The INTJ Maturation Process (guest post)

The Background

I am a 35-year-old male, an only child, born in India, now living in the USA with a Ph. D. in Computer Engineering. My INJ are all very strongly expressed (80%+) but my T is a little more moderate (63%).

The Early Childhood

I was always a precocious child. Apparently, I never threw a tantrum as a baby and was always observing people and things with a wide-eyed death stare. I was every teacher’s favorite student and I breezed through school, often knowing things intuitively before they were even taught and understanding everything in complex ways. I was also a voracious reader and would exhaust all the books at my local lending library. I understood the basics of sexual attraction and how children were conceived intuitively at age 8.

The Adolescent Years

At age 8, I was informed that my father was diagnosed with schizophrenia in his teens, and this caused me to have to grow up pretty quickly and take care of my father in social situations. I also had to look out for my family and take care of their emotional needs. I was also heavily involved in the family decision-making process, as my mother recognized I was mature beyond my years, and I was always given responsibility befitting the head of the household from a young age, which nurtured my paternal instincts. However, I was going through puberty and adolescence and my childhood outspoken confidence gave way to introverted diffidence and I became shy, especially around the opposite sex. I was still getting straight A’s and breezing through school which gave me quiet inner confidence bordering on arrogance. I had a crush on the prettiest and most popular girl in class, (naturally, as an INTJ, you never settle), and I asked her out and was promptly rejected (naturally, seeing I was a shy and diffident kid on the outside). I was suddenly enveloped with emotions I couldn’t understand and spent a year completely flabbergasted as to why she would reject the most intelligent boy in the school. I decided that the only explanation was that I was hideous. This didn’t overly bother me, because as an INTJ, the thought of me being ugly was definitely within the realm of possibility, and not particularly a negative since I was the most intelligent boy in school and something I considered was a way to keep my arrogance in check. Since I would gladly choose my intelligence over my appearance any day of the week, I considered myself to be blessed and this was a trade I would make every day. However, it increased my diffidence and social anxiety when it came to interactions with women.

Young Adulthood

When I was 21, I moved to the USA for grad school. For the first time in my life, I was living away from my parents, in a rented apartment with three roommates. We had countless parties, game nights, and a whole lot of social events which were oddly very enjoyable, because of INTJ and introversion. Ah, the blissfulness of youth. I promptly developed a crush on the cutest girl at the parties, promptly asked her out, was promptly rejected yet again, and had to watch as she went out with my athletic gym-rat meathead roommate. Naturally, I decided that I was hideous but still would choose my intelligence over my appearance any day of the week and twice on Sundays. I decided that I was retiring from the dating game, and sexual attraction was an inconvenience that was inevitable because of hormones, but one I must control before I embarrassed myself yet again. I also door-slammed a bunch of people in my life who did not emotionally validate me and started living alone. This was the beginning of my maturation process. I was on a quest to understand myself, dabbled in astrology with my Piscean sun-sign, decided that astrology was a load of mumbo-jumbo, felt dejected, and discovered the MBTI. I took a test and learned that I was an INTJ. I learned that INTJs represent 2% of the human population and that’s why I was so unique. I learned that INTJs were master puppeteers and supervillains and I promptly walked to the bathroom and practiced my evil supervillain laugh in the mirror.

I also became aware that as an Indian male in the USA, I stuck out like a sore thumb, and I had to adapt to a new and foreign culture. Social anxiety begins manifesting itself deeply, introversion and INTJ observation start expressing themselves, leading to a completely enigmatic student who again breezed through school and excelled at work without ever doing much other than dishing out large doses of the INTJ death stare. I also learned to use the internet to research any question I ever had and this allowed me to avoid all but the most necessary social interactions. I began withdrawing from people and spending a lot of time perfecting my assimilation of American culture, perfecting my professional skillset, and perfecting every tiny detail of my personality that I thought needed honing.

I needed constant stimulation that my job wasn’t providing. Since I primarily worked with computers, my job offered little in terms of social interaction. This was a cause for mild depression and I was getting down in the doldrums quite often. I needed an outlet to express my intelligence, creativity, and competitiveness. I watched poker on television and started studying the game. My background in computer engineering was the ideal foundation as I geeked out about the applications of probability theory, combinatorics, statistics, and game theory to poker. My introverted intuition leaned itself greatly to people-reading skills which I started using at the tables. I was still extremely introverted around people but this hobby allowed me to people-watch and interact with a wide variety of people from all walks of life.

The Adulthood

Suddenly, I was this person who was extremely smart, extremely confident in what I did for a living, had a vibrant hobby, but was diffident around women and was single. This was certainly a welcome relief to women from the guys who would hit on women all the time. I also possessed highly developed introverted intuition which was almost spooky when it came to understanding people’s emotions, even though I had no idea how to react to them myself. For example, I could tell my friends were upset, and I could even nail the reason why they were upset, but I wouldn’t know how to comfort them. Women started finding me attractive and started hitting on me, even though I was still hideous and I had no clue how to woo them. I was even arrogant enough to let a couple of women woo me. Nevertheless,  a couple of failed relationships ensued even though I was friend-zoned quite a lot as well. I also couldn’t understand superficiality, emotional validation, etc., and had no idea why my relationships were failing if I was suddenly attractive. I resorted to dating websites and I started taking a scientific approach to dating women: first, I had my dealbreakers, then my minimum desirable qualifications, and finally my nice-to-have cherries on top. I ended up meeting an INFJ. We are like two peas in a pod and we spend a great deal of time together every day. We both nurture each other and help each other achieve our goals. In spite of the innumerable times in between where I thought it would never happen, my blind belief in early childhood that my life would turn out perfect is now a reality, or should I say my master plan is now a success?