What Life Is Like as an INTJ

The intensity and the concentration of an INTJ stare.

I will be honest, I never did pay attention to the four letter descriptor of my cognitive abilities much. I was friendly and outgoing, I had a laser-like hyperfocus when necessary, and I had just completed my PhD.

Of course, one day I go out with a good friend of mine, one who has known me (and my idiosyncratic shenanigans) for many years. As we were wondering over why I never did have a serious girlfriend before, she dropped a bomb on me:

“You’re introverted”, she said.

“How could that be”, I wondered.

1. For years, I thought friendly and outgoing meant “extroverted”.
2. For years, I wondered why my feelings were always somewhat hidden beneath me, and I presented a calm exterior most of the time.
3. For years, I wondered why so people had problems understanding me, or even how I connected the dots to link what was happening now to what could happen in the future. Why did so few people actually know the real me?
4. For years, I wondered how I could easily analyse systems and find the loopholes in them to exploit.
5. For years, I wondered if I could actually be gainfully employed in a 9–5 job because I absolutely detested the idea of becoming an employee.