Originally Posted by
Adam Strange
Two thoughts, from an Fi user.
1. It is understandable that you want to hear the "cold, hard truth", if you have very weak Se. A weak ability to sense differences between what is real and what is imagined can lead to appreciating someone who tells you what actually is real, regardless of how that might reflect personally on you. Similarly, I, with weak Fi, want to know how someone is really feeling, because I can't tell just by looking.
2. To an Fe user like yourself, the fact that Fi users will sometimes seem to be softening the truth by telling you what they think you want to hear, makes them appear to be unreliable reporters of reality, and to you, that is bad. But Fi users are usually not trying to lie to you. Fe is flexible like a rubber sheet. One day, someone will tell you how much they love you or your shoes or your latest Instagram post, and the next day they are hating on you for some passing reason, and the third day they love you again, and the Fe relationships are none the worse for the experience. For example, IEI's may get offended, but they will eventually forget and forgive. Fi is more like a very thick glass plate. You can push on it and push on it, and it doesn't change much at all, until one day you break it, and it is not coming back. Given this situation, Fi users are minimizing the stress on the glass window, because it is hard to tell when it will break.
So, to an Fi consumer like myself, when I hear someone flatter me, or say something where I can tell they are holding back their full opinion, I understand that it is BS, but the correct way to interpret what they are saying when they soften the "cold, hard truth" is to realize that they care enough about you to not kick your windows in.