Sorry for the delay, I'm reaching the point where i am getting occasional doses of good quality not-thinking-about-her time (in total almost half a day) and i indulged in it.... but since now she's back on my mind anyway...
Your description of how you experience loyalty is really beautiful. I would imagine a SO would love to hear what you wrote. I've heard of other INFJs expressing great ideas of how a relationship should be. In the case I'm thinking of, the theory this particular INFJ outlined to her partner was truly wonderful but unfortunately she was unable to apply it to the relationship she was in. Did your INFJ try to live out her idea of family as a singular tribal entity?
My gut reaction was to say no, because when i am trying to think of things she actively did, and I'm struggling. I am trying to remember my happy moments in the relationship, and most of them where actually with my stepson. a few of them where me and her doing things that made us both happy, and that actually covers almost everything... then i remember a lot of happy moments when i was doing things that i knew made her happy, and i remember that i became content in doing a lot of daily things that made her happy - but each after awhile started being taken for granted, and eventually the lack of appreciation was replaced by whining and complaining about how it isn't good enough, and the content feeling would stop for me... and after those, i am trying to remember things that she did to make me happy, she always spoke about a lot of things she wanted to do to make me happy - something for a member of the tribe which wasn't herself - and i can only remember one thing: on my last birthday before we ended, she did the cooking (which i normally do). And the worst part was that she expressed resentment me for any time i took to do anything to make myself happy or anything that would require her patience with the things i normally did to make her happy... and that drove me insane.
but in truth she did - passively - she made sacrifices for me and for us as a family, some of them small, some of them huge, one of them was so unbelievable that i still have a hard time accepting it - we made a terrible economical decision in our last 7 months or so, we were going through a really bad time on all levels, and she went on an "economical diet", she was fucking starving herself for me, albeit slowly, and i didn't realize that she was.
and in retrospect i was actually a jerk about it - i remember asking her why she isn't eating the dinners i was leaving her in the fridge for after her nightshifts before they go bad, she said something about controlling the way she eats, she told me to eat them myself and stop making them, so i did.... and i didn't understand where we were, what was the state of our bills, why she's doing this and what she really meant... i actually thought she was dieting, and i was a complete jackass about that too - i tried telling her she was getting way to thin and that it wasn't healthy - but the real reason, and she probably knew it, was that i was losing physical attraction towards her. if i would have realized what she was doing i would have stopped her... there were so many other areas we could have made reasonable cuts in, so many other areas we could have saved money, not the least of which was going back on the big economical mistake we made to began with. i didn't actually go that this is what she was doing until she told me after the relationship was over. she probably felt very unappreciated for that, to say the least.
and here's the kicker - we both felt like doormats, we both ended up resenting each other.
we even both failed each other's testing:
this is going to sound crude, and it is, but there was a point towards the end where i really pressed her to get a BJ that started and ended as a BJ, all i wanted was just one time, where it wouldn't be foreplay, wouldn't be finishing something that started otherwise, wouldn't be 69.. just a BJ. she didn't understand why - she knew it took me longer and i seem to enjoy it less then sex, and i really do enjoy it a lot less then sex, but at that point it felt like she always had her reasons not to do anything that i asked for or told her would make me happy, and i just wanted her to do one thing for me that was entirely for me, one thing to please me that she was doing.
there was a point where she pressed on me quitting smoking, and i was struggling with it, 5 clean days here, 3 clean days there, again and again, but it was a constant war for me, and i felt she wasn't supporting me with it or showing any understanding towards it - which given that she never held any addictions i suppose she really didn't.... and she felt i wasn't making enough sacrifices.
in the same times i didn't feel the sacrifices that i was making where appreciated... i was constantly trying to get us to actually get time together with her nightshifts, and i haven't being that sleep deprived since i served in the second israel-lebanon war (which was much shorter), i was constantly missing my family and friends, she knew i was extraverted by nature and new i needed it and a context to meet people in the city, but i felt she wasn't willing to help me out or at least be patient with any household related stuff so that i might have time to devote towards building myself a social context, and after having anything i asked for declined so many times i didn't even feel comfortable asking for that for so long and by the time i did she has already decided to breakup and took that opportunity to tell me...
so that was our last 5 months: she was constantly hungry, i was constantly tired, i felt she wasn't willing to do anything, she felt i wasn't willing to sacrifice anything...and we each felt very lonely. there was no tribe by the end.
Well, I thought it might be healing for you if I could admit what the INFJ you were in a relationship with couldn't or wouldn't.
it did, thank you
honestly the way i see it is that I've done my mistake, acknowledged it, took responsibility for it, tried fixing it, explained to her the state i was under it, and she knows how rare it is for me to actually make such a mistake... and sadly i don't even expect her to do the same, it would absolutely shock me if she did, hell i still loved her even when i didn't think she could, she had many redeeming traits...
