Why Do INTJ Women Tend to Have More Male Friends?
I type as INTJ but I don't relate to the label as strongly as I might. My Introversion score is right in the middle of the scale at 51%, and I call myself an ambivert. I sit right on the borderline of Intuition and Sensing too. One or two different answers on the TypeFinder® test and I could easily type as ISTJ or ENTJ. I still haven’t figured out if I lead with Introverted Intuition (the pattern-recognition function, signalling INTJ) or Extraverted Thinking (the logic and efficiency function, signalling ENTJ), despite working with personality science every day. Basically, I’m a mixed bag and mostly okay with being stuck between types.
But occasionally I read something about INTJs that isn't in the general type description, which makes me think, “Oh, that's me!” The latest ‘fact’ to grab my attention is that INTJ women have more male friends.
Now, I’ve written scare quotes around the word ‘fact’ on purpose, because there’s no formal research directly examining whether INTJ women have more male friends than female friends (or at least none that I could find). But anecdotally, the pattern appears to be real. Scroll through any personality discussion forum and you'll find post after post from INTJ women describing the same phenomenon: struggling to connect with other women, finding male friendships easier to navigate, and then wondering whether something is fundamentally wrong with them.
That question — “Is there something wrong with me?” — keeps resurfacing because the experience feels isolating. A 2022 study published in Personality and Individual Differences found that having a lot of male friends as a woman is a red flag to other women. The researchers examined women's friendship preferences and found that women who prefer female friends (i.e. most women) don’t trust women who prefer male friendships. They see them as ‘pick me’ girls and can be downright hostile towards them because of this. This research made me laugh. ‘Pick me’ is an awful phrase used to describe people, usually women, who wheedle for interest and validation from the opposite sex, usually men, because “I’m not like other girls!” But come on, have you ever met an INTJ who needs validation or acceptance from anyone? One who isn’t as independent and self-reliant as they come? Me neither.
But back to that research. It’s sad because it reveals a self-reinforcing cycle — women who prefer male friendships are targeted by female peers because of those preferences, which further pushes them toward male friendships. But this research focused on intrasexual competition and mating dynamics. For INTJ women, the reasons run much deeper than rivalry over romantic partners.
The Thinking Preference and Gender Distribution
The real picture emerges when you look at personality distribution data. No matter which surveys you look at, it’s evident that males are more likely to be Thinking than Feeling, and females are more likely to be Feeling than Thinking, on average. Up to 75% of men may have a preference for Thinking, compared to roughly 25-33% for women. Among the other behavioral functions, the gender distribution remains very similar.
That means that approximately three-quarters of the female population defaults to Feeling when making decisions, and only a quarter uses Thinking as their primary mode. INTJ women fall squarely in that minority quarter. We're Thinking types in a world where most women are Feelers. The implications of this are more significant than many realize. Like everyone, you’re trying to find friends who get you, but when you’re a woman whose brain defaults to logical, factual analysis in a social landscape where most other women default to values and emotions, you're operating in a different language. The mismatch creates friction that most people don't recognize as a personality difference because it’s not as obvious as someone being outgoing, curious, funny or kind.
My male best friend has never tested his type because he thinks personality assessments are stupid, but I'm pretty sure he's an ESTP. Another male close friend is an INTP. My husband fluctuates between ENTJ and ENTP depending on his mood. The best female friend I’ve ever had is an INTP. Looking at that pattern, the common thread becomes obvious: they're all Thinking types. Our friendships function smoothly not because they're men, but because we're speaking the same cognitive language.
Activity-Based Connection Versus Emotional Intimacy
Research on gender differences in friendships reveals another pattern that I find interesting. Male friendships tend to be activity-based and side-by-side — basically, they’re maintained through shared experiences rather than any type of emotional disclosure or mutual value system. Female friendships are the opposite: they’re face-to-face and maintained through intimacy, communication and emotional support. Women report receiving and providing more emotional support in their friendships. They share thoughts and feelings openly with each other, and the ability to do that is foundational to the strength and longevity of the friendship.
For INTJ women, the activity-based model often feels more natural. We bond through doing things together, through engaging with ideas and projects, through problem-solving. Call me selfish, but I want to do something fun with my friends in my downtime, not bare my soul or re-hash their relationship drama (fix it or leave him already!). I don’t care for "rapport talk" and you’d have to literally pay me to be someone’s unofficial therapist at 3 a.m.
For INTJ women navigating female friendships, this creates a persistent sense of being out of sync. We say what we mean and mean what we say, even if it hurts someone’s feelings. We offer solutions when friends share problems, but for women focused on what it all means and how it made them feel, this gets interpreted as cold or dismissive. We skip the preamble and get to the point, which is almost certainly too abrupt in contexts where the preamble serves an important relationship-building function.
Straightforward, low-emotion communication appears consistently in descriptions of why women prefer male friendships. Women who gravitate toward male friends describe valuing clear communication where you don't have to decode hidden meanings, navigate mixed signals, or keep some kind of emotional score (“I listened to you cry over the phone for two hours last week so now you have to listen to me!”). But again, this type of communication isn’t male coded, it’s Thinking-coded. It just happens to be more common among men due to population distribution.
