crazy:. The INTPs could be emotional clods with a belligerent side, which does not come across as intelligent nor logical to me, and my sensitivity was too much at times for them to navigate (probably because they could not pick up on the early signals that they'd gone too far, & so they kept digging the hole deeper...).

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INTP clods?! Ouch, OrangeApplied, that just SO hurts...that's my F talking

The belligerent part unfortunately makes sense. In high school I was mercilessly picked on for being a "brain." But the brain in me could not resist but to prove what fools they were, and sarcasm became my stock in trade. Gadflies didn't do so well in history...take a look at what happened to Socrates, after all. It took me years to learn that compassion and empathy are excellent tools to get people to like others, and that perhaps I should not use intellect as a means of domination.

Still, a sarcastic dig can be great fun. My Facebook quote is "Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain." a quote by Friedrich Schiller made famous in Isaac Asimov's novel The Gods Themselves.

I quite enjoy my debates – maybe a source of the claimed belligerence. I use debate as a tool to learn, somewhat. It's not my main method, but it's definitely the only way I really learned to get to the "heart" of an argument and figure out why people think about things the way they do. This quest for understanding unfortunately gets me into a lot of trouble.

People often (falsely) believe me to be a dimwit upon an initial encounter. I don't say much with new people, and what comes out isn't exactly what you would expect of a smart person. Strangely enough, without being cocky (I'm not, except on this issue), everyone I've ever gotten to know holds me in a high regard as far as intelligence and usually comes to me first on anything relating to knowledge or logic. That feels good, a sense of accomplishment, if you will.

It seems as if the average INFP is quite a bit different than... all of that. They could be insanely smart and no one would ever know because they tend to keep that kind of thing to themselves and focus more on the emotions or what have you. Just my opinion.

Clandestine said:

I quite enjoy my debates – maybe a source of the claimed belligerence. I use debate as a tool to learn, somewhat. It's not my main method, but it's definitely the only way I really learned to get to the "heart" of an argument and figure out why people think about things the way they do. This quest for understanding unfortunately gets me into a lot of trouble.

People often (falsely) believe me to be a dimwit upon an initial encounter. I don't say much with new people, and what comes out isn't exactly what you would expect of a smart person. Strangely enough, without being cocky (I'm not, except on this issue), everyone I've ever gotten to know holds me in a high regard as far as intelligence and usually comes to me first on anything relating to knowledge or logic. That feels good, a sense of accomplishment, if you will.

It seems as if the average INFP is quite a bit different than... all of that. They could be insanely smart and no one would ever know because they tend to keep that kind of thing to themselves and focus more on the emotions or what have you. Just my opinion.

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Wow. I debate for the same reasons as you do, too. Arguing, providing alternative views, asking questions to find out why someone thinks a certain way -- it's all kinda automatic. I don't even see it as 'challenging' or 'disrespecting', because that isn't my intention at all, but I can see how it would come across that way.

random small example (kind of dumb, but it sort of puts the point across)

Infp friend: I don't know why you think that girl in our class is pretty. I think she's far from it.
Me: But she is! She has big round eyes, proportionate features... (this is basically me trying to set the table for a discussion & to invite her to present her evidence~)
Infp friend: See, this is why I don't argue with you. You always do this.
Me: o_o (at that time having no idea what 'this' means)

Intps, like all nts, take pride in their intelligence, competence, mastery etc. I don't flaunt it, but it'd be lying to say I didn't derive pride and a certain amount of self-esteem from it. The infps I know / have known... they get their self-esteem elsewhere. Although one did value intelligence very much - she seemed to have constructed her sense of self around it or something.

I've had almost that same conversation before. In fact, several times with many different types of people. A lot of people believe I just like to argue... funny thing, a lot of the time I either don't care or agree and am just playing Devil's Advocate. I always make a strong case for whatever I'm arguing, even if I know it's dead wrong. :blushed: