Help. I have fallen for an INTP!!

[Confused ENFP]

Hello all. Before you decide to banish me to the darklands, yes, I am not INTP, I am ENFP. But I thought who better to ask advice about INTP´s than other INTP´s.
This story may seem a little long and being INTP´s you may get bored before you reach the end. But trust me, there is plenty in here for you to analyse 
This summer I met a girl. Well. I forced the meeting on her, being an ENFP as I am. I live in Spain, and one morning this summer when I dropped my sun off at summer school there was something that changed my life. I always speak to my son in English, and to my surprise there was a young girl dropping off a child, and she too was speaking English to the child. My ears perked at hearing English. I could tell it wasn´t her native tongue but she spoke really well. Anyway, she was very attractive, but the more I looked at her the more distant and lost she looked. It would turn out that she was a summer sitter for a family here. It troubled me to see her looking so lost. Anyway, I went home, but to say I thought nothing more of it would be a lie. You see as an ENFP I always want to help people feel better, and generally I do. I also always pick up stray animals off the street.

The next day I saw her again and she was speaking on her phone. This time she was speaking her native tongue, and although I only 3 or 4 words of that language (I have friends from the same country) I recognized where she was from. So I spoke to her. She looked understandably shocked and freaked out (being an INTP). I phoned a friend who had a summer sitter from the same country, who also did not seem to mix well with people and was lonely, so I thought hey, I´m going to introduce these girls and that way hopefully they will both be happier. It worked, they met, hit it off, and are still friends now.

That weekend I was going with my family and friends for a weekend away. To my surprise the friends who had the summer sitter said that this girl I had met had asked if she could come along as well. Anyway, we had a great weekend and I started to feel close to her. Too close maybe. We were 20 people on that weekend and god only know how but I had been convinced to make pizzas for everybody. It was manic. The oven was useless, and I was running out of ingredients. Anyway, the stray INTP was the one there helping me, calming me, assisting me in making various waves of pizzas. It was insanely good to be with her. She was coming out of her shell around me, being really funny and fun loving, and in turn she was helping me to relax. I have a tendency for anxiety; in fact I have been on meds for a few years now. Anyway, that weekend I forgot to take them. That evening with the pizzas she revealed that she was having a really hard time with the family here for whom she was sitting, and she didn´t know how she was going to survive the last week. So I told her to jack it in and come and stay at mine for a week as I had the space. She broke down in tears, not understanding there were people like that.

So she stayed with me. I didn´t see much of her as she was out doing her own thing, but when I was around her it was magic. And I always seemed to get a smile out of her. We both have a very sarcastic f**k you kind of humour. At the end of the week it was time for her to go home. It was a really shitty day. She wrote me a letter and gave it to me, that expressed a lot of feelings she couldn´t understand or describe, thanks for everything, and if one day I am a mother I want the children to have a father like you. I had also written her a message explaining that I didn´t know what was happening but that I had really strong feelings for her.

I took her to her bus to get to the airport. She was emotional after reading the message I saint, and we held hands all the way. She held my hand so tight that she almost cut off the circulation. She got on the bus, I stayed to wave her off, then being the hopeless romantic I am I got on the bus and kissed her.
She was crying like crazy and it was really hard to see her like that. Just an extra note, the whole week she was around me I didn´t take my meds. And I had never felt better in myself.

So she went home, and for the next few weeks we talked every day on the phone. We even said I love you to each other, and we had 3 hour long video conversations, but with silences where we would just look at each other. She revealed secrets to me that she has never told anybody, and me to her.

Things started to turn sour. I pushed too much emotionally and she said things that just didn´t fit my values. So I almost cut contact and that really affected her. So much so that she told me she had lost trust in me. Since then there have been disagreements, and she has been very direct and said there will never be romance between us, just friendship if I want it.

So we have tried being friends, calling and laughing with each other, but every now and again things get heated. Then a few days ago, at 1am she sent me a voice message. It was in her native tongue and she was crying like crazy. Of course, I am a protector and carer so it really upset and worried me. I phone her the next day and asked her if she was better and if she wanted to talk and she said she was better and no, didn´t want to talk. I didn´t know if that was because her sister was there with her or why. Anyway, I used a transcribe app and translation software (took me bloody hours) to try and interpret it. I needed to understand what was affecting her so much because I care for her a lot. Once I got the translation I sent her a message saying I wasn´t sure if the translation had worked but it sounded like this that and the other. I said I was sorry I couldn´t help her but that I am here if she needs me. I said that if any time she felt she could tell me these things in English then I would listen. I also said it would be great to talk on the phone, but maybe without her sister being there all the time.

