How to Ruin a Friendship with Each Myers-Briggs® Personality Type

Trying to steer clear of a friend who is driving you absolutely nuts? Then you’re welcome. In today’s article, we’ll explore the many ways you can evade the grasp of each Myers-Briggs® personality type. Keep in mind, this is a HUMOR article and is definitely not meant to be taken seriously. It relies on stereotypes, roasting, and off-the-wall antics to get its point across. Point being: Don’t try these things at home.

I’m afraid I know enough about typology to be dangerous. I have contemplated how I might provide a sense of usefulness for my villainy. Over time, a true pathway for seekers on the road to meaning and truth has emerged…and this article is it.

Not sure what your personality type is? Take our new personality questionnaire here. Or you can take the official MBTI® here.

ESTP

ESTP friends can be real beasts sometimes. They like to jump out of airplanes and take on challenges they really shouldn’t. Worse still, ESTPs like to pull friends along for the ride.

Is this you? Are you still tired and bruised from your last unwanted excursion together?

Action heroes are great in theory, but not when you’re friends and they know where you live. Being a sidekick isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, is it? If you’re hoping to gain some distance and ditch your ESTP for good, consider coercing your friend into solitary confinement! It’s a foolproof way to both drive them insane and make them hate you. A win-win!

How to Get Started:

• Begin by inviting them out for some kind of “adventure.” Indoor rock-climbing, trampoline bouncing, a nice swim at the pool, you name it. Make sure it’s something active that can entice their Extraverted Sensing (Se) side. Preferably, choose an activity that they’ve never done before. Guiding your ESTP friend towards a new experience will raise the stakes and make their willingness to come along with you much higher. Se is perpetually open to new, tangible experiences, so play into that!
• Make sure the activity you choose is an indoor activity because you’re going to want a destination where you can lock them inside of a room.
• Drive to the activity together. Life is all about making the best of your opportunities and this car ride has the potential to set you up for the perfect disaster.
• While in that closed container of metal, feel free to badger your friend with stupid questions (no questions are stupid, but for the sake of this exercise, let’s say genuinely asking what color a Stop sign is every time you see one would qualify as stupid). These incessant questions (with very obvious answers) will help irritate your ESTP friend’s Auxiliary Introverted Thinking (Ti).
• When you’re not asking delirious questions, be sure to talk avidly about the importance of rules and the consequences that emerge from not following them. This may help to target their Inferior Introverted Intuition (Ni) as well as activate their shadow functions which tend to bother them internally without your help.
• If your ESTP is driving (a preferable situation), watch their speed like a hawk and comment on it when they go even a mile over. Worry loudly about their lack of care for the law as they drive.
• Arrive at your “adventure” with your thoroughly annoyed ESTP friend and take them into a “preparation” room. A locker room wouldn’t be ideal as people are constantly moving in and out and would find your friend locked up too quickly for comfort. Instead, find a small, singular room. Anywhere with a closable, lockable door that you could leave them in for a decent amount of time without risking their inability to eat. (If you’re like myself and hate the idea of someone not eating for hours or days at a time, subtly leave them a bag of snacks. But we don’t want to be too nice here, so be sure to leave them snacks that you know they hate. Does your ESTP friend hate olives? Great! Pack a whole bag of those! They’ll be desperately hungry to eat eventually and will be forced to eat whatever you packed.)
• While your ESTP friend is getting ready for your activity—changing clothes, putting on gloves, and the like—slip away and lock them inside the space. I don’t care if you have to nab keys from a janitor on duty to make this happen (don’t be mean to the janitor though, we love janitors here, just not ESTP friends). Your ability to lock the door is a crucial step on your way to freedom! Your ESTP friend might beat on the door a few times when they look around and realize you’re no longer by their side, but that’s okay! Your mission has been accomplished!

In a perfect world, of course, you would find a way to tie them to a bench first and leave them there—the more restriction of mobility you can muster for the ESTP, the more they will hate you—but we don’t live in a perfect world, do we? In the event you can come up with a valid reason for having rope with you—rock climbing, perhaps—do what you have to do. Your friendship will be over the moment you leave. Trust me. They won’t forgive you for the olives.

Find out more about ESTPs: 24 Signs That You’re an ESTP, the Daredevil Personality Type

ESFP

Is your ESFP friend climbing up on the table to sing that old Celine Dion number again?

Have they committed worse offenses that move you into even deeper trauma?

Such as, are you often mourning the brownie they cut out from the middle of the pan last year just to offset your sense of reality?

Don’t worry, you poor soul, I can help you take care of this bandit!

ESFPs, as you know, have a strong tendency to do what they love and to do it loudly. The Sensing and Feeling sides of the ESFP leads them towards actions like the table singing we discussed earlier because these functions promote a willingness to be present in reality paired with a desire to use their physicality to amp up the fun. The ESFP’s cognitive function combination also prompts your ESFP friend to do other seemingly wild things, like climbing fire escapes to save kittens and avoiding their taxes in the name of unalienable rights. Yeah, yeah, they probably don’t even know what unalienable rights are, but they’ll use the word correctly because ESFPs are good at picking up meanings in context. They probably heard it on a horror movie once and put the term in their pocket after they picked up on the character’s body language changing once the term was uttered.

Losing an ESFP for Good

A sure-fire way to get an ESFP out of your life is to make them act quickly in a way that will put someone or something they care deeply about at risk. If we can urge them into action and also hit at the deep insecurity of their inferior function (Introverted Intuition), we’ll find a gold mine. I would suggest making yourself vulnerable to attack and getting hurt because of something the ESFP did. We need an option that will make the ESFP feel guilty for the consequences of their actions.