That's nice to hear.
i'm not sure if i still feel the same way - if i am still ok with the fact it would shock me to hear her acknowledge making a mistake or apologizing... the whole mentality of believing she makes no mistakes...
it started feeling like a one way road where i would have to fix her problems because if i didn't it showed i didn't care for her enough but where if i would bring up problems she would cry about how i am making her feel that what she's doing isn't good enough and then i'm devaluing her and making her feel like crap... and the only solution i ever remember her offering to any problem was her reevaluating the relationship and questioning whether it's fair to me or to her to continue, and this was fine very very early on when this didn't mean so much to me and i was able to trust her to be able to see my perspective - everything is solvable eventually, even if the solution isn't immediate, and the worth of the family is more than just this anyway and she'd usually change her mind - but later on, as debates got lost in semantics and my relationship with my stepson started taking over me and i emotionally stopped including the word "step" in how i felt about him - all i could hear in her voice was a speeding car heading to my family and i looked for the shortest way out, which was usually "yes dear"...
so for me, eventually i felt alone, i felt i had nobody to brainstorm with, nobody willing to work with me... and honestly i felt demeaned into a destructive cycle in which she was losing her attraction to me because a big part of it was my dominance and the less i trusted her the more i felt like i was losing any power within the relationship...
i'm somewhat conflicted about that - because in retrospect all i had to do was to trust her, to trust her capacity to evaluate the relationship reasonable and to trust her to respect my relationship with my son even if we don't end up being together - just like she'd legally have to if my name was on the birth certificate - and in the same time the fact is that in the end of the day, here i am, far far away. i would have being trusting her to not do the very thing she ended up doing.
the same thing can be said about how i mistrusted her regarding loyalty - if i wouldn't have questioned what she did to the one before me (with.. me), i might have never made her "feel like crap" about herself and thus never "pushed her" to seek reaffirmation from someone else and then resent me for being the reason she didn't follow through with it..
its sort of a chicken and an egg thing... and i am wondering if i did it wrong. in trying to understand who she is, face her with what i'm seen and tell her what i have problems with, did i create the problems, or was it simply me understanding the problems that where there anyway?
maybe i was approaching it from the wrong way.. Maybe the solution isn't facing the potential problems i see, its actually pretending that it isn't there, giving her a better image of herself to see within me and thus making her want to be that image?
on the other hand this whole thing is ingrained on what was in retrospect our worst problem - i took responsibility for everything because things i am responsible for feel to me like things i am in control of and can fix and avoid, and she shed responsibility from anything and blamed me for providing the reasons for her own actions without a sense of proportions because it would make her feel bad about herself.
and i was losing my respect to her - to me she presented herself as a vending machine with input[reasons]->output[actions], where increasingly more and more of those actions where hurtful and extremely inconsiderate, and even though she claims that she does take responsibility for things in general (not quite the flaw-acknowledger), i didn't see her taking responsibility for that critical part in the middle, as if she had never had any other choice or any other way to react... and it was because of me. And for years i fought it, but eventually i accepted that. Everything she did was because of me and everything i did was regardless of my reasons because any reasons she provided she did because of me too. i know definitions of maturity change, but to me this isn't how an adult thinks...
now i look at those times not so long ago where i was desperate to save our marriage and... i look like a little kid going crazy blindly trying all the button combinations on the vending machine to get something good because he remembered at some point getting something good from it, and it was no longer available. by not taking responsibility for anything and demanding that i will, she was objectifying herself to me... and that wasn't healthy.
and even now i see it floating - last we talked she said how difficult she finds it to let anyone else now into her life, and... of course she does, in the world where everything is someone else's fault, the only mistake to regret is letting them in, and then you grow afraid of letting people in.
and it's this very mentality that allows her to demonize me so easily.. for what? from her perspective it was for humiliating her, but for me it was expressing my feelings after she cut off my relationship with the boy i've being raising... where's the sense of proportions? why is it ok that even after i admitted i was wrong for not considering her when i was acting out of my pain, she would never admit that she was wrong for not considering me or even him? why is that ok that i can't expect that from her?
Less and less blinded by love now, i don't know anymore that this was redeemable... i don't know that i should have ever accepted it in the first place. My boy is worth it, but was she ever worth it?
She has to prove herself to you? Surely it shouldn't be only up to her?
If you communicate that up front I would imagine anyone who cares for you would respect it.
well, considering she doorslammed me blocked off all communication and told me she will delete and block anything i send further and will return anything i send... and so far it seems to be the truth, while in the same time telling me she'd hope I'll change in a few years... i am not quite sure how that would be. in order for me to prove anything i need her to prove that she's willing to be open to my perspective and listen, because otherwise nothing i do or say will matter to her by default.