This thing about asking questions, I don’t know, I think that this only tends to be a problem (for me/I only notice it) in the forum because written communication is much more deliberate and I’m a little impatient to get to the point (or what *I* consider ‘the point’). I’ve had FP friends, spent hours talking and it’s never really occurred to me, because just hanging out and talking is so much more stream-of-conscience. I can honestly say ‘â€get to the point!†doesn’t occur to me very much in person with my NFP friends. I’ve definitely had this thought about some people- but I usually don’t end up hanging out with such people talking for hours on end, and if it were a problem irl then (logic states) I’d gravitate towards being friends primarily with Fe’ers…..and that’s not especially the case, so I don’t know. I do know that in the forum sometimes I run into the problem of getting responses from Fi’ers that seems equivalent to the frustration Orobas has described with Ti’ers- that it’s like they skirt around the point and I can’t tell what they’re on about. They seem to hyperfocus on details which I can’t figure out the relevancy of- and if it happens as a response to me venting or looking for specific feedback (and if the convo is shifted towards my feelings instead of the question I asked, it can be agitating for the reason fid described) .
[eta:] It’s like dropping a car off at a mechanic’s to get the brakes looked at, being told you should call them around noon: then you call around noon and the guy says “You’re passenger door handle was sticking, so we took it apart to spray some WD-40 in it and we’re in the process of putting it back together.â€
Me: “Okay, does that have anything to do with why the brakes weren’t working?â€
Guy: “Oh no, it’s just that while the car was here we’d thought we’d fix it. And you’re left windshield wiper needs to be recalibrated because it’s going too far and scratching the paint.â€
Me: “And the brakes?â€
It’s kind of like the goal of the mechanic is to provide the best driving experience possible and ‘brakes’ is just a fragment of that; whereas my goal was to get my brakes working. It’s not that I’m not interested in ‘best driving experience possible’- but that’s something I figure out myself. I don’t feel the urgency in getting that done, I know how my mind works and I really don’t worry about an opportunity to scheme up “the best driving experience possible†passing me by (i.e. incorporating idealistic visions into how to treat people or handle problems) because it’s like that program is ALWAYS running in the background to me- I really don’t worry about whether or not I’ll get back to it, having loose ends in the internal world isn’t a source of contention to me but having loose ends in the external world most definitely is: I DO worry about that car being ready to drive when I need one. It’s kind of like Fi’ers like to bounce that stuff off each other and figure it out/speculate amongst themselves in the moment, whereas I just want the information I want and I figure out the ‘ideal’ on my own time. An FP might be delighted to hear about the door handle getting fixed, because they’ll be in that same “let’s talk about the perfect driving experience together!†boat and neither will feel the priority of actually making the car drivable first- and might even get offended or put off by the notion of only fixing the brakes- having loose ends in the external world isn’t as much a source of contention to them. Honestly, I understand how annoying a repetitive “But what about the brakes?†can be (and how dogmatic it can sound) because that’s what Te is to me, at times- an oafish killjoy.
But it can be grating if I’m exacerbated by something and I’m trying to get feedback- so maybe I’ll ask “Is it out of line for someone to expect this of me?- and the person wants to point out “You sound like it made you angry, what kind of relationship would you like to have with this person?†[Brakes = brakes. Brakes =/= ‘anything having to do with cars’.] I’m asking because I feel an urgency to settle some conflict I’m having with someone and I’m only looking for some objective measure of how reasonable my anger is about that immediate problem. Sometimes what the other person is expecting isn’t out of line and I’ll actually be agitated because the event happened on the heels of something else and I accidentally attach the agitation to the wrong thing- this is the kind of clarity I’m looking for. I settle the rest in private, and having someone point out my feelings really just feels superfluous and invasive unless they’re close enough to me.