What can INTJ men do to have more success with dating?
Life, including dating, is particularly rich and interesting when you’re an INTJ man.
Like other introverted personality types, you have a deep inner world. And because you’re an intuitive and thinking type, you likely have an excellent grasp on how things work.
Yet your personality type can encounter certain obstacles when it comes to learning how to date when you’re an INTJ man.
Whether you’ve just found out your Meyers-Briggs personality type or you’ve known yours for years, today’s post is made with love just for you.
We’ll help you build a successful strategy to date as an INTJ man by…
- figuring out what awesome qualities you bring to relationships,
- opening yourself to the emotional side of things, and
- learning which personality types are most likely to complement yours in a relationship.
When we’re finished, you’ll have a clear plan of action designed to improve your dating life and get real results. An INTJ’s dream! ;)
First, let’s talk about the INTJ personality in a broader sense.
What sets INTJ men apart from other personality types?
Like all archetypes in the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), the letters INTJ form an acronym describing your major defining characteristics.
INTJ stands for…
- Introversion,
- INtuition,
- Thinking, and
- Judging.
Your type profile holds a wealth of information on what exactly these characteristics mean.
Like the INTP type that we covered last week, INTJs observe the world on a very internal basis. You thrive best when you have time alone to recharge (introversion), and you navigate situations with your well-honed intuition.
INTJs aren’t quick decision-makers; you primarily make decisions based on logic and reason (thinking) more than your feelings or the feelings of others.
The final characteristic, judging, describes the way you interact with the world.
You likely make plans well in advance and feel most at ease when you follow a clear plan of action that you have laid out methodically as the result of your logical conclusions.
As an INTJ, you are probably now wondering how you can take this information and apply it to your dating life.
Let’s jump in!
First, remember the strengths you bring to the table as an INTJ
How can this personality profile help you date when you’re an INTJ man?
When you put all of the INTJ characteristics together, you get these qualities:
- scientifically-minded,
- driven to achieve results,
- efficient,
- objective,
- intelligent,
- capable, and
- decisive.
In short, you’re wired to be a particular kind of confident and capable alpha male that many women dream of dating.
You’re starting from a great position.
Since you know you have many desirable traits, the question now becomes how to display those traits to potential partners in an attractive way.
If you only remember one key principle for showing off your good qualities, make it this one:
Humility.
INTJs often have the natural benefits of intelligence and capability at their disposal. As objective analysts, they frequently know this about themselves.
As a result, some INTJs lean too hard toward elitism and rigidity, believing themselves to be correct and feeling unwilling to change for others.
When logic is king and efficiency is paramount to making decisions, it can be tough for INTJs to deal when others disagree with their conclusions.
After all, you have already weighed the information and come up with a conclusion that objectively makes sense. So, why would anyone disagree? Especially when they do so on the basis of emotions or other messy, unscientific criteria.
While confidence in your capability and your decisions is attractive and desirable, you can learn to soften your approach to value the input of different perspectives.
To successfully date when you’re an INTJ man, you will sometimes need to reach compromises with others and modify your beliefs and behaviors. In order to do this, open yourself to the thoughts and feelings of others.
This brings us to Step 2.
What are areas you will want to work on?
The most efficient way of improving your dating life is to understand the challenges you face and follow a plan of action accordingly.
As an INTJ man, you can approach this by objectively analyzing yourself and coming up with a list of areas you’d like to work onk.
If you need a starting point, however, take a look at this list of challenges that most INTJs face at some point during their lives:
- Expressing thoughts and feelings,
- Making small talk and ask your date or relationship partner about her thoughts and feelings,
- Placing value on her thoughts and feelings instead of dismissing them if they seem illogical or messy, and
- Integrating your thoughts and feelings with hers in order to come up with a way forward that helps you grow together as a couple.
Sharing these deep, inner feelings does not always come naturally to INTJ men in particular. If you plan to date when you’re an INTJ man, you will want to develop this emotional side of yourself.
So, what’s the problem?
We have discussed how many INTJs have a tendency to accept only the conclusions which are most logical and efficient and resist anything that seems to be illogical and messy.
