Quote Originally Posted by Soupman View Post
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 this relations but a big problem that can make them difficult is the lack of mutual understanding for your difference which makes both parties confused that find it difficult to work with.

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 the 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...

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. Mutual understanding that you don't have malicious motive in the way you tackle the same problem immensely; this is were high EQ can help relations immensely. EIE start by thinking about where ideally they'd like the goal, 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 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 here high EQ can help both partners.


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 honestly; however
Soupman, this is just so spot on that i dont even know where to begin.
Firstly i'd like to comment that perhaps a quasi-relation between friends may play out differently than between a mentor-mentee. However, not unlike how you described your relationship with your quasi-friend, I do realize that this EIE mentor was trying his best to be a good mentor, and i appreciated it a lot. Its just that i'm under a lot of time pressure, and didn't have much more time to waste in trying to get us to understand each other which ultimately led to my decision to call it quits with him and pick someone else to mentor me.

EIE start by thinking about where ideally they'd like the goal, 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.
I'm serious this is just a PERFECT description of how things went for me. Amazing, it's almost like you were there with me!. Let me give some examples. To give some context, he is a professor of science and i joined his lab to work with him for a bit to learn from him by doing projects together and perhaps writing one (or more) up into a publishable article. So basically his style is as such -- he comes up with an idea and sits down and writes a "dream paper" right off the bat. Now this "dream paper" thing was such a foreign, strange concept to me. Basically what it is--he writes what he envisions the article will be once we do all the experiments and get the results, etc. From my standpoint, that is such a useless exercise because starting out with an idea, you never know how it will work out. My style is more like come up with a cool idea, do experiments, see where the experiments take you, if it's something interesting, THEN sit down look over everything and write the article. Writing the "dream paper" almost feels like making up stuff, to me. Though I did recognize that he was just trying to put something in front of him (and me) as something to aim for (it really did nothing for me, i totally ignored it and figured i would start from scratch when i have something publishable).

Along similar, but unrelated, lines-- when I was verbalizing my dissatisfaction with the direction things were going (shortly before I called it quits with him), he sent me an email listing some of the vague topics i had told him i'd rather be working on in a spreadsheet, his "assignment" for me being to list deadlines by which I would finish the data collection, write up the paper, and submit the paper to a journal for each of these topics. Mind you we'd BARELY talked about these topics, much less discussed what would be involved in projects coming off of those topics. How can I possibly know when i can finish collecting the data, when we dont even know if data can be collected, how it will go, etc??? much less about writing up the paper or submitting it to a journal! It just confirmed my decision that I needed a different kind of mentoring, and it was actually in response to that email that I sent him my resignation (even though I'd already sort of decided to leave even beforehand). After I sent the resignation, he explained that he was just trying to get me to see that i'm so close to having a publication (yeah right...confirmed my decision even more). But what you described there basically explains this crazy stuff -- EIEs just need that endpoint to be able to work towards it, even if they end up changing the "deadlines" 1000 times. On the other hand, I found it freaking STIFLING and just totally pointless. I saw it as him putting pressure on me, and in a way it had a paralyzing effect on me.

but yes, the general dynamic tended to be him constantly coming up with new ideas like a maniac never letting me finish the previous ideas, and that left me feeling increasingly lost, and that he had no regard for the time that i had available to do this work. I like to bring things to completion and it just couldn't happen with that sort of a dynamic.