you're not open about your needs or feelings (yet often grumpy) - how should we handle that?

Give us space, a lot of the time we don't know how to process our feelings. This often makes our partners think it's their fault. A lot of ESTJ's grew up in environments where we were not heard so our "get it done ourselves" attitude is what you're seeing. This is obviously unhealthy but it's what most of us resort to before we learn how we can take care of ourselves and communicate our feelings.

If I can suggest something, I would say always offer a ear. Ask questions like, is everything alright, where you'll obviously be met with the response of "yeah i'm fine don't worry about it" then you can say well "I'm all ears", let us come to you and don't badger us.

Secondly tell them how it makes you feel when you feel like you can't help them. I've had a partner get angry at me and express how me going quiet made her feel, then I realized I was hurting her as well. A lot of us don't actually like hurting people. But this makes us realize that our attitude has an effect on others and that's quite important.

If you want the root cause of all this, look into avoidant attachment and introduce your partner to this as it's probably a better lens than MBTI

/r/ESTJ Thread