The ENFP Male and Traditional Masculinity

The ENFP Male and Traditional Masculinity

If you’re being flighty, unreliable, and changing your mind all the time, it can cause problems with your partner on an instinctual level.

The question I’m answering in this post was left in my YouTube comments and it is:

“Dan, I’m an ENFP male and I love your videos. Can you make a video on your thoughts on traditional masculinity as a male ENFP?”

Can I?

Yes.

Will I?

Reluctantly…because of all kinds of phenomena happening in society right now with people arguing over anything to do with gender or sexuality and all this kind of stuff, but I do think this is a really important topic.

Key Concepts: Masculinity and Femininity

Now for this topic keep in mind masculinity and femininity – those are concepts of sort of energy and a way of being that can relate to either gender.

Masculine energy in the sense is about being kind of action-oriented, going after what you want, being sort of stable like a rock, what you would think of like your traditional, manly man out of a 1960s movie.

Feminine energy tends to be a little more creative, flighty, changing and the two work very well in tandem.

In a relationship you can have a masculine female, you can have a feminine male, you can have whatever you want within that mix, but it does tend to work best when you have a polarity there.

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What’s an ENFP Male Like?

If you are a male ENFP, it’s quite interesting because the ENFP energy tends to be more feminine, tends to be more interested in emotions, tends to be changing very often in terms of changing emotions, changing moods, loving variety, loving newness, and loving experiences.

The masculine energy is often more focused on accomplishments, building things, getting things – your traditional sort of businessman investor type would be more of masculine energy.

Someone who wants to get into emotions and self-discovery and travel the world and, you know, have a coaching business like myself is probably not as much in the masculine energy.

This can create some problems in a relationship because some of the ENFP traits are not necessarily the most appealing to a partner, especially if you are an ENFP male and you’re looking to date someone who is more traditionally feminine who’s looking for someone who is more of a traditional male in that context.

3 Areas an ENFP Male Should Work On For Better Relationships

Being Reliable

The first thing I’d address is about being flighty or unreliable, or maybe changing directions.

This can be quite an ENFP trait.

The more my ENFP videos have gotten popular, the more of my coaching practice has been with ENFPs and I can tell you there’s no other group of people who will talk to you, tell you they’re interested in coaching, disappear for two months, then come back and hire you and be all over the map like that.

Now, that is not all ENFPs.

Some are super reliable and on the ball, but in general being kind of flighty, unreliable is an ENFP trait.

That is not an appealing trait in a partner. I would say it’s not an appealing trait in any partner, but it is especially not appealing for most women in a man.

I would guess, if you were to survey a hundred women around the world, being able to rely on their partner, having a partner they can count on who is trustworthy, who is going to follow through on the things they say they will do, probably rates pretty high as traits women are looking for.

So one thing that I’ve learned as an ENFP and this has helped me in relationships, it’s also helped me in my business life and my personal life, is to make your word mean something.

If you say: “I’m gonna get up tomorrow and I’m gonna go to the gym.” – do that, treat it like an extremely serious commitment. If you tell someone you’re gonna be there, maybe you come ten minutes late – not a big deal, but you’d be there, you don’t cancel at the last minute, you make your word mean something.

That has a huge impact in all areas of life, as I’ve said.

Now this is getting a bit into evolutionary psychology and that can be controversial in some circles but ultimately one of the things that evolutionary psychologists say is women are looking for stability and someone they can rely on for raising children because there’s a much more biological commitment.

If we’re just breaking down basic biology of what happens after sex – if a pregnancy occurs, men don’t have a lot of physical changes, women have a lot, so wired into us on some level is that women are looking for someone that they can rely on for help raising a child or multiple children together.

So they’re naturally looking for someone that they can count on and that’s going to be dependable, whereas men aren’t necessarily worried about that from a pure biology-evolutionary cavemen sort of point of view.

That’s the first area that I personally would look to work on or at least be aware that it is potentially a challenge in terms of relationships.

Or if you are a male ENFP, you might be a better match with more of a masculine female who is someone who is very reliable, who handles the finances of the couple, who earns good money and keeps you organized and you get to be your crazy creative self.

It’s not the route I went down, but that may be the right route for you if you don’t want to learn to adjust and make some of these changes.

Being Decisive

The other area I think a lot about is being decisive.

As ENFPs we change our minds quite a bit and that is fine in some cases.

Often when we do change our minds there is a reason behind it. I have a theory that we just do things quicker than most people, so we process things and we come to a conclusion a lot quicker than other people do.

But ultimately from the outside – if you’re looking at dating and you have a partner looking at you and sees that the first date you were on you told them about how you’re gonna become a YouTube star…

And then the second date you said YouTube’s stupid, you want to start a podcast…

And then on the third date you said you’re gonna be a freelance designer…

And then on the fourth date you’re going back to school…

Probably this person is going to have certain judgments about how reliable you are and how consistent you are in your decision-making.

So something to think about – learning to be more decisive and consistent can be beneficial in life overall.

It is definitely a part of being a mature ENFP. By mature I don’t necessarily mean age, but developing into your best self. I would definitely look at that in this aspect of dating and being the masculine male.

Being Assertive

The last area I’ll mention and – it’s being very traditional but you asked about traditional masculinity – is about being assertive and being a protector.

Generally people, men and women, like to feel protected but in the traditional relationship there is an aspect of the man as a protector.

A lot of women prefer to date a man who is bigger, that helps them feel safe and so being someone who stands up for themselves and who’s assertive is really important in this kind of context.

I’ve had experiences before when I’ve been out on a date and you have sort of a really creepy homeless dude strung out on whatever drug comes up and gets in my date’s face and – I’ll tell you and I think most women would agree – if, as the man, you don’t step in or try to do something about that, it’s not good for the sake of the relationship.

I have a friend and again…I hate that I keep going back on this but people are so looking to pick a fight these days – we’re talking about traditional senses here. I know that there are many women who can kick the crap out of me and many women who prefer to date like a little tiny guy and they protect the guy – all that, okay…

Talking traditionally here. I have a friend who told me about a fight he got into where he was out at this bar and this guy basically groped his girlfriend, was a complete ass about it and he started a fight and I asked:

“How many people were you with?”

He was alone.

How many people was the guy with?

Four.

But my friend’s response to this and – he’s not really a fighter – but his response was: “I had two choices – I start a fight and end up where I get my ass kicked for the night, my shirt gets wrecked or maybe I get punched a bit, a few cuts or for the rest of my relationship my girlfriend won’t respect me and our sex life will go to crap.”

And I think in many cases that is going to be the sense of people.

If you lose the respect of your partner because you’re being very flighty, because you’re being unreliable, because you’re changing your mind all the time or because you don’t stand up for yourself or stand up for them – on an instinctual level, beyond our education, beyond what we’re wired or, I should say, not what we’re wired, but what we’re educated now to think, it can cause problems.

Because a big part of how we’re wired is biology, just our lizard brain and that’s just how it is.

We’ve evolved over millions of years and we’ve only been really properly educated in that sense anywhere from the last couple thousand, to the last couple hundred, to last 20 years depending on what part of the world you live in.

Even then our education system is constantly evolving, so from a lizard brain perspective, that has a huge difference as well.

I look forward to reading your comments about this topic.

If you think I’m not crazy and there’s some good advice in here for an ENFP male and especially from my wonderful female readers, I would love your comments below just to either say:

“Dan, you’re a moron, none of that is true!”

or some reassuring

“Yeah, that’s actually true for me, that’s how I’m wired.”