You might, for example, choose to spend a seemingly innocent night with your friend that goes awry. Find a way to make them responsible for your house catching on fire. I don’t care if that means telling them to put something by a burner that’s on or filling your sink with gasoline and asking them to light a match nearby. Play innocent. Get away from your friend and set up a pile of ashes along with something metal you typically wear. Make it seem like you went up in smoke during the fire. Your ESFP cannot keep saving you if there is no one left to save. Better yet, they’ll have to live with their (false) guilt when they, in actuality, did absolutely nothing wrong.

If you’re not one for faking your own death—it comes with some complications, that’s understandable—the principle remains the same. Maybe you ask your ESFP friend to help you move boxes and you subtly trip your friend, causing the ESFP to drop the box they were carrying conveniently on you. They feel guilty. Terrible. You say you’re fine, but the ketchup covering your feet says you’re lying. Cause enough of these “accidents” and, if the ESFP cares enough about you, they’ll keep themselves away from you. The introverted feeling side of the ESFP cares about preserving life. If it seems to the ESFP that they are ultimately making your life worse and will only continue to make your life worse, your ESFP will let you go!

Find out more about ESFPs: 7 Ways That ESFPs Make an Impact

ISTP

Tired of your quiet, steel-faced ISTP friend showing you up?

You can’t even go to the grocery store together without them doing five backflips and saving somebody from a burning car.

I’m sure you thought things would be different initially. You thought your ISTP friend would be like the “average” human, talking about their family, favorite corduroy jacket, and pastimes. Instead, you’ve slowly come to realize their focus is on constantly scanning their environment to manage the upcoming apocalypse with physical precision and skill. They never talk about their body count, but you know it’s there, lingering in the hundreds of wall scratches by their coffee machine. Yes, those scratches. The ones you never asked about but always knew seemed fishy without a cat in sight.

Your ISTP friend can’t give you two full sentences in response to a question, but they sure can pack a cemetery. It gets old though, doesn’t it? Always waiting for the ISTP to get back to your side after the last plane crash aversion?

Never fear! I know how you can stop the madness.

A big sell to an ISTP is autonomy and the fact that you allow your ISTP the freedom to leave your side is the problem.

ISTPs pride themselves on their ability to do what they want when they want and can easily take care of themselves. It’s their Dominant Introverted Thinking (Ti) and Auxiliary Extroverted Sensing (Se) that grant them this “lone wolf” tactical advantage. Very capable. Very Street Fighter. Very Jigglypuff when angered. However, with Dominant Ti comes Inferior Extroverted Feeling (Fe), which makes ISTPs a little insecure about the feelings of others and also puts inter-relatedness as a lower priority than their introverted autonomy.

In simple terms: ISTPs don’t want to be around people all the time, especially not people who are emotionally taxing.

If you can find a way to force your ISTP friend to be around you 24/7 while you (a) act like you’re two years old, and (b) treat them like they’re two-years-old,  you will have all the elements you need to keep them away from you

Here’s How to Begin:

• To set an ISTP trap, take them to an “escape room.”
• While they’re figuring out the logical puzzle (they’re oddly great at these sort of problems), have someone weld the door from the outside. Of course, they’ll hear it and know something is off if you don’t mitigate their strong sensory abilities with loud music and ample air fresheners, as you should.
• Once the ISTP solves the puzzle—which they will—allow them to try and escape. Watch them open the door. Beat on the door. Look around the room with no windows in frustration. That’s when your prey is ready for you.
• Be as needy, emotional, and taxing as possible. Work your tear ducts. Try to open the door yourself after they’ve tried themselves. Pretend you’re hurt and limp around. Baby them and offer to do everything they attempt to do to get free. Convince them of all the terrible possibilities ahead. Tell your ISTP friend everything that will go wrong because they can’t get you out of the situation. If you can target their weaker Tertiary Introverted Intuition (Ni), which worries about the future “going wrong” on a good day, they’ll make a hole in the wall to get away from you.

Discover more about ISTPs: 10 Things You Should Never Say to an ISTP

ISFP

Ah, yes. ISFPs. Those silly little firecrackers.

I bet your ISFP friend does that whole “I’m innocent, but could destroy you without notice” thing. That’s probably why you’re asking advice from me.

They’re bombs, those ISFPs. Cuddly, teddy bear bombs. Something the Joker might toss at his love interest Batman on occasion.

You might see an ISFP and think “aww,” until you’re the one left in pieces on the floor. ISFPs get to you. It’s in their blood. ISFPs have Dominant Introverted Feeling (Fi) and Auxiliary Extroverted Sensing (Se), which on a basic level leads ISFPs to follow their inner compass towards taking action. That highbrow “doing of things” might include ballet, archery, competitive bobbing for apples, or just generally being a connoisseur of delightful foods and experiences.

Your ISFP might have, on occasion, forced you into a pottery class (they can’t help that they didn’t know it was a Ghost-themed one). Or there was that time they took you to a local hole-in-the-wall restaurant which was literally a hole in the wall. By “forced you” I mean your ISFP enchanted you with their inner vision of how your shared moment would progress.

Were they correct? I’d guess you had a 50/50 shot of enjoying what they said you would. But it’s likely you do not share your ISFP’s tastes in experiences given you have come to me for some direction on ending said experiences. Ending forever. Exterminating. Silencing. Consuming, digesting, and never eating again. Ending, ending those experiences.

