Tales of Hopeless Romantic Fails

Why can't we be friends?

"Why can't we be friends?"
Smash Mouth

Summer 2019

Dear Diary,

This one kinda took me by surprise, I know I have my guy friends theory and generally works in practice. But what if the guy you're friends with was always like a brother to you and has been dropping hints of something more for quite some time, yet me being me just assumed he was being friendly? You would think by now I would be better at picking up at these things. Never I say!

Of course the moment I do realise and see the signs and somewhat reciprocate with intrigue, he went AWOL. Then what else is new? I'm telling you this theory is gold! I kinda knew it was coming, but why can't we be friends?

So who is this guy I'm talking about? N is one of my church lifegroup leader friends. We met when our LG was going to merge but didn't go ahead. Yet we stayed in touch for the church co-leader interview series that I was writing up as a blog post on Joy Journalist. We had a nice Sunday Italian lunch (as in N, Rosa his co-leader and me), where I asked all the hard hitting questions.  Hey being a church LG leader is hard work and challenging at times and it doesn't help when you're having problems with your LG mentor (I'm talking about you Google Docs guy). As usual I took forever to eat (it's a quirk of mine) whenever I'm with friends. I always get too distracted talking and leave food untouched. After every question was answered, Rosa had to go to meet her parents. N though? Kindly decided to stay behind and waited for me to finish eating.

We got chatting about life, career, travel plans and interestingly enough MBTI personality tests. As a reader of this diary, have you heard of it? 

It's 4 letter scale of your preferences that basically looks at at your:

Favorite world: Is your focus on the outer world or on your own inner world? It also looks at how your recharge your energy, being around people or having alone time. (Extrovert (E)> Introvert (I)). Now there are ambiverts (people who can be extroverted/introverted at times, so so also look at how you recharge your energy, is it being around a big group of friends (E) or having alone time (I)?).

Information: Is your focus on taking in basic information or on interpreting it your own way/meaning? (Sensing > Intuition).

Decisions: Do you take the most logical and strategic route or are people's feelings and circumstances your priority? (Thinking > Feeling).

Structure: When it comes to the outside world (i.e. things out of your control), are you the type of person who likes to plan everything to the tee or go with the flow with the options/information? (Judging > Perceiving).

[Adapted from MBTI Basics, https://www.myersbriggs.org/my-mbti-personality-type/mbti-basics/. Definitely check out 16 personalities if you want to do a test to find out your MBTI type!  https://www.16personalities.com/ ]

Interestingly both N and I were INTJs. In case you didn't know, INTJs are one of the rarest of the 16 personalities, even more so as a female. We're best known for being logical, strategically minded and technical and can come off a bit standoffish and know-it-all if we're not too careful. Considering feelings doesn't always come naturally, so sometimes we can be a bit blunt and direct.

Though for N being male can get away with it no questions asked at work. Whereas for me, not so much (I swear the double standard for men and women is ridiculous sometimes!). It's not that I don't consider people's feelings, it's just sometimes easier to be straight to the point for efficiency purposes depending on the context.