TheLionRampant.net

I’m a bit lonely. The thing is, it’s hard to live a number of time zones away from your family and all the people you grew up with. Bryce truly is my best friend in the world but I am really missing all those years-long friendships with girlfriends — where you knew what each other was like when you were 15 and have seen how you’ve grown up in the intervening years. I wish I had a girlfriend I couldn’t wait to be with and talk about important stuff — someone who challenges me, sharpens me and who calls me on things when I’m off base. It’s not that I don’t have great girlfriends here, but they’re just different from friends you’ve known for a decade.

I realise this all sounds very selfish — and I’m not even sure why I’m blogging about such things to the world. But I read blogs and get occasional emails from friends back home and I miss our closeness (and see them forming new bonds with other friends) and, as the holidays approach, it makes me miss that friendship more. However, I know even if we are reunited, that closeness won’t magically appear; I’ll always be somewhat a stranger when I go home now, having spent so much time in another place. I guess that’s part of living so far away and in another culture — part of my life experience is simply too foreign for old friends to enter into — and part of just being a real grown up. That is, when one’s ‘grown up’ it’s the family that takes over what the friends previously supplied. Being that we’re in sort of a limbo — grown up and married and yet still in graduate school and not having kids — I don’t feel like we’ve achieved a legitimacy in claiming ‘family status’ in some areas — we definitely don’t fit it conventionally.

Anyway, maybe it’s just my INFJ coming out so you needn’t worry about me.

I was talking with Bryce yesterday as we walked up the Radical Road at sunset about poetic inspiration, for lack of a better word. It’s not necessarily that you are lead to write or contemplate poetry (but that’s the form it mostly takes with me), but one of those times when things sort of slide into place. It’s not as big as an epiphany, but a pervasion of beauty, art, truth, etc. Have people had this sort of experience I’m talking about? It’s a fairly regular staple in my personality so I was surprised not everyone has these moments. If you’re confused, try reading this post or this one as tentative examples of what I’m talking about.

What personality type are you attracted to in your friendships?

From what I can remember my elementary school best friend was probably an ESTJ, my junior high best friend an ENFP, my high school and college good friends were ISTJs (I’m guessing this is what Katie is), ENFPs and INFJs. I don’t know if I can come up with some pattern about what this means about me, and really doubt if I actually want to systematise something as personal as friendships, but I know the things that have attracted me to certain friends have tended to be some sort of depth of personality and interiority, to know and share deep thoughts (this often means that this potential friend is an Introvert — likes to be alone and think of things — or at least an intuitive (N) and/or Feeling person. I’ve always preferred discussing the personal over the abstract, but do enjoy a bit of abstraction thrown in for good measure — and of course, to prevent too much navel-gazing.

It’s pretty pathetic: I don’t seem to have much time for those who aren’t introspective to some degree; I abolutely cannot fathom a personality that is all exterior. I wish I had more grace than that (maybe I just have too much J!). I also tend to gravitate towards those that ride a fine line between iNtuition and Sensing and Feeling and Thinking. I have enough rational logic (although Bryce might beg to differ as my common sense category is woefully short-shifted) as I’ve grown up to want those who can evaluate their feelings without running away within them, enough of a grounded base in more factual things than being tossed around with every trend of (insert appropriate adjective here) fashion. I have always been attracted to extroverts because they’re so engaging and fun to be around; I like being friends with Ps but often the flakiness can really get to me. But my best friends have tended to be those with whom I feel comfortable to share my big ideas (or insignificant ones); and this comfortable factor usually stems from intuiting that a potential friend also likes to dream, analyse, be creative and reflective. That’s my 2 cents; feel free to share yours.

I thought it’d be interesting to start my own wee series on personalities and my experience with the Myers-Briggs 16-types; if you’re unfamiliar with Myers-Briggs go here to take a test. Obviously assigning a letter to your personality is a bit more simplistic than the nuances in each of us, but nonetheless, I think it helps us to understand ourselves, each other and why you are attracted to certain types of people more than others.

For this first post, I’m going to talk a bit about some of the similarities I’ve noticed in Bryce and myself as we’re both I’s and both J’s (introverted judgers). I used to think being introverted was bad — like you were a geek, had no friends and didn’t like people generally. But I’ve come to see it more about how one needs recharging. For instance, Bryce’s brother seems to have endless supplies of energy and will be out late most nights with a different group of people each night; just thinking about that makes me tired and a bit anxious (how would I make effective conversation/small talk to loads of people I don’t know?) As far as the two of us, thankfully we’re not super introverted so we do have lots of fun in big groups; but that said, we probably won’t be the ones staying up to all hours with huge groups (small dinner parties are different) and we wouldn’t be caught dead clubbing or out partying with a bunch of hot, sweaty people clad in tiny skirts and furry boots. This of course is helpful as we’re likeminded on this front; we can sense (both being Ns as well) when the other is ready to go back to our basement flat and enjoy quiet and solitude. (I would consider this state of solitude as being just the two of us as well, not just me on my own, although I like that too). Oddly, I think that I’ve become more extroverted with age while Bryce needs a bit more quiet than I do; that’s why he’s in his boxroom most of the time and that’s why he needs to just be alone after we argue sometimes, I think.

We’re also (strong) judgers — planners, to-do-listers, likes-to-know-what’s-happening-nexters, and having thing generally figured out and solved (or in the process of concluding). Erratic behaviour is maddening. Both being J’s is great in so many ways: we can plan vacations together and we both know what we want out of our times away, we work well discussing future events and settling on plans. In the past however, I think it’s made it so we don’t “go with the flow” enough; we don’t allow enough spontaneity in our lives and the J in us often means we expect a whole lot (especially consistency) from each other; which as flawed human beings is difficult to follow through with to say the very least. I think too, because we’re so similar in lots of ways it can make us judge others who have opposite characteristics than us in a bad way (not always of course, but sometimes). Because we’re similar, the people who differ from us are “odd” or “weird” rather than just “different”; basically they don’t seem to make sense to us. Of course we do have our “P” tendencies in such things as procrastination and learning to be okay with life as fundamentally open-ended in several areas.