How to Get Rid of an ISFP:

If you’re dealing with that good, old, “healthy,” Se-aware, run-of-the-mill ISFP (your friend would probably hate being labeled within a generalized classification), I would advise you steal their paint brushes, ballet slippers, electric lute, and fancy shoes. Find whatever unique items your ISFP uses to make their way in the world and bury their treasures inside of a CEO’s desk at a Fortune 500 company. They’ll never know what hid them! And what hid them was you.

ISFPs do not like having their sensory pleasures taken away, nor do they like having to put in extra effort to obtain what they want. Once your ISFP knows you’re the culprit of their losses, they won’t trust giving you their time. You will be set for life, little birdy. Fly on.

Discover more about ISFPs: 10 Things That Excite the ISFP Personality Type

ESTJ

Is your ESTJ friend reminiscent of Mary Poppins wielding a sledge hammer?

Are all of your “problems” that don’t seem like problems to you taken care of when you don’t want them to be?

No worries! We can change that!

ESTJs pride themselves on completing tasks promptly and efficiently. Your ESTJ friend’s Dominant Extroverted Thinking (Te) is to blame for their incessant need to accomplish things. With this preference (and our own goal) in mind, we want to cause Te roadblocks. We want to make your ESTJ feel like they are walking in tar where they are normally zooming through life.

Slowing down an ESTJ won’t be easy, but I have some ideas for you!

One way to really turn off an ESTJ is to mess with their expectations of reality. An ESTJ’s Auxiliary Introverted Sensation (Si) gives them a sense of what is “expected” in their day-to-day reality. It makes your ESTJ generally comfortable with things you probably aren’t: household maintenance tasks, bureaucratic paperwork, and tying their shoes so they don’t trip. If you can disturb their Si expectations, you’ll also disturb their Te capabilities.

You might, for example, place some slimy oil on their shoelaces so that every time they go to tie their shoes, the tie comes undone. Simple, mischievous, and highly annoying for someone who expects reality to go their way.

If your ESTJ is responsible for someone—a child, multiple children, pets, the aliens they keep tied up in their backyard—then targeting the efficiency of those people will cause an even great stir. Imagine oiling up the shoelaces of your ESTJ’s child. Your ESTJ isn’t going to allow their child to walk around in shoes that won’t tie. They’re too responsible of a parent for that. Assuming you make every pair of shoes inaccessible to the child, your ESTJ will be forced to go out of their way to reassert normality—their child having a functional pair of shoes—and thus be slowed down.

Feel free to apply this shoelace concept to anything. Does the ESTJ need coffee in the morning? Great! You can use that! Mix garlic powder into their coffee when they aren’t looking. Hazelnut garlic coffee? Yum! They’ll have to remake their coffee. This might be a little thing, but the little things add up for ESTJs. Keep at it and you’ll get on their nerves.

Just make sure you tell your ESTJ friend that you were the culprit to their slow demise, after they yell at their innocent shoes and coffee of course!

Another tactic you might try is forcing your ESTJ friend into deep uncertainty. ESTJs typically aren’t the most comfortable with highly emotional people. ESTJs have Inferior Introverted Feeling (Fi), which means they aren’t the most expressive themselves when it comes to emotions as it’s more of an internal process. They feel uncertain and stressed in highly charged, emotionally expressive situations. If you can be extremely dramatic about things that make little sense to be upset about (“it’s raining and I don’t want it to rain, so my life is ruined for the rest of eternity”), your ESTJ friend won’t be able to help you and that will frustrate them beyond belief. Your ESTJ friend feeling useless will lead to them distancing themselves from you. Now, that’s a problem solved!

ESFJ

If Mrs. Potts from Beauty and the Beast wasn’t a ceramic kettle, she’d be the pleasant version of your ESFJ friend. But sadly, not all ESFJs can be ceramic. Or kettles. Human flesh ESFJs are the best we’ve got and the best we’ve got can be a problem unless we find ourselves at a bake sale.

Your ESFJ friend—the one you’re trying to beat off with a rubber spatula that still has cupcake batter on it—is the best we’ve got.

You’re sighing. I’m sighing. We’re all sighing.

I can hear your mother—who is probably an ESFJ—asking, “What’s so bad about ESFJs anyway?”

The ESFJ Dilemma

In a nutshell, ESFJs are “super nice” and “super organized”. ESFJs are the party planners, banquet planners, wedding planners, funeral planners, execution planners, buy-a-doughnut-for-the-fun-of-it planners, and so on. If a group is getting together for any reason, the ESFJ is going to take control of the room and make it socially warm and inviting. This sounds all nice and dandy like cotton candy, but I’m sure you’ve witnessed your ESFJ friend’s death rays enough to know the truth behind that kind façade: ESFJs gossip and police others like no other.

The ESFJ’s tertiary Extroverted Intuition (Ne) has something to do with this given that it recognizes patterns and potentials. But because ESFJs are primarily oriented towards people, gossip is especially intriguing for them to both create and circulate.

Who cares if the pattern is ultimately true? While an INTP or ISTP would favor the truth over what could be potentially going on,  the thinking side of the ESFJ isn’t always prompted to fact check ideas for itself. Average to unhealthy ESFJs are more naturally attuned to passing out “relevant” information to help people than painstakingly checking the information for accuracy.

