You’ve probably heard of emotional validation, but validating personality is a bit different. It means actively showing understanding and acceptance of your partner’s personality traits and the behaviors that spring from them. It’s different from showing approval, too, because not all aspects of personality are necessarily admirable. Sometimes your partner just needs to know that your awareness and attention are available without judgment.
Validation works hand in hand with approval and encouragement but isn’t dependent on them.
Here, we’ll discuss some ideas for validating a Logician (INTP) partner based on some attitudes and habits that are likely for people with that personality type. But this is just a starting point, as personality traits are a great lens through which to explore your partner’s unique qualities and needs. As you practice validating your loved one’s personality, you’ll discover what helps them best – and that can bring you closer together.
Logician Qualities to Validate
Wandering Inspiration
Did you know that most Logicians feel that their focus and dedication are far below what they want them to be? You may have noticed that your Logician partner is capable of great inspiration and creativity, frequently seizing upon or inventing ideas with gusto. They like to experiment with action, as well, and are often enthusiastic to try new methods and experiences or even to pursue new goals. Chances are this mindset is a good thing that leads to accomplishments and is something that you admire about your partner.
Validating a Logician’s creative inspiration can be as easy as simply asking them about their ideas and then stepping back to observe what they do. (When things go well, you can also pour on your approval.) Where things can sometimes go awry for Logicians is that their new inspirations often overtake existing pursuits before they’re completed as originally envisioned. And because your partner likely recognizes value in both the new and the old thing, they may end up feeling conflicted between excitement and guilt. They may perceive a change in focus as a lack of focus.
You can validate this part of your Logician partner’s personality by showing understanding for both the upsides and downsides of their imaginative mind. On the one hand, trying to improve their focus and dedication is a respectable personal growth journey that can really help them out in everyday life. Yet feeling guilty or deficient for having changing interests is unproductive. Giving your partner the freedom to work out their own path will be appreciated, but it doesn’t necessarily mean backing off – your attentive acceptance can bolster them as they grapple with themselves.
If your Logician partner is open to feedback, you can always remind them that having room for improvement doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re deficient. Great things can be greater. You can also serve as a neutral, objective sounding board to help them reflect on which priorities truly should be seen through to completion and which goals can be abandoned with little harm. You can encourage your partner to follow their inspiration to wherever it yields them the most benefit – whether that means staying the course or changing direction.
Either way, the best contributions that you can make in this case are the idea that there’s nothing wrong with your partner’s mindset and the reassurance that you understand and respect this facet of their personality.
Emotional Intimacy
About 80% of Logicians say that emotional intimacy with their partner is important or very important to them. However, to put that into perspective, Logicians (and other Thinking personalities) aren’t nearly as likely to say so as Feeling personalities. Chances are you feel plenty of emotional intimacy between you and your partner, but your partner might not naturally embrace the kind of overt emotional displays that are often held up as popular romantic ideals.
Consequently, they may feel confused (or bad) about the reactions that they get to their natural style of expression. They may have been given the impression in the past that there’s something wrong with them, a kind of mismatch between how they feel on the inside and how they’re expected to act on the outside. Depending on your personality type, that may be something that you can relate to, as many personalities struggle to fully express themselves.
Validating this aspect of your Logician partner’s personality is made easier by your intimate knowledge of them. You’re well placed to understand how much they care about their friends and family – and you – regardless of how they express their feelings. When you openly acknowledge your partner’s inner feelings while also accepting how they want to show them (or their limits when they don’t), it can be very validating for them. And if you’re seeking more emotional intimacy from your Logician partner, validation may help.
For one thing, healthy relationships often require compromise, and if your partner is somewhat reserved with their feelings, it’s appropriate to grant them some privacy and autonomy. They are who they are, and validation means respecting that. Yet your needs matter, too – especially the need to connect emotionally. To encourage more emotional intimacy from your Logician partner, consider strongly rewarding them when it happens organically, rather than pushing or leading them into it. Pressure may make your partner more avoidant than willing.
There’s also something to be said for infusing emotional intimacy with a childlike lightheartedness. Sometimes the best way to encourage the sharing of feelings is to focus on sharing feelings that are enjoyable in themselves. There’s a place for deep, mutual soul-searching in a romantic relationship, but the path to intimacy can be built on things like humor, flirting, and joyful immaturity. Sharing rewarding emotions as a commonplace thing within a relationship can make it easier to share more serious feelings when they arise.
Sociability Gap
Logicians tend to see themselves as being far less sociable than their own ideal, something that you may see reflected in your partner. But it’s possible that some of that feeling is a response to perceived cultural norms, not merely their own desires. With their Introversion and Thinking traits, Logicians are on the low end of the social-enthusiasm spectrum as a matter of preference as much as anything. Being more sociable may appeal to them in theory, but in practice, they assert their needs through the choices that they make.
Your reaction to your partner’s social preferences may depend on your personality – if their preferences are similar to yours, you may approve, but if not, you may occasionally be troubled. Either way, there’s a pretty good chance that your partner is more at risk of feeling like a social outsider than most people – possibly because they struggle to fit in or because they simply don’t care to. In your relationship, that can look like reluctance to go out and socialize with others or a low tolerance for extended socializing.
Of course, validating such aspects of Logician personality is best approached like all validation – with understanding and acceptance. The goals of validating your partner’s personality are to help them feel okay being who they are and to let them know that you respect them without judgment. In everyday life, that can look like accepting your partner’s social habits and giving them the space to do their own thing when needed. Again, depending on your personality type, your respective social styles may be compatible.
But if there’s a sociability gap between you and your partner, you can respect their social preferences while also asking them to honor yours. In that case, validation means showing awareness and understanding of your partner’s stress points as they push their limits for the sake of growth (or for you). Similarly, if your partner is tackling an internal sociability gap between their habits and desires, they’ll appreciate your nonjudgmental support as they attempt to master something uncomfortable.
Validating your partner’s personality when it comes to sociability can also mean exploring new and varied social activities together to see what works for you both. Logicians are typically enticed by novelty itself, so linking a sense of inquiry and discovery to social activities can make them more rewarding for your partner. Selecting task-oriented social opportunities versus purely social ones (for example, playing poker with friends instead of just sitting around talking with them) can also help. Engaging with something technical can make for a nice break and a little breathing room amid social engagement. For Logicians, experimentation is a good route to enjoying their social side and is something that you can support.
Conclusion: Loving Freedom
Many aspects of the Logician personality call to mind the importance of personal freedom. Your partner’s got a wide-ranging mind and loves to contemplate the unknown. Their personality reflects that mindset, as do their choices in life. How or whether they move from inspiration into action is often something that Logicians need to play with in their own way. Yet they may very much appreciate some externally provided structure in their lives, if it’s kind, beneficial, and not too strict.
Consequently, you can be a very powerful source of validation and support to your partner, because they look to you for both approval and also critical feedback. They’ll deeply value you for helping them think objectively, explore new perspectives, and discover what works well for them. It’s not always easy to provide that kind of neutral support when you’ve got your own opinions and motivations, but it’s a very loving thing to practice.
Further Reading
- Your Premium Profile provides deeper insight into your personality and relationships.
- Productivity Tips for Logicians (INTPs)
- How to Date an Analyst Personality Type
- Check out our Get to Know Your Partner game!