What we're like.

I took this personality test about a month ago. I am an INFP, which stands for introverted, intuitive, feeling, perceiving. I sent it to my boyfriend and asked him to take it, and he is an ESTJ, which means extroverted, sensing, thinking, judging. So we are exact opposites. Which I probably could have told you before I took the personality test, but it was interesting and enlightening to read about so many or our opposite qualities spelled out in objective detail. If you don't already know your Jung-Myers-Briggs personality type or Keirsey temperament, I highly recommend that you take one of the many personality tests online.

Anyway, my point is that my boyfriend and I are extremely different in many ways. When we first met at a party, I was a freshman and he was a sophomore. I was small, shy, cynical, and artsy. He was on the baseball team, was a good friend of the guy hosting the party, and one of the girls on my hall had a crush on him. He was the kind of guy I found intimidating at the time. He was "cool" and athletic, tall with muscles and shoulders and a backwards baseball hat. I wasn't used to that sort of thing. But somehow, we ended up finding plenty to talk about. And we had amazing sparks. At first I figured it was just a fun, casual thing that definitely wouldn't go anywhere. He was so much fun to spend time with and we got along so well, but we had nothing in common, so I knew it could never get serious.

But it did. We just kept spending more and more time together and getting increasingly attached to one another and I discovered there was more to him than I had assumed and blah blah blah you know the drill we were together for the next four years. And it's great -- I love the fact that we are so different. Being with him has introduced me to so many different new settings and situations and people. It's wonderful to have a passport outside your own small world, something that allows you to grow and learn and expand in ways that you otherwise wouldn't. Our relationship has changed me in a lot of ways, and I appreciate that so much.

It can sometimes be frustrating, though, to constantly find myself spending time with other people who I would never befriend of my own accord. The frat guy/jock stereotypes I may have unfairly misapplied to my boyfriend early on are far more applicable to a couple of his best friends. Not that I don't enjoy their company on occasion. But I sometimes find their egos unfathomable. I just don't normally interact with people who are almost defined by their egos, and I don't really know how to react to such a drastically foreign attitude. I'm not used to dealing with people who have to yell to assert themselves and who seem to spend more time talking than thinking, people who talk about girls in a way that either makes me feel sorry for the girls, or sorry for the guys talking about girls. People who are just such...boy boys. Sometimes I think we are friends, and they turn around and treat me like a spy who has infiltrated their boys' club. They don't seem to have any comprehension of irony and they invariably interpret my sarcastic jokes as bitchiness and take offense at everything I say.

Along with having my first real job and being 2,500 miles away from my parents and best friend, this has been one of the biggest and most difficult adjustments for me since I moved to San Francisco.