a little insight

Dav was a psychology major before he got into computer stuff and knows a bit about the Briggs Myers personality test. He did a test and scored as an INTP. And from what I read, it's right on (and he agrees). He thought I would be an ESFJ, but when I took a short version of the test, I scored as EFNJ. There are some definite truisms about me:

"deal with things according to how you feel about them." Very true.

"They live in the world of people possibilities." Yep. I love people in all their flying colors.

"...tend to be more reserved about exposing themselves." I thought that came from growing up in Japan, but hey.

"When faced with a conflict between a strongly-held value and serving another person's need, they are highly likely to value the other person's needs." Not a shining quality, but I've done that.

"Their genuine interest in Humankind." Once again, yup.

But it wasn't a perfect fit as Dav feels about his:

"use their power over people to manipulate them." I hope not! But maybe I'm not facing the truth? Eeeeck..

"turn to dark thoughts when alone..." I actually like being alone and had a blast living on my own. Don't remember too many "dark thoughts" other than missing Dav.

I dunno. How can you type humans into 16 categories perfectly? Anyway, with these two types between us, I of course wanted to find some sorta compatibility analysis. I mean, the tests show we view and react to the world quite differently. I didn't find much between INTPs and EFNJs, but with INTPs and ESFJs, there's "mutual attraction." The ESFJ likes serving "as an anchorage for the INTP's flights to the higher levels of abstraction," according to a different summary. Admittedly each summary says something a little different so in the end, I can't really tell what all this means.

Besides, I noticed an opposite dynamic between us too. For example, when he goaded me to buy the meanest phone in Tokyo, set me up with my first blog, and gave me moblogging capabilities, it was he who anchored me while I ran around snapping pics every which way. Anytime I had a wishlist or a problem, I'd email him and had the best tech support anyone could hope for.

Another example was when I visited him in SF from Tokyo for NYE. He had bought me these beautiful green butterfly wings to wear with a matching fuzzy green top. I truly felt like a magical butterfly. But being a debutante in wing-wearing, I promptly danced around gleefully hitting people in the face unbeknownst to me while Dav, ever so watchful, ran after me keeping people out of the danger I was causing. When I figured this out, I was embarrassed, but also charmed. I got to fly around while he took care of damage-control.

So these tests are cool as food for thought; a nudge towards insight, a reason to say, "hmm, I suppose I can be a pain in the butt that way," or "ah yeah, that's how to describe what s/he does." Yet ultimately, you just gotta live together - day in, day out - to figure out how our quirky characters mesh together. That's pretty much what we're doing.

Along with 2 very quirky cats, if I may add.