There are some grammar errors, but this is so true. I’d like to thank the lady, or gentleman, who wrote this a thousand times. I think all friendships I’ve made over the internet end up in tatters and patches because others just don’t get that I have a limit–that I have boundaries too. I guess it’s never made clear over the internet that I, too, have this mask and boundary.

“every type has a limit of toleration, beyond which they no longer want to interact with another individual. there is nothing INFJ about a doorslam. it’s a human response.

what a person does when that limit is reached is dependent on a lot of factors, including how close the relationship was. there is a tendency in people to open up and develop emotional closeness with an INFJ, so being closed out of an INFJ’s life may seem more severe and sudden simply because of the degree of closeness that preceded it.

also, it’s not unusual for an INFJ to be deeply understanding of others, and their natural empathy often makes them willing to put up with more for longer than many people will, and attempt to help/comfort people that others find difficult, or be kind to those others might lose patience with more quickly – this is why INFJs are natural counselors. people often mistakenly believe that an INFJ doesn’t have personal boundaries because of this, when in reality those boundaries just may not be as wide as some people’s. so what happens is that they push what would be other people’s limits and since the INFJ hasn’t responded negatively, they go on pushing the limits further and further, until they finally hit where the INFJ’s boundaries are.

then suddenly they are shocked that the INFJ does what any other human would do – cut them out of their life because they had reached their absolute limit of tolerance with that person. for a healthy INFJ, this likely won’t occur unless it’s a choice between their own sanity/prevention of their own emotional destruction or intolerable emotional pain and a relationship with the person. because of how forgiving INFJs tend to be, despite being annoyed or hurt over and over, and how emotionally sensitive (therefore sometimes easily hurt) they are, the individual may not really understand just how much the INFJ has been putting up with until that point, so they may think the doorslam is unjustified or unexplained, when in reality their behavior really was completely intolerable. sometimes the individual knows quite well what they did.

the issue here is that INFJs have not defined their boundaries, and don’t tend to…they aren’t out to end relationships. but then again, there are a lot of people in the world who don’t go around defining their boundaries; they just react when those boundaries are crossed, which is what INFJs do.

some people need closure, or need things clearly defined – in these circumstances, an INFJ does. because of all the emotional ties that develop, and the INFJ’s sometimes-difficulty at saying no to people when they can sense negative emotions, if the INFJ doesn’t make themself inaccessible completely (that is, make a clean break), they may never be able to extricate themselves from that person’s life completely (because of their vulnerability to emotional appeals, etc.) and will always be vulnerable to being re-hurt or psychologically destroyed by that person. that’s one reason why INFJs tend to be all-in or all-out, nothing in between.”

6 thoughts on “Limit

  1. A problem I’ve seen before is that an INFJ didn’t make their boundaries clear, and then the other person, without meaning to and without realizing it, emotionally hurt the INFJ over and over until eventually their actions became unforgivable. Then they were surprised and crushed when the INFJ suddenly showed that they were upset and started to shut the other person out of their life. The other person had no intention of hurting the INFJ, and would have tried to make things right if they’d been given a chance. Perhaps the problem never would have occurred if the INFJ had explained calmly to the other person, and then been more forgiving as the other person tried to make it up to them, but that didn’t happen. Instead the two ended up in a continual cycle of hatred until all either of them wanted was to get away from each other. The other person, however much they wanted to, found themselves having a difficult time removing themselves from the INFJ’s life, and kept coming back, trying to make things right, and then saying goodbye again, only to return a while later. Eventually the other person managed to cut themselves off from the INFJ, but they were deeply hurt.

    Making boundaries clear, over the internet or in person, is extremely important.

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