My parents

[Elro]

Temporary descriptions.

Starting with Dad, Mom coming up next.

Dad is the romantic of the pair. He is always finding stuff to give Mom, or setting up "toll bridges" to give her a kiss (or receive one), or doing her favors and then saying he spoils her, and such. He's a hard worker, both at his job (where he has to deal with people all day as a customer service guy), and at home (where he likes to do yard work, and will work until sunset). The yard work: usually he will grow peppers, tomatoes and other vegetables. He waters them every day unless it rains, basically. But aside from his job and the yard work he doesn't like to do stuff around the house much. He likes to get me to help him with the chores, even though I don't like to do them either. He tends to put them off as much as possible, while Mom will nag him about stuff that still needs to get done, and eventually he'll grudgingly do it.

He likes to play golf, a sport I really don't like at all, which I think he takes personally a bit. He'll ask if I want to play golf tomorrow, I'll say no, he'll get frustrated, like it's because I don't want to be with him, rather than the fact that I hate playing any sport where for every mistake I make I have to trudge 100 yards to make another one, getting progressively more annoyed (and thus less accurate ).

He'll repeatedly ask questions of me over and over, apparently forgetting he asked them two minutes before. He likes to go over every detail of what happened in his day, even if it's not very interesting. He likes history, and studies the Civil War a lot. He watches a LOT of TV - for as much time that I'm on the internet, he's watching television (often reality series, or comedies, or old movies).

He's not very technologically inclined - he needs me to baby him with the computer, and I have to repeatedly show him the same thing over and over for it to have a chance at sticking... even when he remembers there's a good chance he doesn't actually understand what he's doing, and when he talks about stuff or tries to do something different this becomes obvious.

He keeps up with his friends and family very well, calling many of them once a week or two, most every month. (If I go three days without contacting him I get a phone call and a lecture on the importance of staying in touch... although really I can understand that - they are paying for my education, after all. I'm just not great at staying in touch with people consistently.) When he's talking with friends he'll tell a lot of jokes and stories, and when it's time to leave he'll procrastinate a lot - he'll start to leave and someone will say something else and he'll get distracted and stay for another ten minutes or so.

When we're at home, he'll randomly come up to me at times and pat me on the back and observe, "That's my boy!" He uses a lot of puns, and seems to analyze everyday speech a lot like I do to make jokes on alternate interpretations (I may have picked this up from him). He likes to tease Mom a lot, generally using the same kind of jokes to do so. (For instance, most times Mom asks where we want to go to eat, Dad will suggest "Hooters!" When Mom is gone for a while and comes back, he will talk about how much we partied while she was gone, etc.)

Dad and I get on each others' nerves a lot, possibly because we are around each other a lot more than we are Mom. I tend to be critical of Dad, which grinds away at his nerves and eventually he thinks I'm just trying to get at him I think. (Usually that's not consciously the case.) Then he'll get mad, and he'll stomp around the house, and silverware will slam down on tables, and drawers will open and shut abruptly and doors will slam, and he'll walk into the room and stare at me and then walk back out... (I've learned not to react to this, but that probably makes him angrier.) Then when you bring it out into the open, he will say why he's angry, which is usually about some principle. If you point out that you were being reasonable in the situation in question, he will get angrier and find another reason to get upset with you. When he gets angry he tends to stay in a mood for quite a while, which can be frustrating after a while. Another card he likes to play is how if he had not immediately done exactly what his father had said, his dad would have smacked him upside the face. To which I generally reply, "that's unfortunate," which is true, but the situation is not relevant imo, unless he intends to take the same policy. He doesn't, by the way. He's way too loving a guy. But he gets upset sometimes.

I feel like I'm showing way too much of one side of him. I am fresh out of my teenage years, after all, and so I'm used to viewing him as this way imperfect guy in a position of authority over me. He's really good to me and Mom though, loves us both a lot. Since I've gone away to college, he seems a lot more reasonable when I do see him, and he'll often do nice things unexpectedly. Although he can get angry at stupid stuff, counterintuitively when you tell him something that you would expect to anger him, he can take it very calmly and cut you a lot of slack.

