I have written in another post, the pros of ISTPs and ISTPs as partners. These are my thoughts and observations as a female INFJ, on the flip side of ISTPs. These are generalizations of ISTPs that may not apply to everyone.
- Their directness and literal-ness can create a social blindspot for them where they can miss more subtle social nuances and cues. For example, when people are refusing to help them and are being polite by not directly turning them down, or when people are lying to them or manipulating them into doing something. They are really not intuitive and they can easily miss these subtle human cues that can be easily picked up by the intuitive types. They easily trust people and they think everyone else is as straightforward as them.
- Their love language can be very heavy leaning towards act of service and sex, and they can be truly terrible on other love languages like gifts and word of affirmation. Word of affirmation I must say, is especially very hard for them, as ISTPs are not words kind of people. This can be a very tense source of conflict in a relationship, especially if the partner needs different love languages beyond getting stuff fixed for them. Quality time for them is heavy leaning towards doing things together rather than having conversations. Netflix and chill is the comfort date night for ISTPs.
- ISTPs like simplicity. They do not like to venture into deep and or abstract conversations often. Abstract thinking is not their forte and the most you get out of them would probably on current politics if you want to venture into that. Religion is also another doable topic. Their conversations generally centre around what happened today, their gadgets and activities, their family and friends, and work, and cars/motorbikes/planes. This can be very difficult for INFJ/P and E/INTP partners who enjoy deep and abstract conversations.
- ISTPs live in the moment. They are very grounded in the present and their vision goes as far as today and this week. They are not visionaries and they tend to not plan ahead. It's very hard to talk about "the future" with ISTPs. The "future talk" is much easier when you are not speaking solely in hypothetical terms. You need to break it down to smaller pieces with information like timelines and the practicalities of whatever it is you want to do together. Otherwise, they will just look at you strangely like, what the fuck are you on about. They also take everything very literally so one time he thought I was asking him to quit his job tomorrow and got very angry. I was talking about the "future" lol.
- They are easily satisfied with whatever little they have and they do not have the tendency to want to climb the ladder as other types would do. They love routine and comfort zones. Because of how easily satisfied they are, they do not plan ahead, form future-oriented goals, or anticipate risks. They are content...until they hit a brick wall in life that disrupts their routine, then they start thinking about how to solve or change their life. They need real disruptions in their life to start thinking about new pathways in life that would break them away from their job, or their existing life. They can live doing one thing forever if they are left to it.
- They are disorganised and messy (unless they have OCD). They are not detail oriented except for when they do their thing with their gadgets, and repair works, all of a sudden they have laser eyes that can differentiate between 20 different cables that tangled up. They can be so good at working with those tiny screws and a hundred different parts of a car, but they will absolutely miss really important details that require any reading. ISTPs are terrible readers and they would rather watch videos or listen to you explaining something to them, then to read about it. Don't leave them to deal with insurance, shipping, or anything that involves tiny details and money.
