That being said, the big picture/pattern I get from this is: Mane was experiencing alot of distraction and stress in a relationship, to the point where it was impacting his ability to get things done. He made the effort to analyze the situation, which showed him that his natural manner of sharing information was coming across to the other person as conflicting signals and/or indecision, causing her to be stressed and upset. He therefore identified a solution, namely to adjust his presentation style better to match the woman's hearing style. The even more top level picture: Mane identified a problem, analyzed the problem, and came up with a solution.
Since this problem involved another person, it is important to note that the solution requires no change or action from that other person. It is all Mane changing his own perspective and behavior, which in the end, is all he can control. Were I to offer unsolicited advice, it would be to share these insights with the woman in question. This might help her interpret Mane's explanations better, e.g. if he forgets to filter his remarks; as well as to understand this source of stress and drama in their relationship. It might make a difference that Mane and I are both NTs, but then that's the point. Different people interpret and react to situations differently, especially ones as subjective as interpersonal interactions.
I agree with your unsolicited advice, which I bolded. Rereading this thread brought home to me how important this kind of communication is because of the different perspectives. Since much, if not all, of my communication is infused with some amount of emotion, I sometimes have a difficult time telling what comes across as overly dramatic to which people. F's seem to react to the emotional tones differently than T's. And posting instead of talking leaves much more room for misinterpretation. Sometimes I can pick up on cues that I've come across badly, but sometimes I can't, so I would appreciate being told so that I can learn, and maybe some sort of compromise can be reached in which both people are happy. Admittedly, this is not the style of interacting that I grew up with, or am used to seeing practiced in my everyday life, so, I would guess that it might take some getting used to before it becomes second nature and communication ends up proceeding more naturally between both parties.
I also think this highlights a problem I've seen brought up time and time again between types here on the forum, where one type assumes that they are doing all of the adjusting and the other type isn't. It's a big part of this thread. What I think I've learned about this is that I don't always understand or hear requests for adjustment from other types
as requests for adjustment. And vice versa. Also, I might not see that the other type is already adjusting, because it's not the kind of adjustment I'm looking for from my perspective. This comes from seeing posts from INFJs asking for more information from Mane, and thinking that he wasn't answering those requests when I first read through, but seeing that he was answering on the second read through. This implies to me that Mane probably already did some adjusting in order to hear the requests in the first place, since our communication styles are different. And I think I see some adjustment from his natural voice in how he answered, too. But the first time through, I didn't see that adjustment and felt that I was being asked to do all of the adjusting for him. I also think that the adjusting I was doing wasn't the adjustment he might have needed from his perspective. (I hope this all makes some sense.) The possible flip side of this is that I might hear requests for adjustment where there are no requests. In any of these cases, if adjustments are made without some sort of communication, the adjustments might be missed, and go unappreciated, which might eventually lead to resentment.
So, it seems to me that all of this adjusting and communicating takes a lot of effort. I don't think there's any way around that. For anybody.
Which leads me to this:
I have no intention of being someone's punching bag, particularly if there is nothing productive to be gained by doing so.
Now, I think we INFJs punched Mane back just as much as he punched us. In order to write this reply, I went back to see if I had kept any of my old PMs to Mane, because I remembered PMing him a time or two after this thread had died down. What I remembered was that I had asked him about what he was trying to say, and his response was frustration because I still wasn't hearing him correctly. Well, I found the old PMs, and what I remembered wasn't quite what I found. Yeah, my memory was basically correct, but I had forgotten how defensive I felt at the time, and that defensiveness, along with a bit of snottiness,* was apparent in what I wrote to him. And yeah, there was frustration in his reply to me, but only after a lot of patient explanation that I didn't interpret correctly at the time because of my own defensiveness, and in reply to a dismissively worded statement that I had no more time to spend discussing things with him. And what I had completely forgotten is that his frustration finally got through to some part of me. I took it as a challenge and skimmed through this thread in order to try to prove him wrong. And I ended up PMing him again and quite snottily saying "You're right, I'm wrong." He actually took the time to PM back and ask me to explain, which I did, but rather reluctantly. So, that probably planted the seed in my head that I needed to eventually go back and reread this thread. Not so much to help Mane, but because I was pissed off at being wrong and had something to prove to myself. But that was almost a year ago. My motivation changed some over time.
Also, despite you taking time to say what you'd gotten out of the thread upon second reading, his response was not to engage with you on that in any real way.
His response was not to engage me
publicly. He did engage me privately. And he did so because he was concerned about the response I would get if he did engage me publicly, which was very thoughtful of him.
And I think this is a good lesson, too. One I recently learned myself. None of us has the whole picture of what's going on here on the forum. I can't follow every single person and every single thread, so my view of the forum is limited to what I focus on. And I can't know who's saying what privately to whom, so I have an incomplete picture of the relationships between people on the forum. I discovered it's not good to assume that my view of the forum, or the people on it, is the 'correct' one. I'm missing too much information.
When I read it first, I'll admit I just came away with an impression of emotional tone which I found dismissive and distracting. Upon rereading, I think he makes valid points, I find it an incredible amount of mental work to " sanitize" emotional tone out so that I can pay attention to the content. I am assuming that I even am over-reading tone into it that he may not even feel, but the style is very distracting to me. Even if I am not the recipient, it feels like being in a room with an angry person and having to navigate around them.
It does take a lot of effort. I didn't just go into rereading this thread cold, though. After it died down, and after the PM's a year ago, I would read some of Mane's posts here and there. It took a while for me to not add emotion to his posts, especially if the subject was INFJs. But his posts on other subjects were easier to read, and eventually, even some of the ones about INFJs were easier, too. After some time, I could read most of his posts as informative or sarcastic in a funny way. So, when I did reread this thread, I had already changed how I heard him to some extent. That was probably good, because rereading the thread was still very difficult--in trying to keep seeing it from his pov as much as possible, in dealing with all the emotions that came up, and in trying to analyze those emotions to see how they might relate to doorslamming. It was uncomfortable and unpleasant. Lots of ups and downs and, from my pov, craziness.
In order to not have to switch back and forth between pov's, I only read Mane's posts. But I also went back later and read his posts and all of the replies. It was weird to do that, because I could see both sides and felt a great need to pick one over the other in order to keep some sort of mental stability. In other words, there were times when all of it seemed rather unreal and I didn't know what to believe. Even after all of that, I had a hard time grasping some of what he was saying simply because I was exhausted (from reading and from real life stuff) and couldn't find the motivation to take the time to work it out. Overtaxed Ti on my part, I believe.
As for who benefited from my doing this? I know I did. I learned a lot about myself. Mane says he did. So, win-win.
Was it worth it to me to put out the effort? Yep. Absolutely. In many ways. Will it be worth it to anyone else to put out their own effort? I can't say. Maybe a good start would be to not define Mane only by the anger he showed in his initial post, and to try seeing him as a whole person instead of one emotion.
*ETA: When I reread my PMs, I was very embarrassed and ashamed of my attitude back then. It's embarrassing to me to write about it now and to let Mane, and everyone reading this, know what an ass I was. I thought about leaving it out, but part of the purpose of this is to show that being able to revisit past information while staying open to new information can be beneficial to any relationship.
