At heart, you're a lover of the ANALYST stripe, and you probably tend to approach mating, as all other life pursuits, from a logical standpoint. To an ANALYST, relationships must make sense.
One way or another, the affectionate connection must allow work to go on, uninterrupted. And, in case of many folks like yourself, work may not be defined merely as a 9-5 necessity. To the ANALYST, work may often be a 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a- week obsession with ideas.
When the paying job is over for the day, the ANALYST may just shift gears and move on to other ``jobs'' or all-consuming hobbies: writing, creating, inventing, designing, programming, studying, learning, puzzling, reading each one tackled with overpowering energy and a sense of driving importance. A lot of ANALYSTs even work at exercise!
If the ANALYST is to commit to a private life at all, it must be undertaken with the understanding that, to many folks with this temperamental type, work is life and life is work.
More so than their perceptive-type cousins, most judging ANALYSTs usually add home, family, and relationships to their list of life's ``duties.'' But even those more rule-oriented ANALYSTs aren't always cheerful about the demands placed on them by the domestic scene.
Some ANALYSTs, in an effort to close the gap between work and home, merge the two. More often than any of the other temperamental types, ANALYSTs seem to mate with business partners, professional colleagues or other career-focused types.
This tactic is most often used by ANALYST women who are driven not only by their characteristic respect for competence in a mate, but also by the culturally programmed desire to mate with a man ``at least as smart'' as they are, and from an ANALYST's critical perspective, only another ANALYST may fill that bill!
Run the numbers if you have any doubt whatever that the ANALYST woman significantly restricts her field of choice by limiting the group of acceptable partners to other (1) available, (2) known, and (3) equally competent (4) ANALYST men. With intuitives outnumbered about 3:1 by sensing-type folks; and with thinkers and feelers more or less evenly represented in the population, that figures out to about one in eight people falling into the (NT) ANALYST category: slim pickings, indeed.
ANALYST men don't necessarily have the same fatal attraction for mating with ANALYST women. (And that's certainly understandable and adaptive when you consider that this temperamental type is even rarer among women than among men!) In general, ANALYST men are content to mate with partners neither so bright, motivated, nor competent as they, just so long as the partner will leave them alone and let them get their work done!
Unfortunately, one of the most typical behaviors for any ANALYST who mates ``down'' (intellectually speaking), is habitually stewing or actively complaining about the deficiencies of intelligence and accomplishment of the non-ANALYST partner!
To understand the ANALYST's attitudes on sex, consider this temperament's behavior in the kitchen. That's right. The kitchen.
Of course, there are many ANALYSTs who can't scramble an egg, because they never considered cooking to be very important a waste of their valuable time.
But, then there are others among the ranks who are accomplished chefs ANALYSTs who have turned all their intellect and drive toward finding out everything there is to know about the culinary arts, the mysteries of diverse cuisines.
ANALYSTs can become great artists in the kitchen.
That tells you something about ANALYSTs and sex. Convince an ANALYST that sex, like all other fields of knowledge, is a fascinating subject to study, experiment with, and master then, look out! The scientifically-minded ANALYST will try everything, and may very well become a bedroom impresario.
Unless it's apparent to the ANALYST that fidelity makes sense and is logical, this type is unlikely to feel totally tied down to a monogamous lifestyle. For those who choose not to roam, the typical ANALYST explanation goes something like this:
``Oh, I used to mess around, but I ended up late for work wearing yesterday's clothes, and I was always having to make up stories and dodges of one sort or another, and it just took too much time and energy away from my creative life. ''
So much for the romance of fidelity!
Work is the main sexual rival for the ANALYST doing work, thinking about it, or worrying about an unsolved problem. A work-distracted ANALYST isn't likely to be ``all there'' when the lights go out.
All the other types may find this behavior a little hard to understand, and understandably so!
Skepticism, criticism, intellectualism: Ah! That's always part of the picture when two ANALYSTS mate.
Intellectual strength, competence, and accomplishment usually draw these two together for a relationship in which learning, either together or independently, plays a continuing role of importance.
Whether or not the ANALYST couple stays together for a lifetime, or even a long time, you can bet that each will learn from the other and actively teach the other. Knowledge is the coin of the realm when two ANALYSTS get together.
Typically, ANALYST mates will encourage each other to continue the formal education process, and you'll find a disproportionate number of ANALYST couples doing the ``working their way through school together'' trip, especially in highly technical or specialized fields, such as science, medicine, and law.
ANALYST couples will scrimp and save to buy toys and tools that support their intellectual needs: tuition, books, a new typewriter, or a computer. To these pairs, such expenses and tangibles rank high on the roll of life's necessities (higher, often, than new clothing, a new car, vacations, home furnishings, or owning a house).
Not surprisingly, these kinds of purchases also hold a high position on this couple's ``luxury'' list (and ANALYSTs usually do love to give and receive these ``goodies'' as gifts).
The ANALYST pair may regard mutual self-sacrifice in terms of supporting each other's work or accomplishments rather than supporting the other as a person or as a mate.
And, if that sounds a bit impersonal, you've gotten the point! Impersonal, logical patterns are most comfortable for any ANALYST, and doubly so for the ANALYST couple.
To ANALYST mates, ideas are real, and they matter. When both hold compatible views, they can spur each other on to high levels of commitment and achievement in many areas of life. And when their principles are in conflict, you can be sure they'll h ave ample opportunity to refine their rhetoric and presentation under each other's critical scrutiny!
When the natural course of life as a couple obliges ANALYSTs to wrestle with difficulties and conflicts outside the logical realm, this pair sometimes runs into trouble.
They may postpone dealing with emotional issues out of personal embarrassment (as in: ``That's not logical! I don't want to bring that up!''), and they may ward off each other's overtures to unwieldy ``feeling'' concerns with similar, curt dismissals.