I’m sure you’ve gone to visit your ESFJ friend with a simple, “Hi, how are ya?” only to be met with stories about people doing the right or wrong thing in this or that way the length of Santa’s Claus’s Christmas delivery list. They probably ate your ear off telling you stories about people you know, stories about people you’ve never heard of, and stories about people who are dead and might resurrect themselves after hearing your friend say their name for the fiftieth time since their passing. Does your ESFJ friend know they’re secretly conjuring the dead? Probably not. They don’t pay much attention to what they’re doing themselves given your ESFJ friend’s utter focus on what everyone else is up to.

If you want to continue learning every minute detail about every person in town, go ahead, stay friends with the ESFJ. But if you want some freedom from the abyss of others, if you’re more in line with Jean-Paul Sartre’s “hell is other people,” then I can save you from your ESFJ socialite.

If your ESFJ friend has a strong tendency to pass around information about other people, other people are more likely to pass around information about them. One plus one is two. Simple. If you can tell other ESFJs a rumor about your ESFJ friend—a rumor your ESFJ friend would be mortified by—your friend will shun you from their circle once they find out you were the one behind their social downfall. Rumors are false, but they seem to circulate better if it’s based off of something true. My advice would be to target something the ESFJ is insecure about and create an outlandish story about it. Make it fun. Perhaps your ESFJ friend has told a few close friends about the sailboat ride they took one summer that ultimately caught on fire due to their poor navigation skills.

You can use this.

Tell every ESFJ you find in your midst the real story of what happened that day. Tell them your friend stole the sailboat from a nun and crashed the boat while trying to get away from law enforcement. I mean, come on! What kind of person steals from a nun? Worse still, who steals from a nun and catches the boat on fire?? You know it’s messed up. I know it’s messed up. All the ESFJs we know, know it’s messed up. The story will get around and your friend will annex you from friendland once it does. This is your opportunity to send your ESFJ friend down with the ship. Have fun with it!

ISTJ

Do you really want to give up your “in” at the IRS? I’m sure we could work something else out! Your ISTJ friend can’t be so bad you would risk your financial future.

Wow. It must be that bad if you’re willing to go to these lengths. I get it though, I get it.

All you ever wanted was a cup of joe with a fluff of whipped cream on top made by a dashing barista who sings the theme from Friends absentmindedly. “I’ll be there for you,” your awaiting caffeine whispers. But then your ISTJ friend breaks through your reverie, dutifully reminding you of how your typical behavior of overpaying for a half-filled plastic cup of ice gives you jitters ever time you drink it and the obvious solution is to avoid buying the coffee entirely.

It’s not exactly your ISTJ friend’s fault they relay the results of your habitual choices given their brain is wired to do that. Your ISTJ friend has Introverted Sensing (Si) paired with Extroverted Thinking (Te), which makes them consider the past in order to find the most effective way forward for themselves and others.

When your ISTJ friend tells you not to purchase that cute squirrel plush you will never look at after the first week of snuggling it, they’re not being rude, they’re being practical and realistic with (shameful) evidence about your typical movements in the world.

Truth hurts. Ugh.

ISTJs are all about helping you make choices now that “set you up for the future.” Gross, right? Who wants someone in their ear telling them all of the ways they could improve on their situation and have a better life?

No worries, darling. I can help you remove yourself from these ISTJ chains.

Your ISTJ friend may hide it well, but ISTJs are actually doing quite a bit of work to mitigate their fears. Inferior Extroverted Intuition (Ne) prompts ISTJs to question the future and the number of things that could go wrong down the line if they are not handled now. Your ISTJ friend probably has an emergency fund, backup plan, or cushion for nearly every category imaginable because the future is so uncertain and so scary.

If they lose their job? Emergency fund. If their spouse leaves them? Emergency fund and coupons for pints of ice cream. Zombie apocalypse? Emergency fund and ISTP bestie to keep them alive.

ISTJs know what they need to prepare to keep themselves afloat during the worst times of life. However, they’re not so great when it comes to acting in-the-moment in situations they have never experienced before.

In order to end your friendship with an ISTJ, you need to get in the way of their safety nets and thrust them into the unexpected. No one likes their safety and security interrupted, but ISTJs especially do not. Throwing an ISTJ into a situation an ENTP would love would prove a solid route to breaking free of your friendship. ENTPs thrive on chaos, being the devil’s advocate, and relying on emergent outcomes that aren’t clear cut or measurable. ISTJs are, at the very least, heavily annoyed by those realities. It might be enough to take your ISTJ to a Comic Con, followed by a larping session, followed by improv classes, followed by time in a ball pit with young children. Do it all in the same day.

ISTJs need time to post-process their lived experienced. Don’t give them that.

If you can overwhelm your ISTJ friend with new experiences that don’t have clear-cut rules or expectations with the expectation that you will always expect your friend to participate in these activities daily, your ISTJ friend will start an emergency fund in the event you come around again. You devil, you.

Find out more about ISTJs: 7 Things ISTJs Experience in Childhood

ISFJ

You know that “nice” friend you keep around? The one you keep forgetting the name of? They’re the ones who bake you a pie on your birthday, seem mysteriously quiet, and then, out of nowhere, relay a story about their family member in excruciating details – every time you meet.

You can thank your ISFJ friend’s Dominant Introverted Sensing (Si) and Auxiliary Extroverted Feeling (Fe) for that. These functions make ISFJs masters of cataloging details about the people they care for. That care is what we’re going to target first.

If you’ve walked in the park with your ISFJ friend for a time, you’ve probably picked up on their passion for their family members and their intense fear of the unknown. We’re going to stir these two elements together to make a beautiful poison!

