Introversion refers to “the state of being concerned primarily with one’s own thoughts and feelings rather than with the external environment.” Introverts shrink from social interaction in big groups. They don’t take on new friends often, or easily, and may even be somewhat mistrustful of others. They enjoy activities they can do on their own—surfing the internet, playing video games, watching movies, and listening to music, for instance. Introverts have a more developed “inner life,” because they’re generally more attuned to their own thoughts and feelings.
In addition to the extrovert/introvert classifications, Jung noted two others: intuitive/sensing and feeling/thinking. He believed that people develop essential traits that are either rational (sensing and thinking) or non-rational (intuition and feeling). From these three descriptive pairs, Jung formed eight basic personality types.[xii]
Each of the eight types is a combination of the traits listed above. For instance, an “Extraverted/Thinking” type of person is a strategist by nature. He or she views situations analytically, devising and instituting plans based on clear reasoning. He or she is a good leader of others when focusing a group on the most expedient solution to a given problem. By contrast, an “Introverted/Feeling” person may be difficult to read and harder to reach; his or her complex, passionate desires may not be understood by most people. Artists often have this personality type, for example.
Many people who have applied for a job in Corporate America may be familiar with the Myers-Briggs personality test or, as it properly known, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Many companies insist that all potential employees complete this series of yes/no questions before they’re hired. The test was originally designed during World War II to aid women in finding a factory job best suited to their personality type. The Myers-Briggs test operates on the same principles as Jung’s three trait divisions—extraverted/introverted, sensing/intuition, feeling/thinking—but adds a fourth, “judging/perceiving.” Those who fit into the “judging” camp approach a potential scenario logically, expecting a fixed end. The “perceiving” camp prefers to explore a variety of solutions and would rather “keep decisions open.” Put simply, “judging” people consider answers to be most important, whereas “perceiving” people focus on the questions.[xiii]
Taking the official Myers-Briggs test would cost sixty dollars and about an hour of your time, if you contemplate your answers. For a free alternative, you can go to www.humanmetrics.com and take a seventy-two question version that closely mirrors the Myers-Briggs test and gives results using the same terminology. Here are three examples of questions taken from Humanmetrics’ “Jung Typology Test”:
You tend to be unbiased even if this might endanger your good relations with people: Yes or No?
Often you prefer to read a book rather than go to a party: Yes or No?
A thirst for adventure is close to your heart: Yes or No?
I’ve personally taken both the official Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and the Humanmetrics’ version, with the same result. Both identified my personality as ENTP, which stands for “extraversion/intuition/thinking/perception.” Among the main traits of someone with my personality type are outspokenness, creativity, and a quick wit. ENTPs are also likely to overlook the day-to-day necessities of life while putting undue emphasis on more exciting projects. If you ask people who know me well, their description of me would almost exactly match my personality type description. If you ask my father, he’d especially laugh about my predilection to neglect menial but important tasks.
If all this sounds intimidating and confusingly technical, I encourage you to take the free test and find out for yourself. The questions are easily understood, and if you think about each one and answer as honestly as you can, you may be astounded at how well the results reflect your own personality. Additionally, the test suggests your ideal careers and notes the famous people who share your personality type.
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator has sixteen basic personality types. Very few people fit exactly into any one of them, but it’s a rough outline that has become so widely accepted that many corporations will or won’t hire someone based on the results. You can’t “flunk” it like a test in school, however. There are no right or wrong answers. As the name suggests, it merely sketches a person’s core personality.
So why is this test important to our discussion? Have all of these pages been a build-up to one master pitch for some test invented in the 1940s? No. I value you and your impeccable taste in reading material too much to waste your time. I want to examine the core of the questions on this test. According to our most respected psychologists, what are the most valid factors in determining who we are?
Having examined the two mainstream tests, I think the questions can be distilled into four of primary importance:
1) Do you prefer the company of a group, or do you prefer to be alone?
2) Do you trust your “hunches” (an inexplicable inner sense of what to do in a given situation), or do you distrust what you can’t see, hear, and feel?
3) When faced with a problem, does your mind or your heart most often make the decision?
4) Metaphorically speaking, which is more important, the journey or the destination?
You may notice that none of these questions has to do with career, leisure activities or favorite bands, movies, restaurants, and places to vacation. I’m embarrassed to admit that my primary requirement for a girlfriend, when I was much younger, was that she despise the same rock bands I did. (I was the sort of surly young man whom I’d shudder to meet now.) That I managed to date a few wonderful women during that period was a result of either divine providence or blind luck, depending on your beliefs.
The simple questions above give you a pretty good read on almost anyone you meet, and how the answers compare with yours will almost certainly be a better indicator of your compatibility with someone than your previous approach. But a few of you might say that none of those questions covers whether or not a guy can turn me on. The good news is that, barring a strange anatomical misfortune, the guys who are compatible with your long-term happiness also have penises capable of giving you pleasure.
