EII-SLE Conflict Relations (INFj & ESTp)

[Lord Pixel]

I have a good friend who is ESTp and probably for enneagram reasons things are peaceful between us. But we tried to work on a project together and that is where I could easily see how we have very complementary strengths but for some reason could not help each other.

Part of it is the IEs and part was the rationality and irrationality.

When we worked together it was like he could never take no for an answer. because when ever I got even close to saying no he would get a little more defensive each time, I sensed that and just backed off since I'm Se PoLR I felt like I couldn't put up much of a fight, but I also felt like I couldn't be honest and this made me less committed to the project we were working on, it felt like I wasn't really involved, only half of me, the half that didn't make him defensive.

The problem was whenever he came up with ideas for a project my Ne could see all kinds of things that could go wrong and I would troubleshoot all the problems out loud with him like "Ok well what if this doesn't work, or what if this happens? If we do this, this is probably gonna happens do what do we do about that" And I could tell he hated that, but instead of saying "Well we could do this instead." he would just try and give me some answer to shut me up and stop making it seem like whatever idea he had wasn't gonna work, he took it as opposition instead of criticism.

He also learned by doing and action and not hypothetical troubleshooting like how I did. When he came up with an idea , when I would think of all the potential problems and how to fix them beforehand he needed to put it out in the open and see what actually happens. There were times where he would even come back and say I was right but it was hard for me to understand why he couldn't see the same problems I saw beforehand, this was frustrating for both of us. To him it seemed like I was stopping him at every step and to me it seemed like he wasn't fullproofing his ideas.

I also remember when we wanted to make a kickstarter page for our project and we both had 2 different approaches to that as well. I had the perfectionist approach where we had to have everything perfect before we made a page, and he had the rush to the finish line approach where he wanted to make a page within days with the least amount of things needed. Again he felt like I was 2 slow and I felt like he rushed way to much. He even said "I need the momentum in order to do this." like he needed a short term big goal in order to do it because if not it wasn't gonna get done.

With the rational/irrational issues they were pretty literal to those terms. We were making a project with a certain theme, all the ideas I had were things within in that theme, while he felt like we could just toss anything that was trending/hot or just inspired him in the project regardless if it was according to the theme or not , which made my head spin.

For ex: if we were making a baking company, one where you bake cakes, I would come up with ideas about frosting flavors, different kinds of cakes, catering. He would see figdit spinners selling like hot cakes and say "We have to sell those in the bakery." and we also have to sell video games because parents have kids, and we also have to sell rotisserie chicken because I read in an article that's booming, and also vegan, everything has to be vegan because vegans are on the rise!

Next thing you know we not making a bakery, we're making Walmart.

If I tried to argue "what does any of this have to do with a bakery, or cake?" He would just say "It doesn't matter, we can do whatever we want."
And the store would be decorated with a deer head on the wall, a basketball hoop and comic book posters, instead of idk cake stuff lol. And he likes it that way. The randomness. The "doesn't make sense"ness of it all. That's like his element or something.

So we differed there. Sometimes I was too rigid too on theme to the point of redundancy, and sometimes he was too loose everywhere all over the place, random. He felt like I was limiting his ideas too much and I felt like he kept getting distracted with shiny objects and kept being inconsistent.

Where we had complementary strengths was:

He had a hard time coming up with a working interesting consistent idea, but he was real resourceful gathering all these advanced tools to make things with and he also was real good with reaching out to the community to get people/press interested for projects, getting involved in local events and things, which I sucked at but totally needed. I was always couped up in my cave working on some idea but never got out to tell people and never found tools to shortcut the process, but I would dedicate hours/days/weeks just to come up with a working presentable idea, which he needed to take advantage of all the tools and attention he was able to get. So if we could have just worked together well those strengths would have complemented each other but welp our processes made us get in each other's way.

Also I did notice he needs some kind of yes man or blind submission. There was one time in one of our brainstorm sessions he brought and EIE around and that guy was his biggest cheerleader, when I felt the urge to question the ESTp friend's ideas to point out why it's not gonna work the way he thinks it is and what is he gonna do about the glaring potential problems, the EIE would beat me to the punch and say "YES! THAT'S GENIUS BRO! YOU GOTTA DO IT!" and with my ESTp friend I could literally see the confidence in him light up like he started believing in himself more or something, I realized he actually needed that, but I couldn't give it to him because well I just couldn't get on board with an idea I saw all kinds of potential problems with. I guess he needed that Fe boost, and I couldn't fake it for him. When he did hear me out it felt like the wind was taken out of his sails, like the door to the direction he was getting geared up to go in just closed on him.

Another ex: He had the idea to sell tee shirts with people's country flags on them (like a shirt with an italian flag, or puerto rican flag), he wanted to sell the shirts at a local gas station, he was excited because he asked the owner and the owner gave him the ok to sell in his store. He came to me excited and ready to get started on this and the first question that came to mind for me was "Why are people gonna buy clothes at a gas station?" , "The person has to be from the country or really like the country to be interested in buying." "How are people gonna find this place? Are you gonna advertise, or do you just expect them to randomly stumble in and buy a shirt?". Then I suggested "It might work if you do it at the time of the World Cup, that's when people wear their country's shirts, or whatever country they root for." And he felt like I took the wind out of his sales because he thought that was a good point but saw that the World Cup was no time soon.

Still good friends but when trying to be productive we just worked against eachother.