Quote Originally Posted by Bertrand View Post
i think two people being unsure of their feelings kind of goes to the overarching IEE SLI dynamic which is a kind of ongoing irrational chase that keeps things interesting. in a sense your entire point as to why you find it to be contradictory is a projection of a relational dynamic you assume "makes sense" and then draw certain conclusions about it all when its like: its supposed to be irrational. my point is that your conclusion on the basis of certain descriptions making "more sense" if they did it x way instead of y as purported by the theory is an imposed assumption. I would just take it for what it is, especially since meged and ovcharov are IEE/SLI themselves. every behavioral description in socionics suffers from this problem, the problem of language and outer behavior meaning different things to different people. you have to penetrate to the psychological perspective which subsumes values and re centers it around the dyad in question rather than try to judge it from a central perspective (only gulenko does a good job of de-loading this in objective language as far as I can tell). gulenko himself realizes the need to craft a system that is not subject to projections rooted in language and outer behavior so it doesn't just become more talking past one another by imposing our own meaning on the descriptions. otherwise you just get endlesss bickering over the "image" of types etc, you see this a lot around here, there's even a pinterest going around that takes up this game, but all that is a lost cause
fair enough, I'd still put their own understanding above my own, but it seemed like relations with different subtypes would resemble activity (even if it's still duality at the core) which would make them easier to establish, but they wouldn't exactly cover for each other's weaknesses like same-subtype duality might, because even in the example you outlined on the previous page with IEE-Ne and SLI-Te being somewhat like "nerds" in the academic world:

Ne IEE subtype is less attentive to sensing aspects and more attentive to thinking aspects, whereas the Fi type would be the opposite. the conclusions they draw is that you actually want differing (creative/base) subtypes, so as to maximize information transfer, so the increased bandwidth is made use of. in other words, Ne subtype IEE wants to be with Te subtype SLI since they both will have increased bandwidth across thinking and intuitive channels.
^ that's built on Ne-Te synergy (information exchange which triggers their respective leading/mobilizing functions) which makes it sound more like activity relations than duality relations, which then makes it sound like activity > duality due to the higher potentiality for quality information exchange, but their Fi/Si channels are practically abysmal now. neither of them are giving or receiving enough Si/Fi feedback, so shouldn't the fact that IEE-Ne places MORE emphasis on Ne-Te mean that they're searching for a counterpart who places MORE emphasis on Fi-Si (since they don't exactly struggle with Te in the same way that IEE-Fi might struggle with Te) so they're more likely to search (unconsciously) for somebody who places a higher emphasis on Si? like IEE-Ne might find an intellectual counterpart in the SLI-Te and vice versa, but neither is accounting for the Si/Fi channels, which is still there but it's relatively depraved in comparison to how their same-subtype duals might account for those channels, which defeats the purpose of duality which is ultimately about balance, but you can't have balance if they're just like "yeah we got all the Ne and Te in the world here, but uh... eh nvm who needs Fi and Si anyway?"

something about it seems off to me because why would IEE-Ne not want more Si to counterbalance their complete and utter lack of Si; with that said, why would they seek more Te when they have a decent handle on Te to begin with, which comes at the direct expense of Fi and Si? how is that duality (aka they're not strengthening their weak functions, their weak functions are still weak, but it's cool because now their strong functions are stronger)