“I want to be alone!”
“Why won’t anyone leave me alone?”
“I’ve never been so alone in my life…”
– Greta Garbo in various roles.
Childhood: Facts
I recall staring at the newspapers, waiting to experience the apparent magic-eye phenomenon that was happening for people who could read. At age 3, my mother gave me the heads up on how it worked and reading took prominence in my life forevermore. I was a self motivated learner with a passion for knowledge but I also took pleasure in being praised for my accomplishments and intellectual stature. Throughout my youth I remained a competitive scholar but naive and unworldly.
I internalised Catholicism into an intensely private mysticism and as a seven year old kept myself awake at night contemplating the horrors of the end of consciousness. I secretly took up a yoga discipline and later my mother enrolled me in a mind optimisation seminar which I eagerly embraced. I developed a lifelong obsession with efficiency, primarily motivated by my desire for having more time to dedicate to my own interests. Creative and artistic, I concentrated my fine art skills primarily on representational art.
Clumsy and accident prone, I loathed all athletic activity. I was often unhappy with what I was forced to eat. I was very sensitive to colour and light, often aggravated by television and preferring to read in a quiet space. Also sensitive to the arrangement of objects, I found a languaging of meaning in placing objects in symbolic relationship. I was easily traumatised by sudden changes such as pruning.
Unexpressed resentment of feeling controlled manifested in chronic eczema. I felt trapped in family stagnancy and constantly craved freedom and solitude. Biding my time as a child, I envisioned myself as an adult who was free from family and duty. I was susceptible to sibling rivalry, particularly around inequalities in gender roles that limited my opportunities for new experiences. I loved nothing more than to be left alone in the family home to feed myself and concentrate on my own investigations.
In adolescence, I continued to be a self disciplined student, though somewhat superficial in my academic thinking. Deeper thought was spent on understanding the dynamics of life around me, fuelled by status anxiety. Despite always having enjoyed a sense of intellectual superiority, I was plagued by a new sense of socio-sexual inadequacy. I repressed all expression of emotional and sexual energy, leading to throat and neck blockages. I cultivated secret obsessions toward love interests but lacked the self esteem to act upon these desires. Friendships were close and few.
Early Adulthood: Opinions
Leaving home at the earliest possible moment, I was able to begin to realise my need for freedom. I studied Fine Arts at university, allowing an explosion of repressed vitality to express through me into a prolific body of work. It was a time of self exploration, experimentation and hedonism. Peer appreciation flavoured with sexual adventure coaxed my ego out and fed into a sense of destined self-importance that flourished within the bubble of academia.
Emerging into the real world was another matter. With no real plan or sense of the real world, I crash landed into fear and feelings of futility and inadequacy. I tended toward obsessive petty intellectual and creative competition with peers and partners and rambled along on a shoestring for a decade on the urban bohemian fringe. I identified as an outsider and an artist and I made do with various bizarre bit jobs, each inevitably expiring once they ceased to teach me anything new about life, the universe and everything. Money was never a motivation beyond the guarantee of subsistence, and my engrained efficiency imperative served me well as thrift and ingenuity. The work ethic has always been the same: time is more valuable than money.
This prioritised wide personal exploration into the meaning in mystic traditions, science and self. Artistic expression was channeled into giving form to thought processes and ideas. In my mid 20s I reached a crisis in meaning, which led to a deliberate, intensive deconstruction of my own psyche, eventually leaving me alone in the void. This was a precarious time for me but I clawed my way back into meaning through the big bang, chemistry, physics, quantum reality, and before I knew it I was full of wonder again, tentatively filling out my world view with my own symbols and my own meaning drawn from the world of religion, philosophy, science and myth. I was on the path to authenticity and the horizon felt wide open for the first time. I began to enjoy the flow of synchronicity and abundance for the first time.
Meanwhile, the long suffering body of the bachelorette was carrying nearly three decades of chronic pain, due to being ignored as the merely inconvenient genetic jumpsuit of a fabulous mind.
Into Maturity: Principles
The open horizon led me out into the remote desert shanty town of one hundred people where I have now lived for ten years. I have put my roots down in a commitment to a garden, a home, a life. My creativity now flows directly through my life and being. My home is a beautiful expression of myself. Finding contentment in self reliance and simplicity, I have liberated much time to follow my own pursuits. Music, astronomy, universal symbolism, wisdom traditions and so on… My consciousness is constantly expanding and I am always reading and learning, yet I have finally surrendered the ego’s need to greedily consume all knowledge. I don’t need to preserve every good idea in a phrenetic journal. I can trust that I know what I need to know right now. I can lovingly embrace cosmic uncertainty and accept truth in myriad contradiction and paradox.
