You will receive that one thing that you aren’t thinking about, their time. They may give up certain activities to spend time with you. Being alone is an activity, and if they give that up (not totally, they are still kind of human) to be with you it could be love or they have strong feelings toward you that can possibly be misconstrued as love but the potential is definitely there.
INTJ’s want efficiency and optimisation so if you find them doing things to help your life run more smoothly or them getting you items to the same the effect then it’s a safe bet that they care deeply for you, love is still up for debate but that’s probably where its going to end up.
TL:DR. They’ll spend time with you, they’ll get you stuff (more functional than romantic)
As an ENFP, why do I feel like my INTJ boyfriend doesn’t love me?
*sigh* If I had a dollar for every time I’ve written an answer to this exact question for the ENFP half of an ENFP x INTJ couple…
I’m an INTJ, and my ex-boyfriend is an ENFP. We were together for fourteen years (from the age of 14 to 28 – in fact, we just broke up about six months ago), and essentially grew up together; so needless to say, I do have a little bit of experience in this area, and at least enough to provide some insights that I suspect will (hopefully) ring true for you once you read them. We went through this exact same problem ourselves throughout the first three or four years of our relationship, and it caused a lot of misunderstandings and needlessly wounded feelings on both sides; but once we figured out what the problem was, it was never an issue again from that day forward. If I’m right about the root cause of this conflict, then I have some good news for you, because it’s a very easy fix.
What I suspect may be going on here is simply that you don’t have the same love language as your boyfriend does.
The main idea behind the concept of love languages is that each person has a natural preference for the way in which they express and experience feelings of love for others. There are five love languages that each person can have an inclination for:
- Words of affirmation
- Physical touch
- Receiving gifts
- Quality time
- Acts of service
Without going into too much detail, here’s a chart that provides a little break-down of each love language, and how they’re expressed.
In my experience, ENFPs tend to show their love most through words of affirmation. Even if it’s not their main love language, ENFPs tend to be very free with their verbal affection, and are almost always extremely effusive and demonstrative when it comes to expressing their feelings for others. They love building people up and making them feel good about themselves, and expressing their warm, enthusiastic, and people-oriented nature comes very easily to them.
INTJs, however, do not resemble ENFPs in this regard. As a type that has both a preference for thinking (meaning that their focus is on rational, action-oriented decision-making) as well as having Fi as their feeling function (which is inherently private when it comes to their emotions), INTJs are notoriously spartan when it comes to revealing their complex inner world, especially when it comes to their emotions; and for this reason, most thinkers – especially high Te users (ESTJ, ISTJ, ENTJ, and INTJ) – prefer to demonstrate their love and affection through actions rather than words.
I want you to stop and think about this for a second. If an INTJ has truly lost interest in maintaining your relationship and come to the conclusion that there’s absolutely no hope in moving forward with you toward the future, then he likely would have already broken it off with you. Think back through your relationship, and try to focus on all the thoughtful little things that he’s done for you that you may not have picked up on because you were so focused on listening to his words to try and detect some verbal affirmation of his affection, instead of paying attention to his actions and behaviors. Has he ever caught you off-guard with a surprisingly thoughtful and sensitive gift? Something that he clearly put a lot of thought into, or perhaps something that you casually mentioned wanting or needing to him a couple of months ago? How much time has he devoted to counseling you, listening to you vent, or trying to help you come up with solutions for a problem that you were facing? How often does he ask you about yourself, engaging you in conversation with the clear intent of trying to understand you more deeply as a human being? How many times has he sacrificed his beloved solitude so he could spend some time with you instead? How often does he anticipate your needs and find a way to meet them before you’ve even had a chance to bring them up?
I could be completely wrong about this, of course, but I suspect what’s going on here is that you’ve just been expecting him to show you love in the same way that you show love to others; and in doing so, you have likely overlooked a great many clues that he does actually care about you. In your defense, it can be quite subtle and difficult to pick up on, unless you’re very perceptive – but it isn’t fair to expect him to behave exactly as you do, so I would strongly suggest that you try to find a way to appreciate the ways that he does show his love to you, rather than trying to shove him into a behavioral mold that he just wasn’t designed to fit in. The fact is that when it comes to INTJs, what you see is what you get – if we’re spending any time with you at all, then it means we care about you tremendously… because INTJs just don’t waste time on people, ideas, or things that they don’t care about or see potential in.
How romantic are INTJs?
I answered this somewhere else quite awhile back, but I’ll share my experience.
INTJ’s are not conventionally romantic like we see in Hallmark movies or on Valentine’s Day. Quite the opposite actually.
What comes across as romantic to me, is their total devotion to understanding their chosen one by studying them with an almost obsessive intensity. They want to know every aspect of you in the deepest, broadest, most accurate way possible. Part of this is because they want to understand and please you, and the other part is because they don’t like surprises and need to feel secure before they let you into their rich inner world. They absolutely will not show their soft underbelly to just anyone.
No other type goes to the lengths I have seen an INTJ go to, in order to bring you into their world.
Their whole being is authentically romantic if you define romance the way I have experienced it. Keep your Hallmark cards and obligatory flowers on Valentine’s Day. I’ll take the exquisiteness of an INTJ’s version of romance any day of the year. They don’t do obligatory. They act when they feel it, and if they feel it, it’s deep.