With regards to Mom, Dad is sort of the sidekick in some ways, which sometimes annoys him, I think because he's very influenced by tradition and when he grew up the dad was in charge and the mom was submissive. He's not imposing about this perspective, but doesn't like feeling out of power either. Otherwise, I think he wishes Mom would be more expressive than she is, but he still loves her a lot and is definitely faithful to her in every way, even if they have their arguments periodically.

My gut impression is Alpha SF, would you agree? I'll try one for Mom if I can maintain the motivation.

[Elro]

Mom is the logical one in the relationship. She's always planning what needs to be done. She makes lists, she checks them twice, she checks things off, always gets all (or most) of the stuff done. On the weekends she gets chores done, and then relaxes in the tub or watches television (The Food Network, HGTV, QVC). She's very frugal - uses coupons all the time. Shops around. Invests pretty wisely in various financial options, from what I can tell. She is the nagger - she reminds everyone of things to make sure they don't forget, and finds out what needs to be done and relays that to them.

Socially, she keeps to herself very much, and only has a few friends. To those friends she will devote herself as much as possible, but if it becomes evident that they don't value her friendship, she won't stick around.

She has taken to Christianity and the church recently. I think this is driven by a relative onslaught of negative things that happened to her recently - she lost her best friend of 30 years over something stupid (STUPID), her mother is teetering on the edge of life with cancer, she got a new boss at work that has been bullying her and humiliating her, eventually costing her the job she loved in exchange for a much lesser one. I'm not too crazy about it, because I'm not so sure about e.g., the idea that God plays a significant role in picking out your clothes for a job interview (it seems like if he's around he has more important things to focus on). But, on the other hand she needs some way out I guess.

She's kind of a worrywart - this is probably why she plans so much, because she's always afraid of what could happen in the future. I'm going to get a job in the mountains? Oh no, I might get eaten by mountain lions! I'm going to college with a cell phone? I'd better have a hand-crank charger, in case a nuke goes off nearby and I need to text-message someone and hadn't charged my cell phone in three days! As a result, she's a very cautious person. Dad teases her about this.

Dad actually teases her about a lot of things, as do I to a lesser extent, and after a while she gets kind of sick of it. She starts saying stuff like "what would you all do if I wasn't around to make fun of?" (And Dad will say something like, "we'd have to get a cat.") She knows, I think, that we tease because we love, but also after a while she just doesn't like it at all, so we give her some space.

Another thing is, she gets frustrated with Dad because he wants her to show affection, which is something she doesn't do well, "I show love through works, not words." She doesn't bring this up with me because I just hug her a lot, rather than ask for verbal confirmation or anything like that...

It is really nice having her around, though. I have a tendency to forget to do things, and she has a tendency to remind people of things they need to get done, so when I went off to college I suddenly was in a world where no one was telling me "okay you need to get this done today in order to maintain your scholarships, don't forget!" Sort of slacked off a little. She tells me I need to work on my time management skills and such, even thinks my procrastination is how I've chosen to rebel against her (lol I wish).

I feel like there's more, but I can't remember at the moment, it's getting late. I'll head on to bed, what do you think of her type?

[Mea]

Sounds ESFj.

[Elro]

Elro, could your mom be ISFj? She seems to have Ne PolR, Ethical Sensor... so ESI

Your dad does seem ESE..

Yes, both of those are definitely possibilities. One problem I have, though, with typing my mom as ISFj is: she doesn't stand up for herself much at work. She does at home, after a lot of teasing, but it sort of builds up (IJ-like) until she explodes, and then it's not Se, it's... Fi, maybe? She's overall not that imposing with her viewpoints. This may still be ESI (maybe Fi subtype), but I was under the impression that ESIs are more likely to protect their interests. Mom is more likely to sort of wallow in self-pity, or turn to religion.

[Slacker]

Your dad is certainly an Fe type. He actually sounds exactly like my dad from that description. But my dad is ENFj.

