Quasi-Identical Relations: Stories and Experiences

[Soupman]

After a few recent real-life experiences, I've come to a realization that the quasi-identical intertype is actually one of if not the most unpleasant in the socion. Please note that these experiences were of a professional nature, not of an intimate romantic one nor of friendship.

Why is the quasi relationship so bad? Even though being in the same club, at first it seems like you are "such similar people" and you get excited about similar goals and seem to think alike, what actually happens is as follows:

--the quasi not only does not provide your DS function, it happens to be their POLR, so they are polarized completely against that DS function you so need. This is in contrast to your conflictor and superego who at least deliver some of what you need from their unconsciously strong Id functions, whether they intended to or not.

--along the same lines, you dont deliver what the quasi expects from you, so not only are you suffering greatly from their enmity towards your DS function, they think your work sucks because your weak unvalued functions are what they need the most from you, and you can't provide that to them. In addition, one of those function is your own POLR, so you develop contempt for them, and their need for it.

--neither of you share any valued functions (which makes it even worse than supervision).

Gulenko's description of the intertype, found here http://www.socionics.com/rel/qid.htm, describes the following manifestation, which I've found to be spot on:



This was my exact experience, and I dont wish it on anyone. Interestingly, in my most recent experience, there was a 3rd individual involved (the quasi's dual, and hence, my conflictor), and my interaction with the conflictor was actually more pleasant, believe it or not. With the conflictor, from the outset i thought he had a weird demeanor, and it seemed like we always felt we had to apologize to each other because it we always felt like we did something offensive to each other (the "oh it came across badly but they meant well" sentiment rings true), but he was actually quite helpful and supportive, and he seemed to be more of a friend in the end than the quasi was. It helped that I sort of made an effort to keep interactions to a minimum with the conflictor from the outset because I thought he was weird right off the bat, and perhaps that is a protective mechanism that does not come into play with quasis because they seem so similar to yourself, which then leads to greater suffering and trauma within the quasi interaction. In other words, with conflictors you never get psychologically close enough to get hurt as much as you do with quasi's.

In short, I found the quasi interaction to be very emotionally taxing, unrewarding, unsatisfying, and a good thing to be rid of. It was driving the usually happy me into a pit of despair, sucked the life out of me, and was turning me into robotic slave. In trying so desperately to meet the expectations of my quasi boss over the course of 6 months, I had literally lost sight of my own goals, desires, and objectives to the point that i absolutely hated what i was doing and the direction that it was going. Makes perfect sense now that this would happen, because my quasi's goals, desires, objectives, view, perspective, etc are actually different from my own (opposing quadra-different), even though they might have seemed similar at first. I now realize that what I saw initially in my quasi was the Id shadow to his ego functions and that deluded me into thinking we thought alike.

Subtypes matter in this as Gulenko even mentioned in his refined theory where he talks about why some of the same relations are better than others, I actually love my quasi identical friend, though the trouble we had was that it took ages for me to know him but the more we learned each other the more we realized that we clicked and I got to a point where I even got confused by our types since we were so complementary. Also mutual respect also helped, I was impressed by his intelligence and I made it explicitly clear that I respected it with sincerity which really helped to build our friendship.

This relations have so many layers and subtypes are a big feature that can help to explain the varying quality of the experience. There are many layers that affect these relations but a big problem that can make them difficult is the lack of mutual understanding for your difference, which makes both parties confused finding it difficult to coexist together.