I’m not telling you to kidnap their family and take them to a yacht in a secluded area near the ocean, but I’m not telling you not to do that either. Wink.

Definitely do that.

ISFJs like to keep up with the people who matter to them and work to have consistent contact with everyone on their love list. If you can break up the consistency your ISFJ friend expects by harnessing entropy and chaos, you will effectively cause massive anxiety.

Have you seen an ISFJ freak out when something unexpected happens? A nail in their tire? A coupon that doesn’t work? Imagine taking their family away. Yup. We’re doin’ it. Your ISFJ friend will spiral into an oblivion of worry. They won’t stop scouring the earth for their loved ones until they find them all.

When your ISFJ friend asks for your help on their journey, don’t simply say “no.” Spice it up! Say something like, “No, I’m not goin to help you because this is a lost cause. You have no ability to find them and don’t even know what you’re doing. You’re too incompetent for this.”

You’ll be hitting on their Tertiary Introverted Thinking (Ti) insecurities by basically confirming one of their worst fears—that they aren’t smart—and confirming their inferior intuition’s suggestion that they are an individual who lacks potential, even when their family is at stake. Generally refusing to help your ISFJ friend—who would help you if the tables were turned—is a nice touch as well. If kidnapping your ISFJ’s family, challenging their intelligence, and questioning their human value won’t get them out of your friend circle, nothing will.

Find out more about ISFJs: 7 Reasons Why You Need an ISFJ Friend in Your Life

ENTP

Chain them to the desk in a secluded room with tax forms and the stub of a No. 2 pencil.

I’m starting with the solution on this one because it’s so obvious as to be laughable.

Why, might you ask, is this the solution?

ENTPs, as you know, given the friendship you are trying to destroy, are vibrant, creative, mischievous types that are “on the go” intellectually as much as they are physically. These sly types have Dominant Extroverted Intuition (Ne) and Tertiary Extroverted Feeling (Fe), which makes them prone to ample brainstorming and ideating with others.

The ENTP’s Achilles’ Heel

I’m sure you know that ENTPs like to get a rise out of people while also expanding on their own knowledge and considerations. ENTPs don’t mind slowing down to consider the logic of something, but they really, really hate doing the same thing twice. Inferior Introverted Sensing (Si) comes into the ENTP’s mind as a begrudging reminder, hinting that paying the bills and completing other maintenance tasks will ultimately help them in the long run. You may have noticed your ENTP friend ignore this hinting on occasion. Okay, fine. They ignore it usually, because if something isn’t new and refreshing, it isn’t worth their mental space.

Forcing an ENTP into a position where they are forever stagnated in place without fresh experiences would feel quite limiting to them.

Imagine removing your friend’s most inspiring sources of energy—people and ideas—and forcing them to stay put. You’re smiling. I’m smiling. Your ENTP friend is not smiling. Good. This is how frenemies are made.

Getting the ENTP into a desk in order to chain them down might seem difficult, but we’re not dealing with an ESTP here. Your ENTP’s sensory awareness is limited. It wouldn’t be that hard to dare your ENTP to sit at a desk and pretend to be their least favorite teacher. You could pull out a pair of handcuffs and they probably wouldn’t even flinch, thinking it was part of the charade. I’m sure the SJ school system felt like being chained to a desk in their eyes.

Your ENTP values creativity. Use that! They’ll know the restraints are not a joke when you leave the room. The tax forms seem a nice touch as ENTPs typically hate paperwork and also seem to have a greater preference for lengthy, written language as opposed to numbers and tables that seem much more in alignment with Extroverted Thinking (Te), which just so happens to be their Critical Parent shadow function. Whereas ISTJs might find some time in peace with an empty data table relaxing, an ENTP would go absolutely insane after a few hours. Ah, insanity. It’s about time to give your ENTP friend some of their own medicine, isn’t it?

Find out more about ENTPs: A Look at the ENTP Leader

ENTJ

I will begin by saying are you sure you want to do this?

There’s a reason the vast majority of villains are ENTJs (with INTJs coming in a close second, those little angels).

An ENTJ’s Dominant Extroverted Thinking (Te) and Auxiliary Introverted Intuition (Ni) make them goal-oriented, efficient, capable, forward-thinking, and futuristic. ENTJs are basically everything you don’t want your enemy to be because even if they lose a battle now they may be well on their way to winning the war down the line.

If you want to end your friendship with an ENTJ you’re going to have to mitigate future potential attacks on their part, because if they come after you, they will come after you hard.

The best approach would be to make yourself seem like a useless entity with no relational value. If an ENTJ doesn’t think there’s something to gain from you, they will not waste their precious strategies for revenge on you. We want to make you the Patrick Star of your ENTJ friend’s life, basically.

The Roadblock

The problem is that having no redeemable skill might put off their outcome-driven side, but they still have the capacity to care deeply about you, due to their Inferior Introverted Feeling (Fi). ENTJs don’t attach themselves to many people and when they do, it’s a big deal. The fact you are friends at all says something. Breaking that bond is going to take more than just fumbling with every task, accidentally driving their Escalade into a lake, or making obviously terrible fashion choices in front of them.

No. You need to show your ENTJ friend that being attached to you in any way will hurt their ability to achieve externally (Te) and feel comfortable with their attachments internally (Fi) now (Se) and for the foreseeable future (Ni). It’s going to take a full-frontal attack of self-demeaning proportions, but I believe in you!