Your mom strikes me as a Te person with her frugality but I don't know which. The religion might be due to the stresses in her life lately rather than type. She almost sounds like an ISTp but I don't think the cautiousness works well with that. Ni and cautiousness work better. Although the relaxing in the bath thing sounds a bit Si-ish. But I think Ni > Si. She sounds kind of caretakerish but that might be because you're the one describing her and she's your mom - so literally your caretaker.

It seems unlikely you'd have ESFj and INTp parents. LOL

I don't know. I'm stuck there. ENFj and INTp? They'd be supervisors then. Hmmm.

Unless she doesn't really hate being teased and shown so much affection? Maybe that's an act she puts on to kind of play along? I might be thrown off about her a bit because she sounds like a cross between my husband and my mom. I have to think outside of the confines of who people sound like.

[FDG]

Mother - ESTj imho

All ISFjs I know don't have any problem showing affection to the people they're close to

[Elro]

Your dad is certainly an Fe type. He actually sounds exactly like my dad from that description. But my dad is ENFj.

Hmm, I'd have to think about that. He does seem to have Beta friends - an ISTj and an ESTp (?) cousin who's practically his best friend... On the other hand I'm not sure I see the creative Ni? Or the Si PoLR..

Si: I forgot to mention how much he enjoys eating. It's probably partially related in part to him quitting smoking - he has a void to fill in his mouth. He tends to eat absent-mindedly, particularly while watching television. Potato chips and fruit snacks and the like. He'll eat pretty much anything that is put on his plate, and really enjoys it. Went to Hawaii and really enjoyed the scenery and the experience.
Mom actually gets worried about Dad sometimes because he has gained a bit of weight recently and he'll eat everything on his plate (which was a lot) and then ask us if we want dessert. (Mom will get upset and say something like "Honey, you're going to have a heart attack if you keep eating like that.")

I have trouble seeing Dad as any quadra without Si. And he does seem like Caretaker, but not so much with me unless he's in a good mood. Usually with Mom.

Though he does have this thing about work ethic (largely due to tradition again I think). If I need to get a job he'll get progressively more angry at me until I get a job, unless I give it my all. And then he'll be so happy with me for a while. He gets mad if he perceives me or Mom as being lazy. Particularly if he's out gardening for a while (of his own volition) and then comes back and sees Mom has been in the tub the whole time, to which he gets kind of snappy and thinks "I've worked my butt off all day, and what have you done?" This is only occasionally though, and probably the result of his upbringing. He's really nice most of the time, especially to people he doesn't know. Always smiles, says stuff like "life is good." Tells me I should make more friends and stuff, I guess because he equates that to happiness. He likes to philosophize to me sometimes about life in my age, but I think he's a little out there. (Probably a PAPa thing.)

Your mom strikes me as a Te person with her frugality but I don't know which. The religion might be due to the stresses in her life lately rather than type. She almost sounds like an ISTp but I don't think the cautiousness works well with that. Ni and cautiousness work better. Although the relaxing in the bath thing sounds a bit Si-ish. But I think Ni > Si. She sounds kind of caretakerish but that might be because you're the one describing her and she's your mom - so literally your caretaker.

Yeah... I'm not sure. Mom does value comfort at the end of the day, I think, but it's not her top priority - she wants to make sure everything is taken care of first. Like, even when she's relaxing in the tub, reading a book, the laundry is probably going.

Unless she doesn't really hate being teased and shown so much affection? Maybe that's an act she puts on to kind of play along? I might be thrown off about her a bit because she sounds like a cross between my husband and my mom. I have to think outside of the confines of who people sound like.

I think it depends on the degree. To some extent, when she's teased she'll be amused, I think because she knows it's Dad's way of showing he loves her. But on the other hand, when she gets annoyed and starts complaining to us that it bothers her that we don't treat her like a human being sometimes (I think she exaggerates a little there, honestly), she is being genuine.

Oh, another thing that gets on her nerves is when she's watching HGTV and I'm in the room and start making fun of whoever's on TV. Although she rarely tells me to leave the room, she definitely doesn't appreciate it... but sometimes people on that channel are really dumb. That may not be type-related either, though.

[Elro]

I think your parents seem very loving and you don't need to worry about type.

I agree with this. I'm just curious about their types.