How many of you out there are an INTJ? We female INTJ are less than 1% of the population! Which explains, in part, why I can’t find a funny meme of INTJ women or why so often I’ve felt like an outsider looking in at the human race. I have little to no emotional reaction to events, I find that getting through things logically and efficiently the top priority. I can process later, I’ve worked on this concept a long time and I’m sorta getting the hang of it now.

I’ve been called cold more times that I can count, and I once called my mother from a bar at 2am to ask her to look up Stoic because I had been called that for the third time that week by perfect strangers. I needed her to settle a debate about whether that was an insult or not. (Before the time of smartphones, and I didn’t take it as an insult before or after the definition because the dude debating me didn’t think I knew what it meant and I guess couldn’t just believe a girl knows a word he didn’t).

I don’t make friends easily and I don’t care to. I have great friends and would rather spend time with them than be bored at a bar. This makes me weird. My lack of interest in getting drunk and listening to people talk about things they don’t know and/or won’t do makes me an outsider. I can’t resist correcting people, it’s physically impossible, neither can my mother. I’ve always wondered why my outlook was so very different from others. This profile really connects some serious dots for me. I wonder if it will for you too? Perhaps you are an INTJ, or know one… Let me know!

We INTJs often excel at world domination, and while a male INTJ is considered Decisive, a Leader, Calm, and Reasonable, we females are called Bitches, Cold, Calculating, Stubborn, Stiff… ahhh equality. Have I mentioned sarcasm yet?

We have high expectations and we hold ourselves up to the highest standard. “They are very determined people who trust their vision of the possibilities, regardless of what others think. They may even be considered the most independent of all of the sixteen personality types. INTJs are at their best in quietly and firmly developing their ideas, theories, and principles.”

​Our standards are so high we don’t even meet them. So please don’t be offended if I don’t seem surprised when you or I fail. It’s not easy to succeed, but you just have to keep going til you get it right. If you’re still here at the end I will be surprised.

We’re terrible at following rules, not because we’re defiant, but because rules are usually made for the lowest common denominator and therefore don’t apply to us. So if a rule is stopping us from success we will simply ignore it.

People often call us know-it-alls, but it turns out we’re usually right. The problem is we know we’re almost always right. We’ve lived with it our whole lives, and have to explain to people over and over, which sounds terribly arrogant. It’s just watching people fail when we’ve already figured something out is tiresome. This not ego, it’s just true. We also don’t find being called a know-it-all to be an insult, it’s really a compliment so don’t worry about it, we don’t. We may worry about our latest project, but we don’t worry about your opinion of us.

We are intimidating not because we’re better, simply because we’ve looked at all the data and are completely confident in our choices. Plus having an analyzing mind we are open to the idea that with new data changes can happen, and that’s GOOD. Also because if you ask us a question we will answer you. Don’t ask if you don’t want the truth, honest truth. (I’ve gotten better about sugar coating living in CA, not NYC. After making a few people cry I realized I have to butter people up before answering their questions honestly, and honestly it’s exhausting.)

We would rather talk big ideas, plans, debate, theorize, play games of strategy, than gossip any day. In fact most of us just leave when the conversation turns from intellectual to emotional, or judgy. If it takes you 10 minutes to say one thing I promise we’ve stopped listening around the 30 second mark. If you start repeating yourself we also stop listening.

We are loyal. When you give us a secret to hold we actually keep it. When you need help burying the body we’ll suggest that burying the body might not be the most effective way to get rid of the evidence, perhaps we should think about how to get away with the murder as a whole… we are big picture thinkers.

This why we make such good coaches and leaders. We can keep a secret, we can tell you honestly what’s going on, we can teach you how to make decisions – not make them for you. We can help you in ways no one else can because we are not trying to feed your ego, we are more concerned with your success and in my case helping you see the cool shit your period does if you’d just stop looking at it like our culture conditioned you to and look at it as one of your top sources of information, it’s totally logical. We want what’s best for YOU, not your husband, brother, kids, mom’s idea of what’s best for you and we’ll remind you of that everyday if we have to.

We MUST solve the puzzle. When I was in kindergarten we had a book of puzzles for the year, I solved the whole thing in I think the first month (Mom, Dad?) then I was bored. Which turned out ok cause I wasn’t there much anyway. When they wanted to hold me back because I wasn’t there enough days for the school to get paid for me. My dad asked if I was behind. I wasn’t actually they thought about skipping me up a year but I was already the youngest in class.

We are efficient improvers. Perhaps to a fault. Finding the best price vs the commute, vs the time spent… Comparing time vs cash, we are always looking to improve something. We can not take instructions, such as a recipe at face value we must improve it first.

It’s easy to break up with us. We’re cool, have a nice day! There’s this super interesting thing over here we wanted to do and you were honestly just holding us back from it.

We hate it when you interrupt, or finish our sentence. Believe me you can’t possibly know what we’re thinking. However, we’re really good at interrupting you and summing up your run on sentence in two words.

“Many of us tend to be rather obsessive-compulsive, for instance ordering our cd’s, dvd’s, and books by genre then alphabetically (by title for dvd’s, by group then title for cd’s, and by author then title for books, except for series which must be kept in appropriate serial order). Most of us have other quirks as well, e.g., always eating M&M’s in a specific color order, naming our children in alphabetical order, etc. It’s a small price to pay for genius, really.” http://theventurouslife.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-complete-idiots-guide-to-intj.html

Actually my mother perfected the death glare. If this was her picture above you’d be dead by now. I did you a huge favor, believe me.

So how many of you out there are INTJs? What’s it like being you!? A round peg in a square hole society… Tell me about it!