SO question

I've had similar problems - can't stand talking on the phone unless it's something really pressing that is too important or too complicated to be sent in a text message.

Like other responses have said, it's important to talk it out with the girl so you don't come off as negligent or dismissive. The things that often got the point across for me generally boiled down to:

  • I'm often busy doing other things and talking on the phone absorbs all of my attention. There are lots of times that I can't pick up the phone, but will happily reply to a text at length because I can do it between tasks.
  • I try to avoid holding the powerful transmitter/receiver device that is my phone up against my brain. Not in a paranoid way, it just seems like a bad idea to do it a lot.
  • If you're saying that she just talks too much when you're together, that's harder. A lot of communication is important in the early stages of a relationship.

Something I learned years ago about communication style: people have different ideas about what is a comfortable level/method of communication, extroverts will increase their extroversion to compensate for introverts, and introverts will increase their introversion as a result. For example, your girl may be talking more than she normally would trying to fill the silences because you aren't doing it in the way her intuition tells her is normal, but her intensity causes you to want even more quiet than you normally would, which makes her want to fill the silences even more, which degrades into you being VERY quiet and her talking all the time. Sometimes that can be addressed if both parties are understanding that it's a mutual issue, but often it's a fundamental communication incompatibility. Depends a lot on how willing you both are to compromise and work around one another. The key here is that it's not her problem, it's BOTH of your problems and you both need to work outside your comfort zone a little to address it.

/r/intj Thread