Competition with other women as an INTJ

I deleted my first response because it sounded really harsh and I overlooked that you wanted advice how to get past it.

I'm not an INTJ, but here's what I've learned, having a lot of close SF friends growing up, until about age 25 (I'm 28 now): I likely won't ever have a "group" of girls to be friends with. Even in high school I didn't feel comfortable with a group of girls. Maybe I will at some point, but I connect with people one on one, and more and don't enjoy drinking or partying with lots of people I don't know.

Here's how I met my good NT girlfriends:

  • INTP: at a frat party in college. We're two straight girls who talked in the corner all night. I got her phone number and the next day we walked around the lake near our school and were best friends for a few years (only ended because she passed away, which is another story).

  • INTJ #1: Met at work. We were both shy and friends with our ENTP coworker. He decided we were going to be friends because he said his friendships and interactions with us were so similar he didn't know how we weren't friends when we sat 30 feet away from each other for 40 hours per week. It also happened really slowly over about 9 months of us both knowing we wanted to be friends with each other but neither quite making the effort, which was kind of funny. We both have different jobs now.

  • ENTJ #1: She was in my sister's sorority and we lived near each other one summer. She pretty much demanded that I be her friend, and it's worked out pretty well.

  • ENTJ #2: Went to the same high school but barely knew each other. Now work at the same company hundreds of miles away from where we grew up. Ran into each other at a coffee shop and have been friends ever since. Really wierd since I only knew her by sight in high school.

  • INTJ #2: Met through ENTJ #1 and eventually became good enough friends to hang out with or without our mutual friend.

I don't know any female ENTPs but I wish I did.

Here are the patterns I've noticed that make these friendships noticeably different than my other NF/SP/SJ friends:

  • When we spend time together, it's hardly ever in a large group. Often it's one on one, hardly ever more than 5 mutual friends.

  • When we do go out to concerts, bars or other big events, we don't go out to socialize with men we don't know. I have a few ESFJ friends and that's always the main event, it's made me avoid going out with them. My INTP and INTJ friends and I hang out with each other and don't really interact with people we don't know. At risk of sounding sexist myself, this is probably the reason I love my INT female friends so much.

  • Along the same line, we also go hiking, biking, and rock climbing just 2-4 of us, and it's never this huge party to be planned.

  • We read books together, go to museums, study math (don't ask), go to exercise classes together, get coffee and walk around the city and talk for hours.

And honestly, I'm not really intimidated by other women in general. I think most women who are generally confident in themselves aren't. Honestly. The only time I ever feel intimidated by any person is if I get the impression they have bad intentions and no moral guidelines, and I think that my friends feel similarly as well. I think this because of how they/we talk about our ex's new girlfriends by being complementary and not competitive, and being mindful of how negative emotions affect us.

The closest it gets is admiration, and often that is from accomplishments more than anything else. If a woman (or person) is intelligent or educated, that is great, but if they haven't done anything with it I'm not particularly impressed. I also just admire female beauty instead of coveting it. I'm happy I look like myself and can't imagine going through life appearing any other way. It's hard to explain, it just doesn't really cross my mind.

There are absolutely behaviors I've noticed tend to be exclusive to women, but I recognize those are byproducts of societal expectations and evolution, and maybe I'll post that another time, but the takeaway is that just because a lot of women act like that doesn't mean all do. There are absolutely great women to be friends with if you let yourself.

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