Please do yourself a favor and wait for one of those.
So how do the answers to the Important Questions help to determine compatibility? Which personality types work with which others? First, I need to provide a disclaimer: there isn’t a universally-accepted personality test that provides pinpoint accuracy in determining a person’s nature. Even Myers-Briggs, the most commonly used, has been the subject of an ongoing debate about its effectiveness. Theory and practice don’t always make ideal bedfellows, and neither people nor life itself is constant, so no test could possibly assess people with perfect accuracy over the course of their ever-changing lives. Neither life nor the people who live it is at all perfect—ever.
Side note: If either you or your life is perfect, put this book down now. Better yet, give it to a friend who could use some good advice or just something to make her laugh one rainy afternoon. Then give me a call through my publisher and say I expressly insisted you get through to me. Seriously. I’ll never be too old or too successful to benefit from the advice of a Perfect Person.
Back to compatibility.
I can recommend a good book on this subject, which gives you all the necessary detail about the possible compatibility of your own personality with the other fifteen types identified in the MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator). It called Just Your Type by Paul D. Tieger and Barbara Barron-Tieger, and it further explores this topic via both theory and research. This field of thought began in the 1970s with research by a Lithuanian sociologist and dean of family science named Aušra Augustinavičiūtė. The good doctor (whose name I won’t attempt to spell again) developed ideas, which he dubbed “socionics,” about how Jung’s personality types interact with one another.
Although socionics has never been widely recognized in academia, it has become more popular since the rise of the internet. The
re are dating websites that match people solely based on it, and there are schools of socionics in Eastern Europe. I’m not endorsing socionics as the ultimate indicator of whether you and male X will make it, or whether you’ll end up furiously throwing each other’s shit out of an apartment window. I am only highlighting this as a fresh lens through which to view compatibility.
Examining the compatibility of the many different personality combos (136 of them), I found a few interesting consistencies. First, contrary to what you might think, men with your exact same personality profile aren’t necessarily your ideal mates. In the same way that being with someone with identical MHC (the immune system imprint that we all carry) isn’t ideal, being with your personality doppelganger isn’t either. While that person may echo your beliefs and outlook, he also won’t add anything new. Boredom might develop over the long term if both partners remain the same. In fact, continued success often requires that one partner assumes an opposite but complementary trait; for example, one becomes a people person when both were homebodies before.
A second consistency is that the “opposites attract” stuff is sort of bullshit. You might be attracted to your polar opposite but, according to socionics, it’s the last person you should be with. A person with all four traits contrary to yours represents the worst chance for long-term compatibility. So if you’re an intuitive loner with your heart on your sleeve, who prefers to “discuss” rather than “debate,” avoid that charismatic, sternly rational guy who loves nothing more than winning an argument. Socionics says you two are doomed.
Here’s the third and perhaps most interesting consistency, which adds a peculiar “yes, but…” to the previous paragraph. Although you don’t want to pick your exact opposite (all four traits contrary), socionics says that your ideal mate should have three of four traits different from yours, but that you must have the same fourth trait: judging/perceiving.
If this seems nonsensical, think about your past relationships. What is more frustrating than arguing with someone who refuses to acknowledge the “rules” of the argument? If you’re highly logical, nothing is more maddening than arguing with someone you would describe as “touchy-feely.” While you’re making a perfectly good point about why you can’t afford a more expensive apartment, he’s accusing you of never honoring his desires. You aren’t having one argument, you’re having two, and you could have them for all eternity without the two intersecting. A difference in this one basic trait (judging/perceiving) almost naturally dooms any consistent, mutually-satisfying conflict resolution for the length of your relationship.
Think about one of the most popular clichés concerning the difference between men and women. Women just want someone for airing out their problems, someone to listen. Because of their manly nature, men assume there is no point to hearing a problem unless the point is securing a solution. To men (or rather “men” in this clichéd scenario), it’s the difference between plugging a leak and sitting under it while complaining about how wet you’re getting. “Men” don’t understand that “women” want to engage in the simple act of unburdening their grievances. A scenario in which this difference remains constant would prove to be endlessly frustrating to both partners and, ultimately, due cause for a split.
We will explore this topic a little more in the next chapter and help you begin to ask the questions that really matter in finding a partner for life.
Chapter Seven
Tapping Into Your Private Dick
In the last chapter, I presented a loose outline of a more useful model for helping you determine compatibility with a potential mate.
Yes, but how on Earth does that help me weed out the keepers from the douchebags? How do I casually suggest a man take an online personality test without sounding completely insane?
Don’t worry. You don’t need to see test results if you pay attention to the four core questions presented in the previous chapter. The answers to these simple questions can be surprisingly important and revealing. Let’s talk a bit more about each.