To convince your ENTJ friend that you’re a lost cause, you must show them that remaining friends with you means they are participating in the sunk cost fallacy. The sunk cost fallacy, if you didn’t know, leads people to prioritize the amount of time they have already invested in something over the fact that the costs have proven to outweigh the benefits. An example of this would be to spend yet another year trying to “make it” as a blogger who writes recipes revolving around taco seasoning, despite trying to make money on said taco seasoning blog posts for the last ten years and failing to make a dime. A rational person would see that after ten years, the taco seasoning recipes have got to go.

We need to make your ENTJ see that you’re the taco seasoning content. You are not helpful to their future despite their prior investment in you.

Possible ways to showcase your uselessness and lack of relational appeal would be:

• Not showing up when they need you
• Ruining every task they potentially have for you
• Going out of your way to make sure their projects get screwed up when you’re around them
• Bad-mouthing anyone the ENTJ cares about
• Not showing any ambition or goals
• Emphasizing that the past is the only measure to be counted on
• Arguing against innovation
• Refusing to acknowledge technology’s importance
• Lacking good reason
• Lacking agreeableness
• Being overly dramatic and emotional about small things
• Lacking optimism for anything but what’s tried and true
• Shooting down the ENTJ’s ideas
• Emphasizing the appeal of things ENTJs find immoral
• You get the point

The goal is to assimilate a thousand small fractures in the system so that your ENTJ can synthesize your general relationship experience and come to the conclusion that you’re dead weight. It’s going to take some time, but eventually, the ENTJ will realize their time is better used elsewhere. The compound interest of evil deeds is a beautiful thing. So beautiful.

Find out more about ENTJs: Understanding ENTJ Thinking

INTP

Wait. Do INTPs even have friends?

On the off chance they do, I might as well reveal the antidote for relieving yourself of these kooks.

Okay. For the one person (or A.I., we don’t discriminate here) who has an INTP friend they don’t want out there, this one is for you!

If you’ve been around your INTP friend for any length of time you’ve probably noticed their deepest attachment: the internet. I’m sure you’ve seen roughly 50 tabs open on their laptop at one time on any given day. I’m sure you’ve seen this same horrendous behavior on their phone. This is where we are going to start snipping the friendship cords, dear one.

Steal their technology.

It’s not going to be enough to hack your friend’s technology and regulate them to only one open tab (though it would annoy them and be great fun to watch), you must physically remove their intellectual weapon. Try anything you can to cut your INTP friend off from their food source: information. INTPs are constantly taking in information with their Auxiliary Extroverted Intuition (Ne) so that their Dominant Introverted Thinking (Ti) can synthesize and categorize it. Cutting an INTP off from new information is like cutting an INTP off from themselves. Technology is a great hit point for that draw.

If you’re friends with an INTP, you’ve probably noticed them sending you way more messages than having in-person meet ups anyway. INTPs get stuck in their comfort zones because of Tertiary Introverted Sensing (Si). By comfort zones, I mean desk chair.

Sinking your INTP friend’s motherboard might be enough to end your dynamic for good. But if your INTP is still coming around you after their laptop is sending bubbles up to the lake’s surface, tell them the reason you’re destroying their access to the unknown is because they’re a bad friend. INTPs have Inferior Extroverted Feeling (Fe), which makes them worry quite readily about their effect on others. You’ll be hitting them where it hurts—right in their little, baby heart that hopes to be Good, but doesn’t know if it’s Good—by directly pointing out their insecurity.

If your INTP friend still manages to find a reason to be around you after all that, throw your friend into the lake with their technology. INTPs can’t swim. Trickster Extroverted Sensing (Se) makes INTPs go limp whenever they have to do anything even slightly physical.

Explore more about INTPs: A Look at the INTP Leader

INTJ

How many more picnics are you going to share with your INTJ friend before you accept that their basket will only ever contain an immaculately arranged chess board for you to share? Not cookies, not sandwiches, just chess. Chess and only chess. Chess. Forever chess.

I can hear your pieces clattering to the board in defeat from here.

How many more days are you okay with losing your Queen while your INTJ friend pierces your soul with that imposing, visceral stare of theirs when all you wanted to do was enjoy a pleasant moment in the park?

It’s not your INTJ friend’s fault they have to pull out a strategy game during every moment of downtime they find themselves in. INTJ’s are naturally fueled by strategic, long-range thinking. Their intuitive and thinking sides work together to measure future movements, grasp patterns, and assess how best to approach fluctuations given a particular goal or desired outcome.

Sadly, your friend hasn’t figured out that bringing cookies in their picnic basket would help them keep your friendship through the sharing of warm feelings and melty chocolate chip morsels. INTJ’s aren’t exactly comfortable with an abundance of affection. They’re heavily uncertain when it comes to Extroverted Feeling (Fe) considerations given it’s their Trickster function. Picnics are not their specialty. Your INTJ is not an ISFJ and we can punish them for it.

INTJs are easily overstimulated due to their Inferior Extroverted Sensing (Se). They might want to rule the world, but they don’t exactly have a grasp on doing things of the world, as ESTPs and ESFPs do. First they map things out, then they think, then they conceptualize. When an INTJ gets around to doing something, they’ve envisioned it for hours or days beforehand. If we want to discombobulate your highly ordered friend, we need to throw them into situations where they have to “figure it out” as they go along.

I would recommend tossing them into a den of snakes, dropping them into the middle of the ocean, or taking them to a five-year-old child’s birthday party. They will not survive these trials easily and they will not forgive you for throwing them into the muck of reality without forewarning.

And how is it that we plan to get your INTJ friend into the fray of life?