Emotional Intimacy Through Closed Doors
Preferring activity-based, side-by-side friendships doesn't mean INTJ women lack depth in their relationships. The characterization of male friendships as "less intimate" misses the point entirely, because intimacy takes different forms.
The best example I can give you is my favorite scene from the TV show Dr. Who, in an episode called Utopia. Here, the Tenth Doctor (David Tennant) and Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) discuss a tricky part of their history where the Doctor left Jack for dead. The conversation covers some meaty themes — the nature of power, death and betrayal, the repulsion the Doctor feels about Jack’s immortality, the horror of holding God-hood in your hands. It’s heavy stuff, but — and here’s my favorite part — the entire conversation takes place through a thick sealed door while Jack is repairing nuclear rods in a deadly, radiation soaked room. The message is clear: Jack and the Doctor can only be vulnerable with each other when hundreds of lives are at stake and there’s a literal radioactive barrier between them. That’s peak male friendship intimacy, and it is also peak INTJ friendship intimacy.
It seems to me that male friendships are less fragile precisely because they don't require the same level of emotional maintenance. Men can go years without contact (they can literally abandon each other on a space station orbiting a Dalek-devastated Earth in the year 200,100) and still consider themselves close friends. So can I. That low-maintenance model suits many INTJ women because we neither need or want constant emotional check-ins to feel secure in a relationship. My friendships endure based on mutual history, mutual respect, shared interests, because your kids are friends with my kids, because we go to the same gym, or for a million other reasons, none of which have anything to do with how many secrets we share or the frequency of emotional exchange.
The Competitive Undertones in Female Friendships
In a room of 100 women, statistically only one will be an INTJ. The rest will likely include about 10 ENFPs and 10 ISFPs, 19 ISFJs and 12 ESFJs. They’re mostly Feelers and mostly Sensors. For the lone INTJ woman in that room, finding someone who processes competition the same way becomes a mathematical challenge.
I can’t speak for all INTJs, but for me, competition has two distinct sides. Internally, I’m extremely competitive. I compete against myself and try to beat my own personal bests almost daily (Write better! Lift heavier! Make more $$!). But direct competition, against others, feels pointless to me. My ego can handle someone having a better job title, bigger salary and better social life (that one’s a low bar). I’m not bothered that you’re better at sports, prettier and more popular, and I have no interest in one-upping others when the shoe’s on the other foot.
I assume that other people are the same, but they’re not. Research on competition in female friendships shows that women prefer equality in their close friendships and become deeply uncomfortable with status asymmetries. Competition, in all its forms, threatens the stability of the friendship, so women will go to great lengths to neutralize a competitive threat, usually through gossip or social exclusion (the researchers call this “relational aggression”). That’s one reason why there’s so much drama in larger female friend groups — the women are actively trying to level the field of their social group so everyone can feel equal and included. If status inequalities persist, there’s a good chance that someone’s getting stabbed in the back and/or kicked out of the group.
The researchers specifically studied ‘women’ friend groups. But assuming their subjects were representative of the general population, they were indirectly studying ‘Feeling-heavy’ friend groups, because most women are Feelers. We know that Myers-Briggs Feelers have a lower competitive drive than Thinking types. They tend to prioritize social harmony, cooperation and the emotional well-being of the group members over personal advancement or coming out on top, and those “relational aggressions” make sense when you understand that Feelers experience competition itself as a threat to the harmony and cohesion they're trying to protect.
As for male (a.k.a Thinking-coded) friendships, research shows they tend to repair more easily after conflict. Men (and INTJ women) are more likely to remain friends after an argument, while (Feeling) women are not.
The Risk of Oversimplification
While writing this post, I started to worry that I was reinforcing the “not like other girls, pick-me!” trope that I mocked in the intro. Because that’s fundamentally the argument, isn’t it? You’re a female INTJ, your type is rare, you don’t navigate the world the same way as other women. Ergo you aren’t like the other girls.
The difference is recognizing that when INTJ women connect more easily with men, we're not connecting with masculinity per se. We're connecting with other Thinking types, who happen to be statistically more common among men. We're gravitating toward activity-based friendships and communication through straightforward texts and radiation-proof doors, which happen to characterize typical male friendship patterns. The correlation with gender is real but not causative.
One INTJ woman on Reddit described her friendship criteria succinctly: "I require respect for my privacy, intelligence equal to or greater than my own, depth of character, and a similar sense of humor. I have no need for gossip, do not suffer from envy of any kind, and am intolerant of insecure, competitive women.” Those criteria are personality-based, not gender-based. But given the personality distribution across genders, they're more likely to be met by men purely as a function of probability.
This understanding should expand your friendship possibilities rather than limit them. Knowing that female friendship is judged by standards set by the 75% Feeling majority (emotional intimacy, frequent contact, vulnerability, harmony) , means you can happily reject it because you’re not a Feeler. Knowing that roughly one-quarter of women are Thinking types means that one out of every four women you meet will share your cognitive framework — the odds are decent that your model of friendship already exists among women you know, and they’re likely just as desperate to find you as you are to find them. You’re not a pick-me who hangs with the guys for validation. You’re simply working with a different set of probabilities, and that makes all the difference.
