Yeah.
ENTP woman with a seven year relationship with an INTJ man. I can give him better advice than I can give you, but I'll do my best.
I need to slow. the fuck. down. For him. My brain is ten steps ahead of him when it comes to feelings. He needs ten minutes to respond to my question of "What is upsetting you?". And I had to learn to give him those ten minutes. He just can't keep up with my verbal speed. So I have to bring it down to a snail's pace.
But that's okay! It is. I want the honest answer, the real one. I don't MIND waiting. I just can't quite understand why I have to wait. To me it feels like it should just be...there. On the tip of your tongue. What he says is always 100% correct, which I appreciate. No bullshit, no run around, it is exactly what he means. He just needs a lot of time to get there. So I have to get slllllow.
I don't get his intensity. He's feeling it but not emoting it. He's in the middle of a fucking hurricane and it just seems like he's sitting on the couch. I mean, seven years in I read it better but it seemed at first as though it is rolling off of him. INTJ intensity looks kind of blank to me. I know, intellectually, that it is happening but it comes off impassive. Words help. "I'm overwhelmed" or "I'm struggling to put the words together" or "I need to think" helps give me an idea of what's going on. Like I said, I can be patient but I need the sign posts that let me know what direction I'm supposed to be moving in. "Give me ten minutes to think about that," gives me an idea of what I am doing.
I need words. You simply have to tell me. It can feel as cheap as you want it to feel, I don't care. I know he doesn't need them, and I don't care. Which is to say, I'm HAPPY to meet him half way. I can do the action thing. That's fine. Not my preferred medium, but I can figure it out. I think you're at the disadvantage. To me, I am just translating. If "I love you" comes in words, in laundry, in blow jobs...I'm fine. I am just trying to get a message across. I can translate that however it makes sense. Action -> words is much, much harder. The best advice I can give you is just to practice saying shit you are not comfortable with. You want the magic, it comes with a word price and you better get used to paying it because, at least in my personal experience, I don't do well without it. But it can be taught! The very best part of dating one of us is that we'll probably hear you the way you meant to be heard. We WILL get what you're saying.
Basic point: I had to slow way, way down to give him time to meet me verbally. He had to meet me verbally. The flip side is that I use non-verbal acts to express myself to take some of the tension off the situation in recompense. And I also learned some non-verbal slight-of-hand that he uses and I take him at his non-word. If you can strike that compromise, it gets a lot easier.