It’s not hard to get an INTJ to go along with you so long as you play into their natural mental preferences. Tell them you want to attend a conference that focuses on a topic of mutual interest like building a dream life, managing money, converging fantasy with reality, or writing with ethics. Then, tell them you do not want to go alone and that it would mean something if they came along with you.

It’s dirty, it’s cheap, but like all you can eat shrimp for $4.99, it gets the job done.

Give your INTJ friend an itinerary and on the way there to set them up with a particular expectation, then veer off the road and take your friend to the designated location of doom. Your INTJ friend always has a plan and now you do too: destroying them. Ready to watch the world burn?

Find out more about INTJs: The Underrated Kindness of the INTJ Personality Type

ENFJ

Has your ENFJ friend come up with yet another idea for what could be classified as a cult? Are you tired of your ENFJ’s legendary pursuits?

ENFJs want to make an impact, but they don’t always realize their impact comes with strings attached: “We can change the world so long as you trust me! I cannot tell you why you must be a part of this, but you must trust me. This will happen, so you better trust me.”

Unlike ENTJs who have Dominant Extroverted Thinking (Te), ENFJs do not anticipate nor pursue the future based off of figures, numbers, and steady progress which end in clear results. ENFJs do not use such tangible, reasonable, reliable methods to achieve outcomes. Instead, they use good vibes and tarot cards…BUT IT SOMEHOW WORKS FOR THEM?? Scared yet? You should be.

ENFJs have Dominant Extroverted Feeling (Fe) and Auxiliary Introverted Intuition (Ni), which makes them long-term visionaries who care about the collective good. ENFJs have a strong sense of what’s possible, but their particular brand of intuition (Introverted Intuition) says things must lead to a particular, singular goal. Many ENFJ goals entail personal growth for the individuals around them, which will ultimately uplift the collective. An ENFJ’s deepest heart tends to go for the largest societal problems: abuse, disease, poverty, fast food places without drive-thru windows, tyrannical governments, dollar stores that sell things over a dollar, reproductive rights, and more.

If you want to end your friendship with an ENFJ, my advice would be to use logic to dismantle their forward momentum. Standing “in the way” of ENFJs with suggestions of all the practicalities that go wrong will not work. ENFJs can react fairly quickly to practical realities and world changes. They will work twice as hard to meet their ends if obstacles arise. Logic, however, can derail ENFJs given their Inferior Introverted Thinking (Ti).

A solid tactic to ruin your friendship would be asking pointed, logical questions about the ENFJ’s vision while they are on their public podium. ENFJs do not typically feel confident explaining themselves in cold, hard, factual ways on the spot. If you can publicly challenge every statement your ENFJ makes and explain how those thoughts are incorrect, your ENFJ will get beyond frustrated and never invite you to their pep rally again. ENFJs are not stupid, but if you want to be free and clear of their influence over you, make it seem like they are stupid to themselves and do it publicly. That Inferior function makes our job easy, doesn’t it? Just prepare yourself to be the bad guy. We’re all the villain of someone’s story, after all. Welcome to h-e-double hockey sticks, Darth Vader.

ENFP

Did your ENFP friend show up three hours late to your coffee date for the eightieth time? Has your forlorn heart grown cold watching your Frappuccino turn to mulch in their stead?

ENFPs will chase the most interesting novel idea present at the moment and, quite often, it seems you have not fallen into this category. Don’t take it personally. The “most interesting thing” on their mind could be anything from the thieving habits of squirrels to the latest obituary. What counts as interesting to your ENFP friend may actually be part of the reason you want to skedaddle from the friendship.

I’m sure you’ll miss their unicorn-themed sunglasses and flights of chaotic wit, but you’re doing the very thing ENFPs value by getting away from them: putting your own needs first. And let’s be real. If your ENFP friend is like most, they are probably devastatingly inconsistent. I doubt your ENFP has remembered to pay their taxes for the last several years, let alone meet up with you at a particular restaurant at a particular time on a particular day of the year.

To avoid future disappointments and to find your way out of a friendship with an ENFP, all you need to do is take away their inspiration. I know this is easier said than done given ENFPs can be moved by things as inconspicuous as snails, but they don’t find value in everything nor are they competent in every area. ENFPs, quite obviously, are not ISTPs. By this, I mean that ENFPs will not be inspired by static, concrete information that can be manipulated with logic and will. If we can throw your ENFP into a situation where they are forced to manage the reality of their situation without any foreseeable imaginative workarounds, you’ll be on the fast road to freedom

As you’re sorting through potential options for your getaway, be sure to choose a torture scene that removes ENFPs from their greatest strength: other people. ENFPs tend to be inspirational and make friends fast. We wouldn’t want your ENFP friend to get out of our trap through relatability and intrigue. We need them stuck somewhere alone with an entirely mechanical problem that takes physicality, not talking other people into solving the issue for them. You want to force ENFPs into a situation that a heart cannot solve, but pure logic can.

ENFPs love their stories, so might I suggest giving them a bit of their own medicine? I don’t mind making things poetic. The Myth of Sisyphus is fair inspiration for us. In Greek mythology, Sisyphus is a figure who is forced to roll a boulder up a hill indefinitely. The moment Sisyphus reaches the top of the hill, it rolls back down. Sisyphus must start again and again, doing the same thing for eternity.

Does this sound in line with how an ENFP wants to be moving within the world? Absolutely not. So it’s perfect! We can use this!