Working together... Rationality difference awareness is your only problem
(mutual awareness, understanding & respect is key)
Now the hard problem about this is understanding your rationality difference since it actually means you do work with the reverse focus but because of your similarities it can never be clear that its the fundamental problem behind your troubles. An undualized quasi identity will mistakenly judge you as their identity and they will make demands on you which don't seem to make sense since they mistakenly assume that you work to their rhythm and this makes things very bad. Rationals are ''results'' orientated whilst Irrationals are ''process'', this might confuse you with the reinin dichotomy but please understand that these are the best words I've found best describing the process in real life, process aristocrats are rather results orientated and that causes friction with me...(I'm ILI)

The only way this can be alleviated is when you come to understand that reverse way of solving a problem are both beneficial though the very existance of this difference makes you FEEL OTHERWISE, its UNIMPOSSIBLE FOR THEM TO THINK PROERLY LIKE so YOU'D SAY. Mutual understanding that you don't have a malicious motive in the way you tackle the same problem helps immensely this is were high EQ can help relations. EIE start by thinking about where ideally they'd like the goal, the result they'd like to acquire and what is very confusing for IEE is that they will constantly tweak this until its right; this feels very alien to IEE who then constantly become baffled by all the alterations being made to the target and how demanding they seem to be about the targets they wish to see which they will constantly edit. This produces stress on IEE who feels like they are having way too many demands called upon them and they barely have time to attend them since tweaks are always added.

IEE work by trying to see the problem for what it is and when they are doing this, processing, they are actually working towards a solution and come time, it then becomes clear to them within the deadline allocation and they come up with a reasonable solution. However, this is in direct contrast to EIE who start by thinking of results before they have to become serious about the ''process'', seeing what the problem looks like, so there are very confused that the IEE's pattern of working can even make sense. Gulenko's statement is half finished when he says that the more they work together the more they find that, they don't seem to understand each other, he is simply oblivious to the fact that there isn't an instictual drive to understand your diverging work rhythm process(irrational) vs results(rational).

Quasi identical have no inclined interests to understand the difference behind their rhythms and that is where the trouble lies. Again repeating myself in this blabber of a response, being patient enough to understand your diverging rhythm is key to understanding your confusing rhythms. Furthermore its unsettling to relies that your differing rhythm could even beneficial helping your work since the other fact of the matter is that when you work together, you'd feel a loss of control since your powerful reverse rhythms stop neither one of you from being in control; this is normal and it isn't bad at all. You both need to understand that this works and as Gulenko even points out it brings the best out of both parties leading to produce amazing projects. Here high EQ can help both partners, I repeat this again since its the truth sincerely.


Health is important, your 7th functions must be healthy and you should both be open to advice,
More importantly, don't get angry since you can easily detect each other's crap
When types are unhealthy they don't care about critique from the 7th functions and this is to their detriment. They ignore subtle directions of advice from each other and this bewilders the party giving the advice leading to annoyance that can irritate the two of you eventually. Though unlike extinguishment, the critique for the 7th function is actually quite mild since the creative function is actually far weaker in the personality, than the demonstrative. This challenges Quadra values, but you easily observe it when you actually start observing real people, getting to the bare bones of how introversion/extroversion and rationality pair up in a personality. To be honest the only manifestation of quadra values is only that you have different critique to the overall direction your soltutions, the is primary critique orientation that characterizes quadras.

This is where the energomodel shines:
IEE 2:Fe creative and 5:Fi demonstrative
EIE 2:Ne creative and 5:Ni demonstrative

When you understand how introversion work in reality you'll the understand Jung's counter intuitive idea that the first two functions share the same orientation. The energomodel makes sense when you realize that introversion is weak for extroversion preference since they don't let a theme of analysis drive their overall ideas, here people then realize that mirror's relations are actually not as similar as they are thought to be since with prolonged communication the ''demonstrative'' half-assed nature will then piece you off about them. IEE get irritated by how EII are simply interested in Ne data which conforms to ideas they already like so they simply overlook relevant Ne information when it conflict with their cherished ideas; mirror relations are over falling to the quadra unity fallacy, again given subtypes some mirrors are more compartible than others and the same is true for conflict. Actually some conflict relations are actually very pleasant feeling exactly like duality when subtypes align and mutually duality is bad when subtypes conflict.

IEE with unhealthy Ni tend to chase after useless objective possibilities

EIE with unhealthy Fi tend to choose ridiculous ideals to target for

An unhealthy EIE will ignore ignore your Fi when you ask them to steer the course of their solution slightly