Ok, I'll bite.
But you did such an excellent, thorough job of covering various things that I'll be quoting some of it in agreement, and maybe elaborating and then adding a few additional things.
I see people usually describing Fe as being at work in group situations but I'm not really in that many group situations. When I'm at work, of course I have to deal with my coworkers but that's a very small group of people, usually about seven others I come into regular contact with. Within my professional life, I have an individual relationship with each person that is the primary basis for interaction, so I don't consider it group but I do recognize it as a particular culture. Any time you get a collection of individuals together, you've got a culture and that's a natural source of interest to me.
This forum is the largest group of people I deal with consistently. As far as I'm concerned, I'm not in enough large group situations to often see my Fe at work in a group setting, or rather the groups shift and change often enough that there's not often one set culture. I'm rarely in a situation where I have to deal with more than 10 people in one setting at once, but I'm often in situations where I have to deal with multiple individuals at once and that always has to be customized and tailored to the particular person.
Right. I'm actually not one who enjoys, at all, monitoring groups or doing the hostessing thing. That makes me distinctly uncomfortable and on edge, possibly because I would feel a need to be 'on' and attentive/aware of everyone and frankly that's exhausting. So I tend to shy away from that sort of thing and I also tend not to organize many group things, and definitely don't do parties.
That really speaks more to my not being a dom-Fe, though, I think.
Anyway. I am primarily 1:1 but I also see the context of each individual in the greater whole, and how they interact with everyone else on the team or in the group. This too is a reason I tend to get really on edge on the rare occasion when I set up a group thing with various of my friends who have not met before - i.e. I have my own circle of friends, which includes them, but they each of their own circle, and intersecting their two circles makes me nervous, only because I'm distinctly aware that they might not like each other. In fact what makes me nervous is I'm quite aware from the get-go what one's reaction is likely going to be towards the other, and vice versa, and obviously if I think one isn't going to be totally crazy about the other, it's like it somehow reflects back at me. Or something. Seeing as I'm the common denominator, I guess. Edit: Ooh, an example!! If I introduce Person A to Person B, and Person B says something that I know (based on what I know of Person A) Person A is going to have an adverse reaction to, *I* become extremely uncomfortable/anxious, as I'm now worried about Person A being bothered, as well as there now being a dissonance in the group as a whole. So it's not that I'm uncomfortable with the topic/content (as in my 1:1 interaction with Person B, we might have chatted about that and I myself am ok with it), it's that the topic/content is distressing Person A, Person A might be wondering why I am friends with Person B, what if Person A judges me for that or my relationship with A changes as a result, &etc. Stuff such as that that might be utterly baseless, but that's what's going on in my head.
Work-related stuff. I've said this before on the forums, but I don't consider my mode of interaction, and mode of communication, a huge definer of who I am. It's why I adjust kind of on the fly when communicating with one person to another, so yes, the 1:1 'dynamic', if you will, might be quite different from one person to the other, but my overall 'goal', I suppose, is to maintain clear communication and *make sure everyone is on the same page* in terms of understanding what is going on, or whatever, and to do that with varying personalities means the method of conveying the message is finetuned from one to the other. I guess that's where I see Fe come into play in more of a work/group setting... adjusting, on a 1:1 level, within the group, with all members. Trying to maintain a positive relationship with all. It's important to note that 'positive' does not mean happy&fuzzy&bouncy. 'Positive' is whatever level I'm able to communicate/reach the other person, trying to get at their level. So, I had an uber cranky and cantankerous fellow employee at one point, so I'd just play off of that a bit, and lightly play with her cynicism, more of my own cynical/dark side would come out at times, and I would agree with her basic points half of the time anyway, so we got along great. It's important to point out that from my perspective, I'm not going to totally be false, so if this cantankerous woman said something I happened to disagree with, I wouldn't agree with her, I'd simply note her point and acknowledge her views, but would then show her a counter view, and stand firm in that. This particular woman was actually relatively disliked/disrespected from an organizational/group perspective... she didn't sit well with most because her communication was frankly really poor and she basically ostracized herself from most as a result of her communication itself. The *content* of her communication? Oh, she was quite right on a number of levels. But the way she communicated it was so poor that she was disregarded. I think that's what happens with someone who has virtually no Fe at all.
I notice who cliques up with whom on the forum, how people tend to interact with each other. I notice certain people tend to group up in thread together, that certain members have often have life themes they keep mentioning, that certain members tend dominate discussions and how they do it, how out of the scores of regularly posting members we have here how only a handful come to be stand-outs, what brings people here, what keeps them here, what are member stakes in the forum (is it just entertainment to them, do they feel a sense of community, etc.), a bunch of other stuff that comes and goes...this is just some of it.