I would suggest giving your ENFP decaf coffee instead of their usual high caffeine dose and kidnapping them, or, perhaps, stealing them away while they sleep. ENFPs aren’t very aware of the sensory realm and probably won’t notice you tossing them into the back of your car. Take your ENFP friend to the large, metal hamster ball with air slits you DIY’d for just this occasion. Lock them inside the ball—which just so happens to have wallpaper on the inside that reads, “you’re welcome” in glowing lights, accompanied by your signature—at the bottom of a crevice with hills on all sides. It’s safe to say your ENFP will not be able to get out of their metal contraption, let alone roll it up the hill very far in the first place. Your ENFP friend will never forgive you for locking their butterfly heart inside a horrific workout machine. I’m sure a cage never sounded so nice. Your time is now safe.

Find out more about ENFPs: 24 Signs That You’re an ENFP, The Visionary Personality Type

INFJ

Are you tired of finding ominous tarot cards in your car? Are you done with the permanent sense of foreboding that follows you whenever your walking crystal ball INFJ friend is around? Their dark and mysterious aesthetic is nice at a poetry slam where everyone dresses like crows and pretends to caw in agony, but it’s not so fun when you’re just trying to eat your waffle in peace. You look up from your mound of syrup and your INFJ friend stares back across the table at you during one of their “moments.”

Creepy, right? The zone outs?

Fear, nevermore! This friendship is not forever! I have the answer you’re seeking. I see it in the cards! All you have to do is follow this method.

The Method:

INFJs aren’t big fans of following clear-cut, detailed routines. They’re intuitives, after all, and are more in touch with evolving mental patterns than repeatable physical actions. They are dreamers more than doers. In fact, I’ll tell you a secret: INFJs hate it when their dreams don’t come true. INFJs build (and attain) precise visions of the future so long as they follow the path their intuition has laid out before them. They trust in their intuitive knowing and believe in grand concepts like universal human unity, manifestation, and the power of the unconscious to bring about their desired life. INFJs aren’t always as great at acting spontaneously in the physical world; they’re not SP personality types, after all. But they do aspire to accomplish greatness. An INFJ’s actual ability to make their dreams a reality doesn’t always play out as expected, however.

This is where we strike!

If we can disrupt the space between your INFJ friend’s dreams and reality by making their desired “manifestation” impossible, we’ll have them doubting the most key part of themselves and hating you. Win-win.

For our tactic to work, I hope you’ve been listening to your friend after their return from psychosomatic exercises and meditation retreats. It’s solitude that helps the INFJ’s desires and dreams percolate and come to the surface. We need to know your INFJ’s deepest ambition in order to thwart it. I would guess your INFJ friend’s grand vision takes some form of wanting to help people live more harmoniously than they do at present.

Does your INFJ want to solve world hunger with regular donations to humanitarian efforts? Great! We’ll make sure the people stay hungry by transferring their money to bounce house enthusiasts.

Does your INFJ wish to become a doctor and cure cancer? Great! We’ll scramble your friend’s transcripts so they’re never accepted.

The goal here is to get in the way. Be a wall to your INFJ’s sense of fate and determination. Typically, this is fairly easy to do in a practical way. INFJs aren’t always aware of the practical steps behind their deeper visions. Generally, ruining an INFJ plans will frustrate them beyond measure. Especially if those plans are close to their heart.

If you’re looking for a cherry on top, I’d advise setting up a rave at their house while they’re attempting to plan their vision. INFJs become overstimulated by sensory input fairly quickly. Your INFJ ex-friend will be begging you to leave and hating you for messing up their humanitarian efforts.

Find out more about INFJs: A Look Inside the INFJ Mind

INFP

INFP friends. INFP friends. INFP friends. These passionate citizens will do whatever it takes to fight against evil and defend the underdog they are feeling sorry for in the moment. I guess “fight” is kind of a strong word. Is it a fight if they just say they care about something rather than doing anything about it?

Your INFP loves the environment, but do they really? Are they sure? (Please question them about their values and ethics this way, it really gets them going.) Go ahead. Support your INFP’s environmental position. Try to encourage them to save their money instead of buying yet another book (those poor trees!) that they’ll only partially read before stacking haphazardly on their shelf. They just might end you.

Are you tired of being an accomplice to deforestation? Are you tired of every emotion under the rainbow ticking like a time bomb whenever your INFP friend is near? I can help. INFPs tend to care quite a bit about the things that matter to them. This is a result of Introverted Feeling (Fi), which causes an elaborate, internal stir whenever an INFP witnesses something they care deeply about, which may include things like injustice, disenfranchisement, or a cheesecake. Fi is a tricky function because you’re not always sure what your INFP cares about until you step on a land mine. If you’re trying to ditch your pal, the best course of action is to purposely find and step on those land mines (gold mines, in our case). Do it repeatedly.

Does your INFP find eating ducks, taxing the poor, or drinking milkshakes on a Tuesday abhorrent? Awesome, find a way to do those things and support those things while you’re in the INFP’s company.

After you’ve proven your terrible character to the INFP over a long enough span of time for their Introverted Sensing (Si) to accept that you suck, you may just be home free. If that’s not enough, I would suggest burning their books and taking away their art supplies. You will be cutting them off from the creativity they naturally crave and you also will be destroying the only proof that your INFP accomplished something other than feeling deeply, which they tend to worry about anyway. So long as you challenge an INFP’s values and whether or not they are actually living them out, you won’t be friends in no time!

Find out more about INFPs: Your INFP Personality and Your Enneagram Type

What Are Your Thoughts?

What do you think of my super easy ways to avoid an uncomfortable friendship? Let me, and other readers, know in the comments!

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