Does my INTP coworker like me..?
Hi! INFJ (21F) here. I have a coworker who’s an INTP (30M). We work in separate departments but they overlap a little, so we see each other throughout the day.
He’s been at our company for about 5 months now, and for the past 4-ish months we’ve slowly built this interesting relationship that mostly consists of insulting each other lol. It started when we interacted over genuine work stuff, and somehow it slowly turned into banter between us, with him telling me I’m terrible at my job, that I’m the dumbest person there, blaming random things on me, telling me my stupidity inspires him lol, and I always throw it right back at him so we have this playful back-and-forth dynamic.
But what stands out to me is that he seems to always find reasons for us to interact, even when he doesn’t have to. He comes to my work room to ask me “work-related” questions that I happen to know he didn’t actually need to ask me. Sometimes he’ll come over just to talk, and he’ll sit next to me and suddenly start engaging me in conversation about politics, ethics, philosophy, etc. Basically from 0-100 real quick lol. It absolutely fascinates me. Sometimes, if he notices I look stressed, he’ll give me dry and practical advice. When we don’t see each other for a few hours, sometimes he’ll text me with a work-related pretense, or call me on the phone to ask me a question he already knows the answer to.
We have a lot of ongoing inside jokes between us, and we engage in dark humor with each other, which is pretty fun and I don’t find that with a lot of other people.
Just yesterday while we were joking around, he said “be a good girl and just do it” while smirking, and that actually made my brain short-circuit lol, but I have no idea if he was really flirting or not. We also hold a lot of eye contact with each other, whether we’re joking or talking about a more serious topic. I rarely do with others, or at least as intensely as I look at INTP…
So I guess I’m wondering… from an INTP perspective, is this just what happens when you find a coworker genuinely fun to talk to? Or is repeatedly seeking someone out, remembering little jokes, debating with them, etc., something you’d usually only do if you were at least a little interested?