Over the course of time, this kind of ostrich behavior may build a wall of blocked communication between these two, or it may allow small problems, like small splinters, to fester into major conflicts and resentments.
When talk can no longer be avoided, new difficulties may arise. Namely, ANALYSTS may be great lecturers, but they're often poor communicators especially when the topic of conversation touches on emotional issues.
Remember, as thinkers, ANALYSTS are all more or less uncomfortable when they're forced to deal with their neglected feeling side.
So, when the ANALYST couple, fired by emotions they dislike in themselves, as well as in each other, finally sit down to hash out their feelings and emotional concerns, they're walking on foreign turf and speaking a language they've never mastered.
The ANALYST couple invests more time analyzing, talking about, or otherwise rationalizing their feelings than they spend actually experiencing them and sharing them with each other.
And, if these two resort to the ultimate impersonal interchange about the relationship making outlines and lists or writing letters to each other another of the ANALYST's personal weak spots is likely to rear its ugly head.
As intuitives, ANALYSTS aren't usually very sharp at the sensing tasks of keeping facts and data straight and keeping details in reasonable perspective.
With emotions at the steering wheel, an out-of-control ANALYST may turn into a shameless nit-picker, dredging up trivial actions and interactions from eons past little annoyances that never were cleared from the balance-sheet of the relationship because they never were talked about when solutions were more reasonably accessible.
Given these difficulties, mediation through a third party a counselor or advisor of some sort might seem to represent a logical recourse for a couple that so readily respects education, credentials and ``expertism.''
But not so fast! Neither partner may be willing to trust the counselor's judgment unless the intermediary's intelligence passes the routine ANALYST scrutiny.
And, of course, that usually requires that the counselor, too, be an ANALYST type, who may fall right into believing the couple's persuasive intellectual defenses and never expose the fears and other emotional concerns at the root of their well- disguised conflict.
Whether they compare their achievements and ideas overtly or covertly, ANALYSTS can't help but drift into a report-card mentality with any other ANALYST even an ANALYST mate.
With an (NF)EMPATHIST, a (SP)REALIST, or an (SJ)LEGALIST, it's hard for the ANALYST to feel threatened intellectually. These diverse types are intelligent in different ways from the ANALYST, and, frankly, the ANALYST usually regards their intelligence to be of an inferior variety. Ah, but when you put two ANALYSTS together, in love or in any other relationship, both of them, consciously or unconsciously, slip into keeping score.
And that may not be entirely bad.
One ANALYST couple I knew enrolled in a tough Ph.D. program together in the same rigorous science department. For four years, the two of them teeter-tottered back between #1 and #2 position in their classes. They registered for the same classes, worked together, studied together, did research together, and finished their dissertations together.
They talked research for breakfast, lunch and dinner. They traveled to national scientific meetings instead of taking vacations. And when they did finally get away for a vacation, they usually brought along a couple of scientific colleagues, so the intellectual interchange could be enhanced.
They carried scientific journals to read on airplanes, and they drafted manuscripts on legal pads as they ate meals in restaurants. They never took breaks, either from their work or from each other.
Professors, mentors, and colleagues were impressed by their dedication and single-mindedness, and everyone agreed that they'd go far in their chosen research field.
Naturally, there was some amazement when the couple divorced after graduate school. At the time, they attributed the breakup to a grab bag assortment of acceptable excuses.
But, years later, they acknowledged to each other that their intense ANALYST relationship had simply worn each other out. In the blinding illumination of hindsight, they agreed that their habitual parrying for ``top dog'' position probably never would have ended, if they had stayed together!
Taken to this level of extreme, ANALYST couples may let their relationship with work handicap their relationship with each other.
Then there's the case of the ANALYST attorney who married the ANALYST physician. In this case, their different fields of knowledge, their separate offices, schedules, and professional demands separated their working and private lives so much that each came to feel closer to professional colleagues than to each other.
Or there was the ANALYST couple where one was highly educated and credentialed, and the other wasn't. On one or both sides, the ANALYST preoccupation with formal education made the ``ignorant'' mate feel defeated and discouraged. The inertia of this partner became intolerable to the other, who was unable to recognize that the ANALYST interaction was at the root of the problem.
These are some of the troublesome, typical pitfalls of the ANALYST-ANALYST pairing, but we've only been looking at the aspects that are generated by the ``temperamental cornerstone'' of iNtuition and Thinking. As we said in the ``Introduction to Insight,'' these are important characteristics, but not the only ones.
First of all, the partner whose preference for intuition is stronger may see the other as a sensor! And the partner who's most comfortable with ``pure'' thinking may regard the other as an emotional feeling type.
In other words, ANALYST couples who differ markedly in the strength of their preferences for thinking and intuition may actually regard each other as ``foreign'' types!
Other important conflicts and misunderstandings may revolve around the dimensions of judging-perception and introversion-extraversion.
For example, an ANALYST who prefers judging may consider a perceptive type partner to be indecisive and disorganized. The perceptive, in turn, may call the judge narrow-minded and rigid. In either case, they may minimize their areas of compatibility and focus on their differences.
By the same token, introverted ANALYSTS may find their need for peace, privacy and personal territory continually violated by extraverted ANALYSTS, whose requests for socializing, contact, conversation and feedback are frustrated by introverted partners. Neither may recognize the other as a kindred soul because their needs for interaction are so different.
The significance of differences along the introversion-extraversion dimension cannot be overstated. Even though they're both ANALYST temperamental types, an ENTP and an INTP represent vastly different personality styles in a close relationship. And an ENTJ and an INTJ may have to work very hard at understanding each other's needs even though they have three out of four of the personality factors in common.
Follow the links below to learn more about each Mating Type.
Follow these links to learn more about how different Mating Types interact.
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