Last night, Karl turned to me while we were watching TV and said "I don't know why we're married."
The day before yesterday I took an abbreviated Myers Briggs personality test*. I came up as an ESFJ. I read several websites describing ESFJs and found myself nodding along. Yes, I talk about my feelings ad nauseam. Yes, I am controlling. Yes, I want to be told that people like me... a lot.
When Karl got home, I asked him to take the same test. He came up as an INTJ. INTJs do not like to talk about feelings. INTJs do like being micro-managed. INTJs are often seen as "cold" and "logical." INTJs are not, probably, a good match for ESFJs. Karl read a lot of information about both of our personality types yesterday. Wikipedia provides a more in depth description than the Myers Briggs website, but he read several other sites too.
According to all of these sites, Karl and I shouldn't work. One of his pet peeves is, indeed, talking about his feelings. However, we talk about feelings a lot. We talk about how I feel a lot and why I feel that way. Then I want to know how he feels and why he feels that way. It drives him crazy. Karl doesn't like being micro-managed, as his Myers Briggs profile indicates, but I micro-manage him a lot because of his brain injury and my controlling nature. Karl doesn't like being viewed as incompetent, also right in line with an INTJ profile, and we struggle with this because he is incompetent in several ways.
I know why we're married though. We do work. Whether because my "practical" side compliments his "logical" side or in spite of our personalities, we work. Last night I started crying because, out of nowhere, my husband told me he didn't know why we're married. It makes no sense to him that we work despite all the psychology that says we shouldn't. The psychology acknowledges that a logical thinker will inevitably tell a sensitive feeler "I don't understand why we are together" and the sensitive feeler will be hurt. However, being a practical sensitive feeler, I know that it's okay. We don't make sense. Feelings don't make sense, but we have them anyway. Being a logical thinker, Karl kept trying to figure out what he was trying to say, which was that it doesn't make sense, but he loves me. That's all I really needed to hear anyway.
*A Myers Briggs type test may be taken at either of the following links:
http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp
http://www.16personalities.com/
Karl doesn't seem like an INTJ to me, I dunno, clearly you're a better judge than I
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