I've got to agree with what everyone else has said. Rather than repeating all of it, I think the best contribution I can make is to add a little bit of male perspective to some of it.

It's really funny to me to hear other people having the same issues I do when it comes to talking about things. That's one of my favorite things about this tribe: the continual reaffirmation that I'm not alone and that there are other people like me out there :) Personally, it sends me into my terrified panic zone when a gal says to me that we need to Talk. Instant Fight or Flight mode. It's a survival thing at that point. Written communication is perhaps less personal, but it gives me more time to think about what I want to say and allows me to say what I want to say without being afraid that it will come out wrong.

When I read your first post I was hesitant to respond because I wasn't really sure what to say. Fortunately, some other folks jumped in there. What Shift and Michelle said are absolutely correct. We INFJ's are either ON or OFF when it comes to relationships. All or nothing, there's very little middle room. What I was initially worried about from your first post was that your relationship had already moved to OFF. I don't think so anymore, if he's still communicating with you. It's possible that it may have flipped to OFF, although even if it has that doesn't mean it's the end of the world, just that it's going to take a lot of work to flip the switch back to ON.

You mention being kind of surprised that he didn't just close the door without second thoughts because you've only been together a few months. This is just another fact of our all-or-nothing personalities. Once we commit then we COMMIT. We put everything we can into our relationships.

I had a hard time understanding how most of my friends could just casually date people. I've tried, and I just can't do it. As soon as we've been on a couple dates I'm ready to start working on building a serious, committed relationship. It's like I'm just hardwired that way. On the other hand, it means that I don't go on dates with people who I'm not interested in on that serious of a level. So even though you've only been together a few months, he's hesitant to completely abandon the relationship because from his perspective he's already practically married.

How much time do we need to process everything? It varies tremendously. It depends on how severe whatever happened affected him/. Some things I get over in a matter of days or weeks, other things are longer. One of the worst relationships I ever had was with another INFJ. We were both young, inexperienced, and dumb, and so it ended in an epic failure. I couldn't even be in the same room with her for three years without growling and hissing. Eventually, we started talking again and spent a few very intense confused weeks talking with one another, sharing our mutual frustrations, and apologizing for how severely we had hurt one another (I've still got emotional scars that I'm dealing with from that and we broke up 16 years ago). Since then we've been close friends, although dating again would be completely out of the question.

Back to talking about things... at some point I think talking is important. Even though I get so stressed out it makes me physically ill when I have those conversations, at some level I recognize it is important, and when it's over usually I feel better and whatever it is we talked about doens't bother me as much as it did before. It's a painful, uncomfortable process, though.

Thanks for the advice, Ed. I will definitely keep that in mind. Shortly after we got together, one of the things I noticed about him was that he did not play the traditional "dating games." I found this refreshing and embraced it. I intend to continue giving him the same respect.