Titans Clashing, Harmoniously

Even before our first date and before Arthur was ever on Alex's radar, Alex's mother made the comment that a relationship between us would be like the clash of titans.  I'm sure she meant this in the best way possible.  Now 5 years later we joke about the truth of this statement.  Before you become concern about marital conflict let us explain.
 We often discuss our personality type results from the Myers-Briggs test.  This test examines how a person views the world, takes in, and processes information.  The categories are extroversion or introversion; sensing or intuition; thinking or feeling; and judging or perceiving.  Arthur is an INTJ (the mastermind-- I know everyone is shocked to hear this).  Alex is an ISTJ (the duty fulfiller).  Understanding our personalities and common traits have really been enlightening in how we interact.
Arthur as an INTJ since he loves to deal in the theoretical and abstract.  He is reserved, serious, and spends a lot of time thinking.  One of my favorite questions is, "Arthur, what are you thinking about?"  The answer is always interesting and rarely the same thing twice (unless it is some form of political thoughts.).  He is pretty intense and likes strategies.  This makes it challenging to find a game to play together since I hate strategy.  As an INTJ, Arthur would rather think about things rather than actually doing them.  Mundane tasks are boring for him.  They become more tolerable if he is able to escape to his own thoughts. Early in our relationship I was very surprised that Arthur never felt threatened by conflict but rather enjoyed a good debate for the sake of exchanging ideas.  As someone who is often lost in their thoughts it is common for an INTJ to not be in tune with their own feelings or the feelings of others.  (after all what are the use of feelings?).  Some of the best careers for this personality type is an engineer or scientist.  They have no patience with inefficiency.  Each morning Arthur walks out the door on his way to work "to rid the world of inefficient processes".  Finally, INTJs are "generally serious but will let loose and have fun if drawn in by others.  This is my job- I think the amount of fun in Arthur's life has drastically increase in the past few years since I have dragged him into "fun". 

I am an ISTJ.  This personality is characterized as stable, practical, and down to earth.  They tended to be dependable and like structure and organization.  I also tended to have strong opinions about how things should be done-I am sure everyone is shocked by this.  I like facts and ideas that are concrete.  This group likes to play by the rules.  We want to focus on the task and don't care to debate the process but instead spend time getting to work on it.   ISTJs tend to be good with handling money but are very financially conservative.  Good careers include medical professionals and military leaders. 

Of course marriage means two different personalities have to work together as one.  This further exposes weaknesses but also maximizes the strengths.  Neither one of our personalities are very in tune to our own feelings or others.  We both know this so we do try to specifically ask the other if something is wrong since we might not pick up on the subtle hints.  As an ISTJ I am less likely to give others a lot of praise or encouragement.  Words of affirmation is Arthur's top love language (maybe we will do a post on the five love languages sometime.)  I know that I need to be aware of this weakness.  We also think with very different purposes- Arthur is all abstract, theoretical, and strategic.  I want structure, organization, and to stop thinking about it and to get to work.  When I ask Arthur to think about something I expect his response to be a action plan but instead I often get a theoretical thesis.  There is one common trait that both of our personalities share-- we value our own opinions over the opinions of others.  This may not be the best quality to have in a marriage and it has lead to some rocky discussions when one or the other of us felt that we weren't being heard.  Maybe a benefit of this is that these disagreements mean we have to spend considerable time talking the issue out which usually helps us develop an even better solution or opinion that either of us had in the first place.  As I mentioned earlier, Arthur is our mastermind as an INTJ and occasionally my nickname is "the general" because of many of the military characteristic that an ISTJ exhibits.  My mother's prediction of The Clash of the Titans wasn't that far off-- but hopefully we exhibit more of a symbiotic relationship than "clash" would normally bring to mind.  Omnia Vincit Amour.