tl;dr
I advocate:
1. Getting her to join some group activities with guys, per [MENTION=9811]Coriolis[/MENTION]
2. Gently talking to her about her insecurities, and why they exist (ENFP should love this)
3. Gently talking to her about her too-high standards, and drafting a list of "reasonable" standards
I think that having you there to talk to is great, as well. I wish I'd had a sister to bounce ideas and thoughts and fears off of.
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I feel this is what it's going to take for her. Some guy whose interested enough and confident enough to see through her bitch act, and really take her on. The age + experience thing is another great point. She's just so innocent, you know? Like she literally knows nothing, and I'm terrified at the idea of something going wrong for her. And it definitely does occur to me that some people assume the worst about her behavior simply because she's old enough that she should know how to reciprocate on some level, and the fact that she doesn't makes her come off as even more of a frigid bitch.
Well, and honestly, probably something
will go wrong for her. I've made some HUGE beginner's mistakes with my boyfriend and I know I've hurt him more than is fair (thank goodness he has very clean, clear boundaries, which prevent him from getting mired in hurt the way I would). I think the most important thing for her now is to move forward but take her time, and aim for a
good first relationship.
The ENFP tendency is to want every relationship to be the one-and-only, be-all-end-all, but I think a more realistic goal (perhaps an example of gentle, constructive Te pruning?) would be to try to find a sincere, upright guy who will treat her well and give her a good taste of a realistic relationship, even if it doesn't work out forever. I think part of what she will need to accept, if she hasn't already, is that you can still have a
good,
meaningful first relationship without it being your lifelong relationship. There is something magical about your first relationship, after all. They will always be the first, even if not the last. And the first is all about learning - I think it's really not all that important to have the "perfect" guy for your first relationship. Most important would be to have someone willing to help you grow.
She definitely wants a Feeler. [...] He also has to be extremely attractive. [...] He'll also have to be pretty fucking smart, or he's not gonna make the cut either.
!
Well of COURSE the NFP wants it ALL.
Does she have many opportunities to interact with guys relatively close in age? If not, it might help to find some. Not dating or bar situations, but more like hobbies, clubs, community/volunteer groups, etc. where she can spend time with guys in no-pressure situations where dating is not even on the radar. This might help her relax around guys more, get to know a few just as friends, and see where things lead.
Yes! I strongly second this!
I started making good guy friends at work after college, very much in contrast to how I'd always surrounded myself with girls or the occasional not-so-masculine guy. I think that really opened me up to how to hang out with male peers. I think with the sx 6 drive - the "strength and beauty" thing - you're pretty much always opposed to guys. I always tended to see them as academic competition, and often just mean, brute force that needed to be overcome - especially hyper-masculine guys. Hanging out with guys at work really taught me what
real men are like, instead of just my competitive bully archetypes. They're cool - sometimes easier to hang out with than girls! And that opened me up more to being willing to go get a couple drinks with my now-boyfriend, because he was fun to talk to. He wasn't
threatening (until he made it clear that he was interested in me as more than a friend, lol).
I don't know how to create a connection because usually connections find their way into my life on their own. Making one is a process I haven't really trained on. [...] I think it is important to know the main ideas she wants out of a relationship, but she may not even realize she is destroying potential relationships based on nothing but assumptions. I realized I was being very cruel that way.. I wouldn't want someone to assume things about me without really getting to know me. [...] You have to understand what people need, and you have to know what you need so you can communicate it. Men aren't psychics, or miracle-workers.
Yes, this, absolutely. I'm still working on understanding what I need in a relationship, and working on articulating this. It's very challenging to the old forest of Fi, with its mossy roots dug so deep but so hard to see and trace. And it's hard to direct that F outward, to the other person, when the concept "relationship" conjures so very many NeFi linkages (and all in her head, since she's never had any real experience!) Sometimes it's hard not to objectify relationship potentials, as cruel as that sounds. It's easy to accidentally minimize them into a role, and Te-reject them because they do not seem to perfectly fit that role you have created. But that's the thing about that role - is it what you actually need? Or is it what you think you need? The pretty picture NeFi weaves is not always matched by truth.
But most men aren't fans of this whole "lets see how many flaming hoops I can make a man jump through to get my approval."
Truth.
