INFPs tend to find INTJs intriguing because of their paradoxical approach to decision-making. INTJs speak with absolute confidence and authority when talking about their areas of interest and often appear as if they are completely closed off to the conclusions of others. However, if the INFP probes the INTJ on their decisions they quickly find that the INTJ is totally willing to throw away their own conclusions in favor of more compelling ones with little to no resistance if the conclusion is well-reasoned. This puzzles the INFP because their mind works in the exact opposite way. To others, they appear easy-going and non-judgmental, when in reality they constantly judge everything and everyone around them. The INFP leads with judgement. They simply prefer not to share those judgments with others. Moreover, because those judgments come from the INFPs personal values they can be extremely hard to change. This contrasts sharply with the INTJs willingness to share any of their judgements with others and revise them immediately upon receiving more information.

What further intrigues the INFP about the INTJ is that their actions don’t seem to stem from their personal values. The INFP naturally believes that all external actions must stem from internal values because their actions always do. But INTJs do not have a natural conduit to their feelings and therefore must use their ability to identify and distill patterns to make decisions. So while the INFP might love a certain musician and choose to go to the musician’s concert alone, the INTJ might go to the concert alone because they are bored and have noticed that it’s hard to be bored at a concert. And when the INTJ explains that reasoning to the INFP, the INFP is very likely to believe that the INTJ isn’t being honest with themselves. They can very clearly sense the emotional reasoning behind the INTJ’s decision and are amused and intrigued that the INTJ needs all of these reasons to do what their hearts clearly desire. But the INTJ’s elaborate and obscure rationalizations nevertheless interest the INFP because they offer a seemingly rational formula for what the INTJ would and would not do which the INFP can use for speculating. The INTJ could wind up going to concerts for the rest of their life because they never admitting an emotional truth to themselves, the INTJ could try to escape their emotional responsibilities by becoming a roadie for a band they’ve seen a hundred times, etc. . . The INTJs have a perfect combination of emotional ineptitude and dynamic flexibility that makes the INFPs’ natural tendency to think in ‘what if’ scenarios and future possibilities seem all the more plausible.

Related: Through The Eyes of An INTJ

The complementary nature of the INTJ’s outward rigidity and inward flexibility plays to the INFPs natural love of speculation and is made more even more pleasant by the rewarding nature of friendship with the INTJ. INTJs do not tend to share the full scope of their desires and goals with someone unless that person has been fully vetted against pettiness, stupidity, dishonesty, and irresponsibility. When the INFP passes these tests they are given even more information to use for speculation. The INTJ will stop giving them drops of their inner world and instead give them the entire flood of thoughts, plans, and conflicts. The INFP then gets to quietly judge every aspect of the INTJ’s soul as good or bad and assimilate the INTJ’s personality into a more refined and plausible series of possibilities.

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So to recap, INFPs find INTJs intriguing because they appear judgemental but are actually open-minded, they are often blind to their own emotions, and they are willing to bare their souls to safe individuals. These qualities all combine to fuel the INFPs natural strength of sorting likes from dislikes using their personal values and then using those likes and dislikes to speculate what could and could not happen in the future