Re disagreement: I think it might also have to do with the seriousness of the disagreement, as well as how emotionally charged it is. I find conflict much less uncomfortable than I once did. However, the degree to which I will delve into it often has to do with what I project the outcome to be. Maybe it's about efficiency for me. If we agree on a lot of the foundational aspects of something but disagree about the details or implementation, then it seems possible that the discussion will yield something useful. If not, then the whole effort seems like a losing proposition before it even starts and I'll withdraw. Just as I feel personally attacked if the sense of being in the same side isn't established, I also am uncomfortable with disagreeing with someone about foundational aspects of their idea/argument/plan, as it feels like I am personally attacking them and I'm not sure that I want to deal with all the projected fallout of that.
That makes sense, but realistically, you're going to really struggle to get that out of a FP because we take this part as a given. In fact, it's something that seems highly
inefficient to us. Like it's the boring, obligatory, ceremonial part you have to trudge through before you get to the good stuff. I guess in the long run it could save a lot of trouble and prevent needless arguing and tangential debates, but it's hard to convince us of that ahead of time. To us it's like doing business negotiations in certain Asian countries where the first 3 days are spent engaging in activities and talking about things that are totally irrelevant to the deal. Of course the whole point of that is to establish trust, good will, mutual respect and co-operation, but it can make Westerners want to tear their hair out in frustration.
I wish I knew an expedient way to serve this, without feeling like I'm saying, "yada, yada, yada...". I want to feel like I'm doing something productive and significant not just condescendingly patting someone on the head in appeasement. I need for such a process to be meaningful to me for it to make sense to me and to be an effective tool.
Similarly, if both parties are not overly emotional and more analytical, it feels more comfortable to express disagreement and to accept it without reading it as a personal thing. Emotion makes disagreement feel a lot more personal to me and I become less comfortable with it.
This also makes perfect sense, and it makes me wonder how it works for me. I think Fi just makes everything personal: both emotional and analytical content. Not necessarily as an affront but in that I'm very invested in it, or else what's the point of talking about it?
So basically, INFJs must be a lot better at compartmentalizing.
So I may withdraw from contact in a thread with someone I know I will not be able to productively discuss something with, yet engage with others. In my mind, I am respecting their space and protecting the future potential of our interactions, while to them it may look like a marked effort to devalue their ideas and promote others' or silence them by ignoring their presence.
Really? That is rather strange to me. Although, I guess I do a vaguely similar thing but would never describe it in such a way. Mostly I just shut my mouth and walk away before I say something I'm going to ultimately regret. I would never ignore that person; I just see it as having to protect the both of us from myself.
On the other hand, engaging in conflict that doesn't have a clear objective or a productive foreseeable outcome is exhausting and unnecessary to me. Is there a middle ground that can work for both parties?
There must be.
I think one thing is, NFPs (and NTPs too I guess) are often better sifting at through useful and useless ideas/information and generating a resulting response than Ni-users realise. By this I mean that when Ni users seek to limit the scope and outline the terms in the way that they need, they can go overboard and more prescriptive than they really need to be with us. Perhaps if the topic is aimed more at Ni-users, the higher the level of prescription, the higher the clarity, which in turn allows them to generate a better response. But with NFPs this create the exact opposite response; it stifles free thought and creates resentment. I'm actually OK about having some goals set beforehand in broad terms but not when there are controls on how to achieve them or if I feel as though I'm required to reach a specific conclusion. Perhaps if a INFJ is creating a topic of discussion or making a statement with an end in mind, they should be slightly more vague than they ordinarily would be. Creating a little bit of room to move to move within some boundaries can be really seized upon with glee by NFPs. It's like the difference between putting a kid in a straight jacket and telling them to go play, and letting them run loose inside a hall; allowing them to explore and discover the space themselves. This creates the relative focus and the establishment of the terms you need, but gives the NFP the sense of freedom that allows them to think freely within that. I guess we just need to be humoured a little more than you'd expect when it comes to figuring things out.
This makes me think back to what I was saying about how common ground is implied to FPs - I guess goals are implied for FJs in the same way. If you want to achieve a certain goal maybe you need to communicate that more clearly in order to keep us on track, but without outlining too many rules about how to get to that place. And I guess there must be a way for me to do the same thing for you guys but in reverse (however that would work).
I don't know, what do you think? Is this off-base or impractical to you?