F**k, that set things off. She wrote me that she wasn´t replying to my messages because she was with friends and didn’t want to be living on her phone. That the translation was not at all what she said. That she did in her native tongue because it was her recording her thoughts and emotions at that moment and she didn´t want me to understand it. She just needed to send it to somebody. It wasn’t about me and that´s why she didn´t do it in English. That she was not going to push her sister away for me etc. etc.

I told her OK, all clear, and left her alone for the rest of the day. Yesterday I messaged to see how her days off were going. 10 hours later (by that time I was asleep) she said fine and asked how I was. I texted back this morning that all good……message not going through. She has blocked me.

So if you are still reading this, thanks for your patience. I care so much for her, but I don´t know what to do or how to handle this situation. I don´t want to lose her, and I know that when we are together we complement each other so well.

How can I get the trust back?

Do I try contacting her by other means or do I leave her space and let her contact me (if she wants to)?

Should I do something crazy like flying to see her so she can see that I really am here for her?

Any further advice?

Just to add that she has a complex home situation and I know there are things there that are suffocating her.

 

[The Gopher]

I'm starting to doubt Auburn saying I'm an ENFP.

 

[Cognisant]

Give her space, let her come to you.

Should I do something crazy like flying to see her so she can see that I really am here for her?

Absolutely do not do this, INTPs are not swayed by grand romantic gestures indeed it may be received as manipulation, an INTP needs lots of time and space to emotionally sort themselves out before they're ready to deal with the emotions of others and being persistent will just trigger a defensive response that will only escalate the more its tested.

 

[Confused ENFP]

Thanks Cognisant for the clear reply. I thought that would be the way, but as an ENFP I analyse emotions not logic, and that is where the confusion sets in.

 

[Confused ENFP]

Another question. If she does come to me how do I handle it? Hey stranger, good to have you back? Do you want to talk about what happened? Do I act as if nothing happened?

 

[Cognisant]

She'll come to a decision then contact you to either test the waters for reconnecting or to tie off loose ends, honestly I think it'll be the latter but who knows?

Of course, I am a protector and carer so it really upset and worried me.

INTPs are fiercely independent in their thoughts and emotions, INTP women doubly so because society is constantly telling them what to feel & think, I imagine the last thing she wants is to be coddled. What she does want is a confidant, that you translated her message wouldn't have been the issue (that was clever, INTPs like clever) but the fact that you wanted to intervene on her issue on her behalf would have been received as domineering.

ENFPs aren't really a good match for INTPs because you're used to "handling" people's emotions, you're good at cheering someone up, that's fine to some extent (INTPs are as susceptible to charm as anyone) but you're going to keep running up against that fierce independent streak, the nanosecond you think you know how she should feel or that you can fix her emotional issues her NT mind will recognize manipulation and turn hostile.

Romantically INTPs are probably one of the hardest types to deal with, more like trying to defuse a bomb than romancing a person

Disclaimer: I am speculating, I don't know any of this for fact.

 

[Confused ENFP]

Well she has just contacted me to see if I am still on holiday. No more than that. So I have just answered that No, back working like a dog and suspecting I may have caught fleas (the last part to lighten the mood a bit).

I am a fairly clever person, Industrial Management degree and a Project Leader in a multinational, but I will admit she definitely has a distinct edge over me in the intelligence field. The debates we have had, mixed with her knowledge through study and her unbelievable handling of sarcasm in English, she has argued me into submission. Not easily, but she has won every time. Although I think really there is no way I could win as she can dream up logic for anything.

In regards to intervening, that wasn´t my intention. My intention was to let her know I am here, but I have a tendency to overtalk it I think. I think that is where I am going to focus my change.

 

[Jennywocky]

it doesn't sound very promising. Just too much distance and too much difference.

Pursuing her would feel invasive to her, I think, and she doesn't want to live in a virtual world as she has said. That idea of "flying out" would definitely be invasive. It sounds like there was some kind of connection when she was with you but it didn't necessarily mean a romantic connection from her end despite being couched in a way that it scanned that way to you. She was just feeling lots of feels and needed time to interpret them, and she also had to somehow reconcile them with the constraints of actual life and what made reasonable sense to her.

I'm mainly saying it's best to let the idea of a romantic relationship go and just be her friend if she contacts you, unless she initiates something specifically from her end.