ESEs supervising SLIs
What are some examples of this you've witnessed? I guess I remember IRL one female ESE saying about a male SLI "ugh he drives too fast." "He's too standoffish." "He doesn't communicate well or say what he needs/means enough." "He's too hard to talk to."
From the relationships that I've witnessed, ESEs seem to be most concerned with SLI anger and siege mentalities, which sometimes seriously affect their relationships both socially and at work. I wouldn't call these supervisory relationships because SLIs seem to view ESEs as happily impotent people and rarely listen to them. ESEs seem to think that aspects of SLIs need to be fixed but don't really have any effective tools to deal with it; they erroneously think that behaviour modification would be so easy but unfortunately, nothing is really broken. These are yes/no relationships with one side saying "you-should-do-what-I-do" with the other side thinking "who-are-you-to-tell-me".
a.k.a. I/O
I know an ESE and SLI couple who have a particularly bad relationship.
The ESE is the backbone of her community, always offering food and smiles for the poor. The SLI takes care of the household, cooking food and repairing what's broken. Thing is, the ESE never recognizes his efforts and gets jealous when he encroaches on her domain. Some examples of their arguments.
Case 1
SLI: *Walking around, looking for his tools*
ESE: Could you stop pacing around? Slip, slop, slip, slop! It's annoying!
SLI: You were complaining that the washing machine needs fixing, so I'm going to fix it!
ESE: And I told you to get a repairman!
SLI: I'm not wasting money on something I can do myself!
Case 2
SLI: *Watching ESE clean the house* I just did that this morning!
ESE: Well, I felt like doing it.
SLI: Why? There wasn't a speck left! This is unnecessary!
ESE: You don't tell me what's unnecessary! I won't have guests coming into a dirty house!
SLI: I said I cleaned it already!
Case 3
Family member talking to ESE: Why won't your husband join us?
ESE: Oh, he's just shy. Hubby, come join us!
SLI: I'm not shy! I have work to do and nobody else is going to do it!
ESE: SLI, how could you say that in front of the guests? *Turns to family member* I'm so sorry about him. You know, sometimes I wish he would go outside sometimes. Maybe then he would learn to fix his attitude. *Proceeds to gossip about her husband right in front of him*
So, from what I've witnessed, ESEs can use Fe and Si in a negative way to publicly ridicule and overwrite the sensory environment to their ideal.
Note that both the ESE and SLI have had a very trying relationship with abuse coming from both sides. However, as a LII, I could imagine myself avoiding conflict in these scenarios.
Case 1: I would call the repairman.
Case 2: I would leave the cleaning to the ESE.
Case 3: I would be polite and introduce myself even if I won't talk much.
However, I wouldn't subject myself to that kind of relationship, dual or not.
I want to believe, therefore I question everything. I pursue the truth, therefore I eliminate all lies. I crave the ideal, therefore I defy the world.
This is funny, @Jo Lande. I can easily see my SLI son saying those exact words. He's my Supervisor, and our relationship can get a tiny bit tense at times, but his complaints, especially about cleaning or my choice of furnishings, have some similarities to those of the SLI in your story.Originally Posted by Jo Lande
I agree with your statement that ESE's can use public ridicule. I'll add public shaming to that, in my own case.
I was talking to a female cashier in a deli about Socionics and I told her that I could send her more information about her type if I had some way to contact her. She said she'd like that and wrote down her email address and handed it to me and I told her I'd send her the information in a day or so. Her ESE boss was observing this, and as I was going out the door, she followed me out and demanded that I give her the piece of paper that the cashier handed me, "Because she doesn't want you to have that". I was so surprised and felt instantly as if I had done something wrong, that I handed her the paper.
I didn't stop to consider the fact that the cashier had given it to me freely, or that it was none of the ESE's business, but I did consider that that bitch could make trouble for the cashier.
Man, the ESE's vectoring in on and exploiting my social weakness left me pissed off for days.
And, Jo Lande, I agree that no one should stay in a relationship where the participants do not respect each other.
*EDIT*
My SLI son did some work on a house with an ESE home remodeler. My son doesn't like to work with the guy and is ceaselessly critical of his work ethic and his handling of money.
As a person who has been Supervised all his life, first by my SLI father, then by my SLI ex-wife, and now by my SLI son, it's nice to see the tables turned a bit. I'd say that my SLI son's reaction to being supervised is a lot harsher than mine has been. Probably because of his greater sensitivity to Si pain. Lol.