Though, it's in part self-protection (and by extension, protection of potential mates). 6s protect themselves via avoidance (phobia) or pre-empting (counterphobia). I don't think it's a conscious measure - more like what Zarathustra said about being a front for insecurity, combined with the inevitable NF idealism.
Give her the proper time it takes to develop Fi(by feeding it with Ne) and *know* what it wants, or I guarantee you, disaster will ensue. [...]
Force Te on an NeFi that isn't ready, that hasn't had the time to process or do its homework, and you will wreak a lot of emotional damage, on all parties involved. Her Si will be so traumatized, she'll never wanna repeat the experiment ever again. [...]
Once again, give her NeFi time to catch up and prod Fi to get to work already and demand from Ne that it feed it real information instead of 'what if' scenarios. Right now she's not NeFi-ing, she's NeSi-ing (what if, omg, it'll be horrendous). Si is retaining all the scenarios Ne feeds it that are a disaster. And Fi is used as a barrier to keep that from happening as it's fueled by both her Si nightmares of reality and the idealistic dreams she's gathered from tv, books and her own aspirations. If anything needs to be pushed, it's Fi. Her Fi needs to learn to merge reality with her dreams in a for her acceptable way, and that takes time. As for Te, tell that thing to sit on its ass, behave and wait its turn, for realz. If she's smart, it'll get its marching orders when Fi is good and ready and not a moment sooner.
I agree... I do think Te needs to be used to trim the NeFi idealizations and lower her entry threshold, but gently. Fi is currently being used as a blunt defense mechanism, and Fi and Te together are creating a bizarre set of high Fi standards versus grim, quickly-dismissing view of reality. Te actually needs to be
let up in the sense that she is doing too much external pruning. Te in ENFPs is the "let's throw EVERYTHING OUT" function, to save us from the Ne overgrowth - that's not what needs to happen here.
Zarathustra said:
She needs to realize that when she starts acting like a fool when she's around a guy that she's attracted to, well, that's what every guy is going through when they try to ask her out. So who the hell is she to judge them for their potentially botched approaches that don't meet her exacting standards? I mean, she finds herself a catch, but she's not exactly smooth in this regard, right? Well, the single most important rule of morality is reciprocity: if she turns into a bumbling idiot when around someone she's attracted to, then she needs to realize she has no right to judge others for being the same way. We all should already realize this, but perhaps she needs to have it very flatly laid out to her. That can serve as an opening to the next step.
What you're saying is a fair point, but I'm not sure it would get across to her in the way you're intending it to get across. The argument is a little flawed in that she's not the one doing the asking out - the men who come after her
are openly acting, so she has a right to judge. Does that make sense? She's not voluntarily subjecting herself to judgment, probably because she
knows she's not very good at it. She
can judge because they're initiating. Because she's not acting, she's morally exempt from judgment. It's not really a bidirectional thing.
What [MENTION=5494]Amargith[/MENTION] has said about treading carefully with harsh rationality is particularly important in this sense because, being reactive, a blunt "attack" could send her flying either far, far away from relationships - which would be eminently counterproductive - or so geared up to go that she will explode not only at Rex (who will be fine by virtue of being ENTJ, but would probably prefer not to have to deal with that), but possibly also voraciously hunt down some poor innocent guy and tear him to shreds - both results leaving her in a worse-off place than she was before.
Next, she needs to realize that a big part of her "exacting standards" and what not is a front to cover up her own insecurity. It's fine to have high standards, but it's not okay to use high standards as an excuse for inaction or to cover up one's own insecurities.
This is very true, and I wonder how much of this she's aware of already. I was
painfully aware that my constant rejection of relationships and ridiculously high standards (ie, you shall not pass) were to protect me from being humiliated (and to protect a guy from having a negative experience, too). It's interesting, though, that she
does explicitly want a relationship - I did too, but not in the here and now. I wanted my fairytale in the indefinite future, after I got myself looking like a supermodel and running marathons and working at the UN and all that jazz.
Anyway, I think it
would be a good idea to help her outline some
reasonable standards for a guy - no hard drugs, good sense of morality, steady job, respectful, etc - and maybe that will help her open her eyes to grasp that there can be excitement in discovering what a guy does that's totally different - better! - from what you expected.