As such, if you’re an INTJ, it indicates a lot of courage and openness on your part to even want to develop your emotional side.
To best do this, you can reframe this pursuit and define its purpose:
- Healthy, happy relationships must have a basis of emotional connection as well as making logical sense for both of you.
- In the beginning, before either of you can come to that logical conclusion of whether a relationship is a good fit, the only thing you will have to base your judgments on is your emotional connection.
So logically, you know that if you want to have a healthy and happy long term relationship, you must develop your emotional side.
Since many INTJs don’t want to waste their time and energy focusing on emotions, it’s a good idea to approach a first date with the same clinical efficiency with which you approach everything in life, by simply adding “sharing and receiving emotions” onto that list of necessary things to do.
Suddenly emotions are not messy and “extra”… Instead, they become an integral part of the dating process. So handy!
Many INTJ men find it helpful to have an inner, mental checklist like this:
- Have I told my date how I feel about her?
- Have I asked my date how she feels?
- Did I fully listen to and internalize her answer, understanding that her emotions may not make sense to me on the surface?
- How can I best take her feelings into consideration in my plan moving forward?,
- Have I shared this plan for moving forward with my date and asked how she feels about it?
With time and practice, this mental checklist feels less like a computer program running in the logical center of your brain and becomes a natural and even enjoyable part of the dating process.
The goal is to spend timen sharing your feelings and reading her emotions intuitively as you develop a deeper connection.
In the meantime, this plan will get you started on the right track.
Which personality types are most likely to complement yours in a dating scenario?
You know very well by this point that INTJs are often all about maximizing efficiency and taking clear action based on supremely logical conclusions.
As a result, you might find yourself yearning to cut through the inefficient parts of dating and get right to the best results.
If that sounds exactly like what you were thinking, then awesome! Experts in the MBTI personality types have already put together a breakdown of the types that would be your best bets to pursue in a romantic relationship.
Here are the personality types you’re most likely to be compatible with:
- ISTJ
- INTP
- ENTJ
- INTJs like yourself.
Sometimes, however, dating someone with a high degree of similarity does not offer the same fun and challenge as dating someone with a few intriguing differences.
While you might not click as fully with the following as you would with the above list, you’ll probably still have the potential for great compatibility with women of these types:
- INFP
- INFJ
- ENTP
- ENFJ
If you’re going for pure efficiency, stick with the above personality types when it comes to choosing a partner.
However, if you’re willing to experiment and take on some fun challenges, it’s still totally viable to form a lasting and healthy connection with any of the remaining MBTI types:
- ISTP
- ESTP
- ESTJ
- ENFP*
- ISFP
- ISFJ
- ESFP
- ESFJ
You never know; perhaps you will feel swept off your feet by a woman who wows you with her extroverted, emotionally vibrant way of living life!
*(Fun fact: There may be something to the theory that “opposites attract”; ENFPs and INTJs are often paired as the perfect match, despite the fact that they appear to be polar opposites on the surface!)
Opposites can work out well romantically as long as both of you commit to embracing your differences and using those differences as challenges to grow toward each other and meet in the middle.
Conclusion on how to date when you’re an INTJ man:
Now you have a clear plan to date when you’re an INTJ man. Hopefully, you feel more equipped with what you need to reach fulfillment in your dating life.
Fantastic!
In the meantime, let’s go over the key points we covered today:
- In order to unleash your full strength as a smart, capable INTJ, you can moderate yourself with a bit of humility,
- One big growth area is opening yourself to thoughts and feelings (both your own and your date’s), and
- You can find a compatible partner based on personality combinations that fit nicely with yours.
Also, don’t forget to download our free ebook, “Why PUA Doesn’t Work for Introverts & What Works Instead.” You’ll find more great steps to take toward improving your dating life without all the messy trial and error (yay for that INTJ logic!).
If you are ready to tackle your dating life in the kind of sequential, logical way that INTJs thrive with, check out our Launch Your Dating Life program.
Many of our clients are the INTJ software engineer type. So if that’s you, you’ll be in great company in a program that was literally created just for you! Talk with us in a 1:1 phone call (apply here), and together we can see if the program is right for you.