Do you prefer the company of a group, or do you prefer to be alone?
This question simplifies the “extrovert/introvert” distinction. Basically, if you prefer the company of others to being alone, you land in the extrovert camp. If not, you’re an introvert. Very few people will fall completely into one camp or the other. My friend Stephanie describes herself as a staunch introvert—socially awkward and even a little panicky in groups of strangers. However, I’ve also seen her shine in those seemingly difficult situations. For many people, it’s a matter of the circumstances. Although I’ve described Stephanie as a “closet extrovert” (a description she flatly denies), the truth is that she’s more often a wallflower than the life of the party.
Determining whether someone is an extrovert or introvert isn’t hard. People reveal themselves by just describing what they like to do on weekends. Can’t wait to get off work and meet your friends for a drink every Friday afternoon? Extrovert. Can’t wait to curl up with a good book—like this one, for instance? Introvert.
Do you trust your “hunches,” or do you distrust what you can’t see, hear, and feel?
Another old cliché about the difference between the sexes is that women are intuitive and men are sensible. A male chauvinist would even describe women as “superstitious” and “irrational,” while describing his sex as a model of clear-thinking practicality. If you meet such a man, I urge you to politely and discreetly escape from his presence as quickly as humanly possible. Engaging or humoring these assholes is like watering a weed; it encourages growth in something better used as compost.
In addition to being a condescending dick (though not the “dick” of the chapter title, which I’ll explain in a minute), the chauvinist is absolutely wrong. Many of the sharpest, most rational people I know are women. In fact, by far the most brilliant analytical mind I’ve ever encountered belongs to a woman. Her name is Audrey, and she was kind enough to be the first to edit this book.
“Hunches” obviously aren’t the exclusive province of women, despite the often-referenced “women’s intuition.” Intuitive types exist in both genders equally, and they aren’t more “superstitious” than anyone else. Intuitive types are those whose thoughts tend toward the abstract. They may be described as “daydreamers” or as having their “head in the clouds.” They crave fresh intellectual stimuli and gravitate toward the unconventional—whether a new, cutting-edge technology or a person that others might describe as “strange.” Intuitive people are more likely to avoid “9 to 5” jobs. They’re more concerned with past events than “sensing” types; they also prefer the theoretical to the concrete, making them ideal writers or teachers. Intuitive people are far more likely to make decisions based on gut feelings than their “sensing” counterparts.[xiv]
Stripped to the basics, intuitive people are best described as “contemplative.” By contrast, “sensing” people are usually described as “active.” Focused on the present moment, sensing types prefer to be at the center of any discussion; they focus their energies on problem-solving, using the tools and materials available to them. Do you need someone to help you balance your budget, set up your computer, or fix a leaky faucet? Call a “sensing” man. But if you want someone to see a wonderful new French art film with you, you’ll probably want to dial a different set of digits.
Sensing people are more likely to be physically active. They’re more attuned to their bodies and tend to be more naturally athletic. Because they know their bodies better, they’re more likely to seek physical pleasure than their intuitive brethren.[xv]
This doesn’t necessarily make them better lovers, mind you.
When faced with a problem, does your mind or your heart most often make the decision?
Still another old cliché says this answer splits squarely across gender lines: males are thinking creatures and women are feeling ones. The truth is that, while women might on average lean toward “feeling” and men toward the “thinking,” most pe
ople contain shades of each trait. In the extreme “thinking” people with no trace of “feeling” are coldly analytical. They believe in strict adherence to rules and don’t let emotions influence their decisions in any way. They’re uncommunicative and uncomfortable when pressed to discuss their feelings. Faced with a problem, they seek the most expedient solution with no regard for the people involved. They seek an efficient, ordered world above all else.
At the opposite extreme are “feeling” types who prefer to engage any problem by listening to and gauging the opinions of the people involved before coming to a conclusion. Whereas efficiency is the goal of the “thinking” type, “feeling” people seek harmony. They make decisions based on sympathy and the desire for deep understanding. They value passion and romantic love more than their “thinking” counterparts.[xvi] Whereas the “thinking” man may feel love for you, the “feeling” man is more likely to be “in love” with you. If this description seems to suggest the superiority of “feeling” types, consider that every neurotic, needy, and emotionally draining person you’ve ever dated was this type.
Of course, every man you’ve ever described as “cold,” “heartless,” and “unfeeling” were likely “thinkers” at the extreme end of the spectrum. There isn’t a right or wrong personality type, only a right or wrong type for you. The key in all of this is to find someone who is balanced in a way that complements you. If you’re equal parts “thinking” and “feeling,” find someone similar. If you aren’t terribly balanced in this regard, find someone who complements your imbalance.
Your Ex-Boyfriend Will Hate This Page 4