Originally Posted by
silke
ESI confirmed lol. It is such an ESI trait to ask questions when someone is telling things about themselves, and you guys ask about the most obvious things possible, hence the reaction of surprise that you get from your MIL. This is quite possibly due to lack of Ti and repressed intuition. It feels startling that a person cannot connect the dots to that extent and asks questions about something that is that apparent.
I'd say you need to switch your communication tactic from asking questions, which only places an accent on your incompatible types, to listening, empathizing, and offering your own complimentary yet brief commentary. The ESE expects deep Ti understanding, which is what you cannot provide - only LIIs can - but by asking her questions you're only emphasizing this fact and broadcasting the difference between you. Each type communicates with others the way they expect their dual to listen and to respond. Keeping this in mind ask yourself: how would an LII communicate with an ESE? There is lots of information about LII-ESE duality posted on Wikisocion that will give you some pointers on this, with the general form being laconic non-intrusive respectful empathetic and understanding comments with an inquiry or two here. The LII does not ask a shit ton of questions because the LII understands - think of this as a form of deep Ti empathy - and especially not about what's right there present in conversation because the Ne-creative/Ni-demonstrative is able to weave that information together.
Good news is that she cares about you. There's not much weird about this. That's generally how ESEs demonstrate that they care for someone - by worrying about you, thinking about you and trying to talk to you - perhaps more often than you'd like it - as well as attempting to give you their advice and tell you of their own life experiences.