I want to understand Fe. I appreciate it when my ESFJ friend is very accommodating and good at making everyone come together and feel accepted. Is Fe sometimes putting your own values aside so everyone can get along? I can kind of appreciate that but I'm not sure that's how I personally would want to live/what I value in life. Maybe because Fi means your feelings aren't as affected by your external environment so a little conflict here and there for the sake of someone's values doesn't bother me so much.
Yes. My infj friend was always hollering during an argument (for all I know it could have been a heated discussion or a moment of conflict but to her, straight up argument), that she did not like conflict and she did not want to fight.
When we both were younger I totally ignored it and continued to hold my ground.
As we got older I tried my best to come at it from a different angle to make it more of a discussion or a moment of conflict, but it still came across to her as an argument. When I say I tried, I mean I tried to keep myself even tempered, but as time continued if I wouldn't just agree (which I most likely didn't do enough), she would grow more and more defensive and start asking me what exactly it was that I was trying to say.
I never truly knew where to go from there because it was like okay I'm trying something different than arguing back with her and I'm trying to speak in a different way as to not agitate her and now she's asking me to be direct. When I had been more direct when we were younger she couldn't handle that either.
I understand where you're coming from as well about needing to speak up or get it across to peoole about how you feel and how you see things. That doesn't always blow over so well and I think sometimes for infps, or maybe just myself, it doesn't bother me.
I think when people avoid conflict, always grinning and smiling, it makes it easy for people to walk all over them.
Now I can sense things my friend said to me. That sometimes I come off mean and sometimes I come off being a bully. I thought now that I was older I had gotten better at it and I might have, but I still carry it with me or that I applied it to other things.
Still. Now that I'm older I don't sense it as bullying or even see it as that so much as in me just trying to use a tough approach to get someone going in the right direction. I grew up that way though with two parents who always tried to tough me up because I was so painfully shy. It took until I was 17 years old or so, my first job, to really break out of that she'll and start to develop a tougher skin.
So in my mind or in my experience yes there was conflict from a young age and it made me nervous, uncomfortable, worried, and scared -- but I managed to live through it and grow a spine. If I can do it, so can the next person.
But some people can't. I'm learning now to fall back on what I think other people are capable of because what I think is possible might not be for them. Or the approach for them will be sensitive care and not something like tough love or what can be seen as bullying behavior depending on what the individual finds bullying.
And there's just some things in life that I can't sit back and let happen. It's a good thing I'm not interested in politics the way some people are because I would sit there and argue my points until the world fell apart -- because somethings in life I just can't let go. I have to speak up for racism and sexism.
My INFJ friend told me once that she couldn't help me over racism and I found that to be insulting, but I never said anything to her about it because anything I said about any conflicting type of issue would grt her going. I live with racism directly in my life and she doesnt. WhIle she finds its wrong you will never find her speaking about it or even acknowledging it in a way that someone like me could notice. While I carry it around with me in my everyday life (to to the extent someone might imagine. Nothing like how online feminists on blog sites like tumblr carry on about anti men and things of that nature), she doesn't. I talk about it out in the open at times and I have opinions about it and she has the same opinions, but she chooses not to say anything.
Maybe she thinks it makes her appear mysterious to other people or carefree, but in my opinion it just read it like she felt I was getting worked up about something I couldn't change.
And I can't change it. She's right. Shes logical in that sense, but I can't sit back and not do my part to change an injustice I feel strongly about. I rather make my mark than bury it inside.
