Yay! Actual practical information based on lived experience! In the zombie doorslam thread that will never die! Will this, like much of the other practical bits of info here, get lost amidst the dysfunctional clusterf*ck dynamic or not? Let's see.
this hidden system [Fi] seems scary because you don't know what's in there, so do expect your interactions to simply 'not work' sometimes, and it's not anybody's fault, and there's nothing wrong with that.
This "
sometimes we just won't get each other and that is perfectly okay" thing (including but not limited to the above slice of it) is IMO a basic crucial tool that those of us in actual real life INFJ-INFP relationships seem to get when it's articulated ... but this basic information is not in any way informing INFJ/INFP related dialogue in this thread, and I believe it has already come up before here.
The thing to keep in mind is, Fi gives you a lot of room to breathe, and you can be a little quirky with your requirements and be off the hook without having to explain anything. To put it tactlessly, "That's how I am. Deal with it" is a pretty acceptable answer.
This is quite true in my lived experience with my INFP. It's been quite a revelation for me! It wouldn't have occurred to me to do this at first - I was always looking around to see if there was agreement for using "how I am" in mutual decisions with her. That just annoyed her. The clearer and stronger I am on "That's how I am. Deal with it," the better things are between us. In our case, it seems to be a seriously mutually beneficial way to interact - she seems to like it
way better when I do this, and knowing I can do this helps me get centered in Ni-Se percception as I very much need to do in my own trajectory. I had to learn this through experience over time, though. I wish someone had told me about this years ago!
However, this is key for me:
I have to be able and willing to say it and mean it. This means that on my end, I have to know the "how I am" information, be relatively centered in my own ways of perceiving and doing, and be able and willing step up and say it clearly without needing her permission or agreement This IMO is a big part of why any INFP-INFJ interaction that actively
undermines the INFJ's ability to get centered enough to get clear and step up and say this kind of thing will have unnecessary stress, in my experience. Telling an INFJ that we don't know or understand what's going on and should use Fe-aux more and/or listen to how the Fi-dom sees it without giving us the space to figure out where we're coming from can be a problem. Similarly, framing our choices in such a way that us having
boundaries indicates something wrong with us, rather than being normal necessary space that needs respecting - also opposes what's useful for healthy interaction between INFJs and INFPs.
In large part, this thread is a classic example of what not to do in this regard.
Of course, if actual healthy interaction between the two types isn't the goal in any interaction, this kind of practical information is irrelevant.
I feel like I keep saying the same thing over and over >_<
I think that it's very possible that the INFP-INFJ discussions in this thread are not actually
about supporting learning for healthy interactions between INFPs and INFJs in real life personal connections including mutual care (of any sort). It seems to me that in this thread, much if not all of the dialogue on these things is firmly inside the middle ground/middle layer area - that place that those of us in actual real cross-type relationships know is the absolute worst place for INFJ-INFP interactions to take place. All information that doesn't feed back into that middle space seems to gets lost. From my perspective, this is a huge energy drain and an unfortunate waste.
If there aren't basic shared goals (and quite possibly, some level of real mutual care) underneath the different processing paths, there really isn't a place to stand for healthy INFJ-INFP learning and interaction IMO. And I do suspect that's what's going on in these parts of the dialogue here.
