Has it ever happened to you that a friend or family member told you someone liked you but you didn’t believe them? But then later you found out they were right?

This phenomenon is very common for people of the INFJ personality type, though it’s not exclusive to us. But why does it happen at all? Why are we sometimes clueless about how others feel about us?

After giving it some thought, I’ve come up with four reasons: humility, proximity, intuition, and denial.

Humility

You will rarely find an overconfident or arrogant person who doesn’t know when someone likes them. In fact, they’re more likely to assume someone likes them when they don’t.

Humility, on the other hand, can make us reluctant to even entertain the thought of someone feeling that way about us. We would rather believe they’re just being kind, not treating us any differently than they do others.

Sometimes we can even take humility to extremes and wonder how anyone could ever see anything about us worth loving. That’s definitely not an ideal place to be, but it’s one we sometimes go to. And if we’re in this place, we’re more likely to miss when others have special feelings for us.

Proximity

Has anyone ever told you that if you want to solve a problem, you need to distance yourself from it? That’s because it can be hard to see a problem from all angles when you’re too close to it.

Something similar happens when it comes to someone liking someone else. If you’re the someone this person likes, you see what they do around you from up close.

But you’re concerned about so many other things at the time—like speaking, making eye contact, and trying to seem somewhat normal—that you may miss some of the clues this person is giving, especially the subtler ones. (This is especially true if you’re not looking at them at all, either because you’re nervous or shy.)

But if someone is at a distance from you two, they can more easily observe things you might miss—things like the way this person looks at you, the way they lean toward you when they speak to you, and the way they seem to gravitate toward you when you’re around. It’s understandable that you would miss so much when you’re standing so close.

Intuition

If you’re an INFJ, I know you don’t need me to tell you this because you live it. Some people are gifted with strong intuition. It gives them insight into situations that’s not based on logic or reason. Instead, they pick up on other cues to arrive at the conclusions they come to.

Someone with strong intuition will often be able to know when someone likes you as more than a friend. They may even be able to tell before the person with feelings is aware of those feelings.

But everyone has access to intuition on some level. So, when someone you know sees someone interacting with you, they may just sense that this person sees you as more than a friend. They may or may not be able to say why, but something tells them that this person probably won’t be content just being friends forever.

Denial

It may seem to follow that people with strong intuition, like INFJs, would always know when someone likes them. That’s true in a sense, but due to other factors like low self-esteem and extreme humility, we’re usually in denial about others’ feelings for us. (If you’re like me, you can even be in denial about your own feelings.)

But, again, a person doesn’t have to have strong intuition to be in denial when they sense that someone likes them. All they have to do is doubt their own lovability.

If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll realize that sometimes you’re aware on some level when someone likes you. You’re just choosing not to believe it. A friend or family member, however, has no reason to be in denial. So, if they see the signs that someone is interested in you, they’ll tell you what they see.

They have no reason to sugarcoat it or deny the obvious attraction they’ve observed. They may choose not to tell you for any number of reasons, but that doesn’t mean they don’t know. And even if they don’t tell you, they may drop hints.

Also, if someone with strong intuition is nervous around this person who likes them, that will make it harder for them to consult their inner voice. Since intuition is quiet, too much internal noise will make it more challenging to hear. Thus, it is definitely possible for them to be genuinely clueless about this person’s feelings.

But, again, an outsider doesn’t have to deal with any of that noise, so they can easily consult their intuition, however strongly it presents itself.

Final Thoughts

If you’re someone who tends to either miss the cues that someone is interested in you or who is often in denial about things like that, try giving yourself a little more credit. You are a lovable person, and you would make a wonderful partner for anyone worthy of your time and affection.

Now I turn it to you. Why do you think other people know when someone likes a person before they do?

~ Ashley C.

Last updated: June 23, 2022