Back from a busy week!
Mane said:
thereby rationalizing the process in which one's response to hearing about someone abandoned mid pregnancy or getting cheated on or loosing their kid or having their house stolen (different people btw) is to attack them
Here's where my difficulties having different conversations at the same time come in. If I were a in-person friend of yours, all you'd ever hear from me (unless you asked) was "Man, that sucks. What bitches/bastards. I can't imagine how hurt you are. Ugh, the nerve of some people. I hope their decisions come back to bite them in the backside." I'm not defending their actions at all - I think those actions are despicable.
But right now I'm both sympathetic to your bad experiences with your INFJ ex (I think I have the gist of the story from some other very long threads) and the other INFJ-scorched folks on here, and also an INFJ doing a what's going on behind the scenes/where did we go wrong meta analysis with you.
Maybe it's a personal flaw and other people have no problems hearing and being heard wearing two hats, but it's hard for me to interpret things 'correctly' if the two aims of receiving emotional support and receiving new perspectives and skills are present at the same time. My - problematic - efforts to juggle them result in monster posts going 'If I interpret X from perspective A, I'd say P, and if I interpret X from perspective B, I'd say Q. But wait - were you maybe thinking of perspective C, D or E? If so, R, S and T. Maybe. Unless F. And oh wait, Q and T are mutually exclusive, so please pick one?' And I don't think anybody wants THAT.
Mane said:
then do it: confront an INFJ with a mental image contrary to their ego. show me. if confronting INFJs honestly about real life misgivings is humanly possible, then this should be a piece of cake.
Haha, I like your conflating of 'humanly possible' and 'piece of cake.' I'll assume that's accidental. (Cause I did not say, nor did I mean to imply, that it's easy. I think it's SIMPLE, but whether it's easy depends on soooo many things.)
I wish I could 'then do it' on demand, but I can't.
For one, I don't have an actual beef with the other INFJs you call out (or anyone here), so it would be hypocritical for me to pretend that I do and impossible for me to pick an 'image contrary to their ego' that I think they need to accept. Keyword here is 'real life misgivings,' and right now I don't have any.
For two, Fe is a relational function - I don't have actual relationships with the other INFJs (nor anyone here), so I have no relationship weight to call on. This would also prevent me from 'calling out' anyone else I'm not in a direct conversation with, by the way, so it's not some secret INFJ-INFJ protection scheme. In other words: why should they care? They have no obligations to me.
For three, things like solving interpersonal problems in which someone really hurt someone is sacred, intimate, and relationship-dependent to me. You asking 'Well, if you say you are capable of {apologizing properly and taking other people's perspectives into account}, prove it to me by {showing me how you'd do it or ask in such a way that other people will do it}' makes the exact same sense to me as 'Well, if you say you are capable of {putting together a touching wedding proposal}, prove it to me by {going down on one knee for me or asking someone else to go down on one knee for you}' or 'Well, if you say you are capable of {meeting your spouse's sexual needs}, prove it to me by {doing the things you do together for me or asking someone else to display that behaviour}'.
So I think it's impossible. And even if it weren't, it would be too icky for me to comply, even in jest or to test a hypothesis. Sorry 'bout that. I can tell you HOW I'd do it, but I can't actually DO it.
I still stand by my claim that it's possible to tell an INFJ the truth about how you feel and what you want and have them accept that truth and change their ways. Some caveats apply, of course, like picking a common language to duke things out in and the INFJ having mental space to think so they don't act stupid, but I think they apply to all fights. If you're interested, I could sketch a hypothetical situation & point out what I think the essentials are.
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Segue to [MENTION=15291]Mane[/MENTION]'s quotes by [MENTION=6275]the state i am in[/MENTION], [MENTION=7842]Z Buck McFate[/MENTION] and [MENTION=20789]Werebudgie[/MENTION], and also [MENTION=5999]PeaceBaby[/MENTION]'s reply to [MENTION=20789]Werebudgie[/MENTION].
I think Z Buck and Werebudgie are talking about the same thing with regards to 'investing in POVs'. I think The state i am in was talking about something else (sounded to me like zie thinks it's HARD to interpret your words the way you intend them, not that zie refuses to do so because zie's decided to disinvest in your POV, but I could be wrong). [MENTION=5999]PeaceBaby[/MENTION], I'm interpreting your reply to [MENTION=20789]Werebudgie[/MENTION] of "Still, I palpably feel your hurting spaces. I feel you as a real 3 dimensional human being" as describing what you mean by investing, is that correct?
If so, can y'all who dislike those quotes elaborate a little on what you think investing or choosing not to invest in someone's POV (edited to clarify) MEANS?
- What does investing in someone's POV (or choosing not to) mean to you in terms of feelings, thoughts, actions, priorities? When they're in the same room with you and when they're not?
- Is investing in a person a 'requirement for mimimal decency as a person' or an 'above and beyond' thing? Whose POV should a minimally decent POV invest in? If the answer's anything other than 'everyone on earth', what are acceptable ways to distinguish? What percentage of the world's population would it make sense for you to say you're invested in?
- What's the least amount of effort a person needs to put in to show they're investing in someone's POV? What would be the key difference between 'minimally invested' and 'not invested'?
- And what's maximum amount of effort a person can expend before they become ridiculously overinvested? Or is there even such a thing?
Cause from other posts, I'm pretty sure that we all believe things like relationships (edited to add: of any kind) should be good for all people in them, people have the right to enter and leave relationships, people have the right to ask their partner to help meet their needs, people have the right to refuse their partners' needs-meeting requests but shouldn't expect partner to stick around if that happens too often, etc. None of us seems to be devoting 100% of their energy and time to meeting other people's needs arbitrarily and without discrimination. So I'm expecting there to be way more common ground than there currently seems to be.