New personality posts + Why we mistype the people we love

Most people don’t mistype strangers. They mistype the people they love.

That’s what I realized after years of using personality type in parenting, partnerships, and work. I knew all the frameworks, but I still got my family members wrong over and over again. The problem wasn’t the system. The problem was that I was emotionally invested in the wrong version of them.

This is one of the biggest weaknesses of personality typing: it only works if you’re honest with yourself, and most of us aren’t. When we’re close to someone, we don’t type them based on how they see the world. We type them based on how they make us feel.

If we’re dating someone, we’ll make them whatever type fits the story we want to believe. If it’s our kid, we may avoid seeing the type that would force us to parent differently. It took me twenty years to realize Nino is an INFP. It just hit me one day at the beach. And I thought how could I have missed it for so long?

I used to type someone as an ISFP because I needed them to be gentle. I typed someone else as an ENTP because it let me intellectualize their flakiness instead of dealing with how much it annoyed me. Later I discovered they were something else entirely — and suddenly all our conflicts made sense.

For years I thought I was being objective. I’d notice a pattern, assign a type, and feel proud that I’d figured them out. It took me a long time to realize I wasn’t naming their cognitive functions so much as I was naming my feelings.

That’s what makes personality typing unreliable. The system isn’t broken. We just project our experience onto other people and call it insight. So I’m hosting personality type office hours on March 19 from 5–6 pm Eastern. You can stop by and ask about anyone in your life, and I’ll help you see their type from a less biased perspective. (Zoom link will be available to paid subscribers.)

Meanwhile, here are the newest posts about the six types I’m tracking.

INTJ: Timing how long your friend’s story takes

ENFP: The real you is not still coming

INFJ: Inside I’m thinking about the fate of humanity, outside I’m asking if you want more tea.

ENTJ: Why success still feels like failure

ENFJ: The death grip on relevance

INFP: What to do when nothing feels meaningful enough