The ENTP Romantic Relationships

Romantic Relationship Expectations

ENTPs expect growth. They spend their lives working on their own development and they want their partner to not only do the same but also to support their own growth and development. There’s no quicker way to break up a relationship with an ENTP than to get in their way of their self-development or to neglect your own, this is unforgivable to them.

ENTPs are naturally very active and assertive in every aspect of their lives, including in their relationships. They usually love to show their partner how much they love and appreciate them, performing acts of service or buying small gifts they think their partner will enjoy. They also like to spend a lot of quality time with their partners, bonding over long meandering conversations in which they get to know the other person and reveal themselves in return. An ENTP in love will show their emotions in their own way and their partner needs to be able to listen for and hear that expression, no matter what love language they use.

Meeting Potential Partners

ENTPs are blunt and straightforward and quite capable of making the first move. When they first meet someone they think they could be romantically interested in they usually start evaluating them to see if they’re a good match. This means testing to see if they’re capable of growing alongside the ENTP. This personality type is very good at seeing possibilities and potentials, and it’s easy for them to see what someone could be rather than what they are. This can trip them up sometimes, but it also means they can tell immediately if someone has the potential to be a good match for them.

ENTPs tend to be spontaneous and active and they look for the same in their partners. Usually, they’ll meet their romantic interests while they’re indulging in one of their many interests or while they’re exploring the world, which can give them a good idea about whether their lifestyles will match. No relationship will last with this type if their partner can’t keep up with their curious and sometimes meandering life path.

ENTPs in the Honeymoon Phase

ENTPs tend to be strongly attracted to academic achievement and they bring this same dedication and attention to the honeymoon phase of their relationships. For ENTPs, this is the time for them to explore everything about their new partner with an almost unnerving focus and enthusiasm, and they’ll expect the same from their new partner. This can also be the stage in which the ENTPs difficulties in relationships start to show. ENTPs are not the most sensitive or emotionally aware personality type, and as they get closer to their new partner this will start to show itself, warning both types of future problems.

Moving Past the Honeymoon Phase

Once their romantic relationships move past the honeymoon phase the ENTP can find themselves in a bit of trouble. Their dominant function, extraverted intuition, likes to explore patterns in the external world. This means that it instinctively seeks novelty to deepen its understanding of how things work. And once the ENTP moves out of the honeymoon phase of their relationship, this can apply to their partner as well. That’s not to say that ENTPs are cheaters, but their interest in everything can mean that their focus shifts away from their partner and onto their latest adventure or idea. This can leave their partner feeling neglected and forgotten, which is not a good place to be for anyone.

However, the ENTP attention to self-improvement can be the antidote to this. ENTPs want to constantly grow and change, to reach the limits of what they can be. If their partner shows them they’re willing and able to grow and change with them it will go a long way towards convincing the ENTP to work on maintaining their relationship. A certain level of maturity is also required for this. ENTPs tend to jump around more, in every aspect of their lives, when they’re younger and still figuring out what they want to do and be. But as they get older they start to understand that they need to work on their relationship if they want it to grow and change along with them.

The ENTPs Ideal Partners

This is not an exhaustive or prohibitive list because any personality type can find love with any other personality type. However, most personality types have natural matches, people they will naturally click with and be able to understand more easily, and ENTPs are no different.

ENTPs mesh most naturally with other intuitive types. ¹ Sharing an intuitive function means there’s a natural connection between two people. It means they like to talk about and think about similar subjects. And this similarity in their world views can go a long way towards overcoming any communication difficulties that can arise in relationships. ENTPs can also work well with intuitive feeler (NF) types. Because ENTPs can be emotionally blind, they’re often naturally attracted to these types and can learn a lot from a relationship with them.

ENTPs usually avoid being in relationship with personality types that use introverted sensing as a dominant or auxiliary function. For the ENTP, this is their inferior function, which means they find it uninteresting and have few skills in this area. This is why most ENTPs hate dealing with paperwork or anything involving bureaucracy, and being in a relationship with someone who naturally thinks this way can be really frustrating to them.

Final Thoughts

In a relationship ENTPs can be giving and exciting companions. They love to explore everything about the external world, including their partner’s character and belief, and it can be intensely flattering for others to have that rapt attention turned on them. But ENTPs need to learn to retain some of that focus even once the bulk of their attention turns to their next idea if they want to have relationships that last.

References

1. “Dr. Gary Chapman Explains The 5 Love Languages“. Apr 23, 2013. (Retrieved Jan 2018).
2. Dr Drenth A. J. “Extraverted Intuition (Ne)“. (Retrieved Jan 2018).
3. “ENTP – The Inventor“.

Footnotes

1. This refers to other personality types who use one of the intuitive cognitive functions, either introverted or extraverted intuition, as their dominant or auxiliary function.