This newfound, or perhaps remembered peace has integrated my expression of feeling. Intimate relationships in the past have tended to start with an obsessive lightning bolt impulse, followed with a tedious monogamous melodrama, ending with me disappearing into a new life. Apart from the occasional brief wrestle with the reproductive imperative of the organism I inhabit, I have never had any desire whatsoever to raise children. I also prefer not to be around other people doing it. I have reached a point where I can probably even resist the mayhem of ‘falling in love’, and let it pass by without entangling myself into domestic pair bonding, to which I seem entirely unsuited due to my growing intolerance for other people and their mess in my zone. I don’t feel any lack in not being tethered to another. On the contrary, I feel deeply grateful for the space in my bed, in my home, in my mind. I absolutely love the presence of my animal friends and the tactile bond we share. I enjoy immeasurably the company of my dearest friends, my tribe, but short spells are best as I become resentful and easily exhausted when I don’t have a good amount of time undisturbed.
This time alone is especially important for me to cultivate body consciousness, which is essential for my health and wellbeing. I absolutely need to choose (and preferably grow and harvest) my own food and feed myself or I easily become energetically imbalanced, disembodied and fatigued which results in chronic posture related pain. As I find it immensely difficult to commit to a healthful routine, such as morning qigong, I am very easily thrown off course by the habits and needs of others. For this reason, I now tend to ensure that my mornings are kept to myself for waking naturally, writing, eating well and exercising. Successfully regaining and managing good health and pain free life has been a tremendously rewarding, if not tenuous accomplishment in recent years, and one that I am open to sharing as a casual massage therapist for local people.
Despite being an outsider all of my life, people tend to tend trust my peaceful consistency as a sign of a sage and charming mentor, but I now pretend less than ever to know all and I always add a disclaimer with any tentative offer of advice. I feel that the only real thing I have to offer others is by example in living consciously. This doesn’t mean blasting people with intense cosmic truths as was my way in younger years, but to simply be able to be present with others. I am getting to know myself and how to set boundaries to meet my own needs. I have the good fortune of recently finding the perfect little day job for me to supplement my lifestyle – working in the small local library in the afternoons, one week on, one week off. Aside from being delightfully nerdy and self directed, ticking some important boxes for me, it puts me contact with people in the tolerably impersonal context of discussing books and ideas…
And that’s what Phase III for a female INTP can look like. Alone but never lonely. Creative, mindful, spacious. Self disciplined, self empowered, self defined. Free.
AMT, 2015
Learn More about INTPs in Our books:
The INTP: Personality, Careers, Relationships… (#1 INTP book on Amazon)
The INTP Quest: INTPs’ Search for their Core Self, Purpose, & Philosophy
Lillian says
Thank you for sharing your story, AMT. As an INTP female who chose a very different life path (five children, SAHM), I found it very interesting that we have some common experiences. First, in being an INTP mom of many, I have the same high need for alone time, though this has tempered and lessened as I have consciously sought therapy and balance and growth. I taught my children that Mom needs time alone, and this has become easier as they get into school. Most weekdays I have free to do what I want (which is usually a long walk alone, followed by errands or social visits.) The children have provided a surprising outlet for my personality type: they are MY little people, and their thoughts and feelings are always changing, relatable, and interesting, and provide fuel for the most important thinking that I do. They also provide a focus for my spirituality (which is something I never had until them.) I also enjoy doing a good job with them while not fitting into the SAHM mold: I am always honest and direct with them, I don’t baby them, and I very much like being my own combination of mom and self that does not fit into the mold from which I imagined a mom had to be cast.
Being married has also been an interesting experience: my husband and I share deep values, but have VERY different ways of doing things. (He is ESFJ; for giggles, go read about that personality type.) Having such an opposite personality type be my soul mate has been an enlightening experience. My husband short-hands it as, “Not everything is going to be awful,” which is his way of reminding me to go with the flow and be open to possibilities. I have learned to sit back and enjoy the experiences he plans for us, and I always have fun. For my part, I enjoy using my planning skills to enhance our family life.