Totally.
Can't really add to this, but I'm distinctly aware of all of this as well.
I'm sensitive to ramifications, implications, and what is being communicated...what are my actions communicating to another person, what are my words communicating, what are my and the other person's discrepancies and consistencies? What are they saying to me, what do I expect of them, am I being reasonable, what can I realistically expect, what is most likely to happen between me and this other person, what kind of position am I putting them in, and conversely thinking do they realize what position they're putting me in.
Me as well. The downside of this is a susceptibility to control...being hyper-aware of the consequences of an action of mine, or how the other is likely to respond if I word something one way, and therefore getting caught up in anxiety and worry about my half of things (since I know if I would do something differently or word differently there might be a different outcome), and not being able to let go of their half and realize they're responsible for their reactions and I shouldn't be putting as much weight on my end. In the end I think it's a fine balance, and something I'm always trying to figure out. Needless to say this is a constant element of my existence - that fine line between realizing the impact I in fact DO have on the outcome and whatnot from my end of things, but also needing to learn to let go more of that too.
The 'am I being reasonable' piece is huge, too. This comes into play a lot. It's a big reason why I don't express most of my emotions/reactions.... I know very well they're of the moment, for one thing, so why needlessly express them when they might be a moot point a little bit later? Also, I definitely don't trust my initial reaction, a lot of the time, because I think I might in fact be unreasonable or I want to analyze why I'm reacting/feeling the way I am, to get to the root of it. And I might be quite unreasonable, in the end. You can also replace the word 'unreasonable' with 'unjustified', because that's a common theme too. Am I justified in having this reaction? etc. Which again is why I don't really show much emotion- mostly speaking of negative ones here - I need to go through the internal process of assessing what's going on, and trying to view the situation from all sorts of different angles.
I'm sensitive to power balances and tend to see people in relationship to one another and myself to another person. What am I to them?
What is this person typically like? What are their patterns of behavior and thought? What do they want? What are their beliefs and what's important to them? What are their reactions like? How do they typically react to XYZ? What is their baseline? How is this person contextually different?
What kind of tone do I want between me and this person or me and this group of people? How do I approach them?
How is this person or group of people going to fit in my life? How am I going to "zone" them? How much of myself, my energy and my thoughts do I give to them?
What is the context and history between these people, or between myself and this person? What's their background? How do our backgrounds intersect?
How likely is our pattern of interaction with each other to change, is it worth changing, am I invested enough to change myself enough to adapt? Are they invested enough to change?
What's going on in this person's head, why do they think the way they do, how aligned are we, where do we agree/disagree?
For myself I can't say the depth/number of these questions happens super often, unless it's more subconscious (well, and also, I'm really not out and about enough to be meeting/interacting with any great number of new people - I'm pretty removed in that sense
), but what I can say is that these are the sorts of things that are going on in my head when I'm determining how close we might be able to be, and whether I can see a possible friendship/relationship, etc.
Of utmost importance/concern to me, when it comes to relationships, is: Are we both viewing this relationship in the same light? If we aren't, that's a problem. If one sees it much deeper than the other, then that doesn't jive so well with me. I strive for and seek out relationships that are relatively equal. So. If I meet someone and we hang out for a bit, and I come to sense that they are more invested in it than I, that makes me really, really uncomfortable, as I don't see it as being very fair. I don't want to lead them on, nor am I comfortable knowing they want more, or are prioritizing it more, than I can give. So I very well will let it go or I will formally end it. Works the other way, too. If I am really invested in it, and they aren't, I'll extricate myself from it. I think I may be on the more extreme end when it comes to this sort of thing. While I think the 'everyone being on the same page' and 'are we both viewing it in the same light' has a lot to do with Fe, my particular manner of dealing with discrepancies might not be. I guess I just don't see a point of being in a relationship in a half-assed way, most especially when the other feels quite differently about it. It seems really 'off' to me. Selfish to stay in it knowing the other person wants more, and unselfish (in a bad/destructive way) for me to stay in one where I'm obviously not getting as much out of it as I desire or as I need.
This isn't to say I don't have acquaintances in my life, because I do. There are people who I chat with in certain social circles, who I only see a handful of times a year, and that's all it is - we don't really keep in touch outside of those pleasantries in group settings. That's fine. That's one thing. What I'm talking about above is the situation where one is wanting to build something deeper and change the nature of the relationship, and the other just isn't down with that, for whatever reason.
