A Valentine’s Gift that Will Keep on Giving

Is there anything we long for more than to be known?

They say that opposites attract. Like magnets with opposing poles, we learn, opposites gravitate toward one another, then stick together like glue. This has certainly been true in my life, in friendships, and primarily in my marriage. My husband and I will celebrate 10 years together in March, 8 of them married. We were young, college lovebirds, wed even before I received my diploma. And while our values and beliefs are aligned and intertwined as they have always been, our personalities are so. very. different.

On the Myers-Briggs spectrum, my husband, Jared, is an ENFJ. I am an INTP. He reaches outward, I retreat inward. He processes the world through a filter of feeling, I consider the world through a thicket of thinking. Our common intuition leaves us no shortage of ideas to discuss and philosophies to ponder, but my open-ended, possibilities oriented, perceiving nature fuels our home with a sense of adventure, while Jared’s easier-going, did what I need to do and it’s done way keeps us from doing something completely crazy. (We do a lot that’s a little crazy.)

We’ve known this for a long time, Jared and I, that our personalities are quite polar. In fact, the most common analogy I use when describing our marriage to others (a description often prompted by someone asking me, “so, you two seem pretty different. How do you…make it work?”), is that at the beginning of our relationship, even the beginning of our marriage, we started at opposite ends of a football field, and we’ve spent our time together working toward the fifty-yard line. We’ve made great strides in these together years, the end zones certainly behind us. But there still is, perhaps will always be, the fact that we simply do not engage information, situations or relationships in the same way, that we just see things differently.

And recently, we’ve realized a bit more of why that is the case.

About six months ago, my parents, two sisters and their husbands, and Jared and I gathered in our living room with another couple, friends of ours who do personal development consulting. We had all taken Myers-Briggs tests before meeting with them, and the goal of the evening was to discuss our personality types and consider how they affect our marriages and family relationships. It was an insightful, eye-opening night for all of us, one we refer back to regularly, one that has spurred many more conversations since.

After that evening, invigorated by the possibilities of what our personalities could teach us, I found a website and podcast called Personality Hacker. This was the first time that I was introduced to the concept of “cognitive functions” — the fact that each personality type has a framework for intaking information and making decisions, a “stack” of functions, the first four the most important. Personality Hacker uses the model of a car to describe this. Everyone has a driver function, they say, a function that is so automatic, so primary, that the user doesn’t necessarily even realize it is there. Next to that driver is a co-pilot function, a potentially highly valuable asset to the driver, but often an untapped resource. In the backseat on the passenger side sits a function with the maturity of a ten-year-old, and next to that ten year old, behind the driver, sits the fourth function, with the approximate maturity of a three year old.

As an INTP, my functions are:
- Driver: Accuracy
- Co-pilot: Exploration
- Ten-year-old: Memory
- Three-year-old: Harmony

Any guesses as to what Jared’s functions are, primarily his driver and three-year-old? Yep, nailed it. His driver is harmony, three-year-old is accuracy.

How this plays out for us is that I desire to explore possibilities, data and outcomes forever and always, constantly searching for patterns, meaning, logic, clarity. The world of interpersonal relationships can be extremely stressful for me at times, and now that I know that “Harmony” sits in the literal blind spot of my mind, this makes a bit more sense. I have just enough awareness and desire for connection to know that personal relationships are highly important and incredibly nuanced, but I often lack the depth of understanding of others’ feelings to be able to appropriately engage.

I remember noticing this when I was in junior high school. A friend would start crying over an incident, and I just wouldn’t know what to do. Other girls would crowd around her, arms around her shoulders, hands stroking her hair, and I would just…stand there. Was I supposed to crowd in? What if she wanted space? If I’m that close to her, I’ll have to say something, and what the heck would that be? This is still oftentimes how I feel, though I believe (hope?) that with marriage, adulthood and motherhood, I’ve matured a bit in this area.

My husband, on the other end of the spectrum, is intuitively relational to the core. He can talk to anyone, hugs everyone, knows how to connect to people who are on the fringes of the room and bring them together into an immediately budding relationship, and can look into someone’s eyes and have near-psychic awareness of their needs. He does not need the world to be unflinchingly logical. He engages the world with the belief, with the faith, that it should be unflinchingly loving. I love this about him, except for when I hate it, which is almost always in a moment of jealousy over his relational acumen. Usually though, and especially now that I understand that not only is he “a people person,” but beyond that, peoples’ needs are the first thing he sees when he walks into the world, I treasure this gift deeply. Jared has brought some of my deepest friendships into my life by (literally) knocking on a door or walking across a room and starting a conversation for me. His endless advice and insight into the feelings of others has enhanced nearly every relationship I have.

Stumbling into this treasure trove of information about Jared’s and my personalities has been a primary catalyst for growth in our marriage, our communication and our affection for each other. Those differences that are so intriguing at the beginning of a relationship that can become so obnoxious in a marriage have become fascinating again, become a new world to explore rather than an annoyance to squelch. We are able to say, “I’m exhausted today, I think I’m functioning from my ten-year-old,” and help each other out of that place, or help each other find rest. We push each other to exercise our co-pilots more and more — for me to explore through writing and new projects, for Jared to engage his “Perspectives” through digging for insight in theological studies, relationships and his career as a pastor.

While there will always be little differences that grate on us, always be the moments of, “I absolutely cannot believe that’s what you think about that,” I can truly say that never before have we known each other so well, been so interested in each other, so honoring of one another’s design. Understanding our cognitive functions helps us bridge the gap that has at times seemed so wide, allowing our opposites to not only attract, but to connect, to collaborate, and to celebrate — both each other as individuals, and our union as a couple.

Maybe this year, what your loved one would like for Valentine’s Day most of all is the gift of understanding. Click over to Personality Hacker (this is not a paid endorsement, by the way. They have no idea who I am.) and listen to each other’s podcasts together (after each taking the 10 minute personality test). Knowing how your loved one processes the world and communicating with him or her in response to that knowledge will be a gift that keeps on giving, far beyond February 18th.

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