I have also had to learn to care for one’s body, and approach this intellectually. I am lucky in that I was a little girl who stereotypically loved horses, and riding (and not wanting to fall off the horse) afforded me the sense of proprioception that carried over later in life when I learned to care for my body. Now I prioritize eating and exercising and use my big brain to observe my body’s feelings and reactions and adjust my self-care accordingly.
Another experience we share is learning to let go of knowing everything. At some point, when fully stuck in analysis paralysis on some topic, I read a bit of advice: decide in advance that I will give this decision X number of minutes/hours/days, and then act, and stop thinking. After practicing this several times, I discovered that my decisions were no worse than they had been, but I was much less crazy. This also carried over to not needing to know the answer to something in advance, not need to “blast” people with my truths, and in fact, accepting that there are many truths, and I had no need to duke it out with others.
Thank you for sharing your story. I have really enjoyed reading about a totally different life from mine, that shares some of the same themes.
Meredith says
This gives me hope. I go back and forth on if I want kids. I do, but I always fear I will be too distant from them and I don’t want to be a distant mom, or a frazzled one who never gets anything done, haha.
I got married (to an ENTJ) but would have been perfectly happy on my own too. He enriches my life so I am glad to have him in it, and I think I am starting to feel the same about if I have children. They would enrich my life so I would not regret it. Still, I definitely need a larger home if I ever want any privacy.
Dan says
An excellent reflection on your life thus far and the choices along the way where you at times made difficult decisions in order to stay true to what you believe to be your best self. As a fellow INTP, I can relate to much of what you shared, particularly the strong desire for freedom and exploration of truth. While I may not be in the same life circumstances as you, I have to deal with many such questions myself, and the answers to those questions dictate a large portion of my journey.
I appreciate your candidness around choosing to not have children up to this point. It’s a helpful reminder that there are multiple paths and one does not have to follow the cookie cutter pattern of the majority. I have multiple examples of people who did not want children but chose to have them due to their spouse and societal expectations. While the children were a source of great joy and pride, they at once felt disappointed in themselves and limited by the choice they made. They secretly longed for the greater freedom they might have otherwise had and neglected the continual development of their inner selves, while on the outside appearing to be the dutiful provider and stable parent that society values.
There is no one answer that fits every person and each of us must make wise choices and decide what is worth keeping and what is worth letting go of. But it is certainly true that one can find their way on an alternate road and come to contentment and fulfillment. Having positive stories from the road less traveled reminds the rest of us that we have more options than we may realize.
Kryptokate says
Love this sentence: “Meanwhile, the long suffering body of the bachelorette was carrying nearly three decades of chronic pain, due to being ignored as the merely inconvenient genetic jumpsuit of a fabulous mind.”
A mind trapped in an ungainly, inconvenient, nuisance of a body is always how I’ve thought of myself. :)
Your paragraph on not having children and living alone is also one I could’ve written. Congratulations on creating a life that works for you — I am still often saddled with resentment towards the impositions of people, employment, and daily requirements to keep things up. This is so even though I live by myself and have more freedom than virtually anyone I know. Sometimes I marvel at how perversely extreme my needs for being alone and controlling my environment can be.
Ironic though, how wistful it makes me that I have never met another true INTP female in my life (that I’m aware of). I’ve always wanted one as a friend. I have long-standing relationships with male pen-pals and friends where the basis of our relationship is almost entirely the discussion of ideas, but I’ve never met a female interested in the same. That’s okay with me and I’m used to it, but I’ve always wondered how it would be. Sometimes I wonder if INTPs don’t normally ever truly connect with each other, and the only reason I have these male INTP friendships is because their sexual interest motivates it even though it’s masquerading as an intellectual connection. Perhaps that’s why I’ve never had the chance with another INTP female. But I’ve always wished I could experience a deep female friendship with an INTP I could discuss all my ideas with, who wouldn’t get offended or take things personally the way most women do. I have friendships with women but we never discuss intellectual ideas, that only seems to happen with men.
Great writing.
Tracy says
I’ve struggled to identify myself as either INTJ or INTP and this is probably the first life experience I read that I can actually relate to.. in fact, some of your experiences are so eerily similar… I even work part time at a library right now. I started by studying fine art in school and college and changed several times, finally to psychology, of which I am pursuing graduate study for now. I like to self sustain by growing my own food. And your childhood experiences with socio-sexual issues, emotional repression, and resentment of gender opportunity ring all too true. The meandering and procrastinating and time even the trying to figure out reading by staring at newspapers, its just so uncanny its odd.
Thanks for sharing your experience.