Lol my SEE dad (I think he's SEE anyway) used to do that all the time. Recently I've had one or two opportunities to flip the script because the people he was around didn't understand his behavior, and it was obvious.
Se quadras outsource their pain to preserve their Ni. It's one of the reasons America is eating itself alive. But I kinda know how you feel.
You would basically do everything as the ESE wants
My mom is My supervisor and besides teen years, I've neber felt particularily supervised or uncomfortable around her or another ESE. Through, I can see how ESE could be controlling and dramatic in romantic relationships. Definitely just an Se PoLR won't make them feel threatened.
Last edited by Hope; 10-12-2020 at 07:03 PM.
I met an ESE through my friend. Usually they're too popular for me to interact with them, so it was a first. She laughed a lot and I thought it was cute. We met a couple more times, talked a bit, and had fun and whatnot. All smiles.
A couple months later, the friend that introduced me to her said that she talked about me behind their backs. She said that she thought I was grumpy and mean because I never smiled and had a "mean" face. Usually I can detect when someone doesn't like me and form defensive barriers immediately but it kind of came out of nowhere in that particular instance. It really hurt. From then on I don't trust outer facial expressions to accurately measure the inner emotional experience anymore. It was a valuable experience.
Most ESEs are more mature then that though, I think.
@Tommy. Haha, so true! I'm no good with household matters, so I would gladly leave that in an ESE's hands. To some, it might seem like ESEs are controlling, but to me it feels freeing to have someone else lead the home, leaving me to enjoy focusing on abstract concepts and logical quandaries, and the good ESEs I know feel the same way. I guess that's why duality works.
I want to believe, therefore I question everything. I pursue the truth, therefore I eliminate all lies. I crave the ideal, therefore I defy the world.
ESE's are big gay. My ESE friend can be quite a snake too, I gotta threaten him like daily to keep him down and nice.
Interesting. I am particularly interested in this discussion because I believe my SLI husband's mother was ESE, from what I know of her, who died before I met my husband and (we are married 6 years, 2nd marriage for both) from all I hear of her, how she was and what she did and how. (She was also beautiful, a very nice person, and a good mother). My husband is emotionally healthy, but, I see evidence of wounding, a habitual defensiveness, that surfaces frequently, and I reflect and wonder and search in my mind for the source of his wounding, and I have from early on sourced it at that Supervision relation. This year his brother died and recently his wife sent us a suitcase full of family photos. I finally got to piece together some gaps in what my husband has told me. I sensed there was no real trauma in his growing up, and surely, he was a MUCH photographed child!).You would basically do everything as the ESE wants
My mom is My supervisor and besides teen years, I've never felt particularly supervised or uncomfortable around her or another ESE. Through, I can see how ESE could be controlling and dramatic in romantic relationships. Definitely just an Se PoLR won't make them feel threatened.
So I have told him before, I think your mother was your supervisor, the most traumatizing of all Socionics intertypes relationships for you to be in". he shrugs, says maybe, but doesn't feel the trauma so much (but does not deny this is a possibility, and he would if he thought it wasn't a possibility. He simply says, my mother always got along best with my brother (LSI). I am thinking that it is quite possible his dad was SLI, too, though I am not 100% on that. So then the relations would feel perfectly normal to him. The supervision wasn't too terrible as she was a nice person, plus, his Mom worked, so he was not super immersed in that relation every day. The kids ran free after school as they did in those days, and when young, his grandparents raised him, and they sounded good. But I think it was that Supervision relationship that put the defensiveness in him. I think it wasn't too hard because he did what you you described in this post!
"A man with a definite belief always appears bizarre, because he does not change with the world; he has climbed into a fixed star, and the earth whizzes below him like a zoetrope."
........ G. ........... K. ............... C ........ H ........ E ...... S ........ T ...... E ........ R ........ T ........ O ........ N ........
"Having a clear faith, based on the creed of the Church, is often labeled today as fundamentalism... Whereas relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and swept along
by every wind of teaching, looks like the only
attitude acceptable to today's standards." - Pope Benedict the XVI, "The Dictatorship of Relativism"
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Thanks for sharing Eliza. Could there be a chance that all Introverted types are much more defensive than Extroverts? From what I've observed its easy to tell that the mere nature of introversion is to individuate the experience or separate the self from the object or from the external influences so a "barrier" (as could be experienced by extroverts) is always in between, which is basically the IE in question filtering the outside influences either through Si,Ni,Ti or Fi.
On the other hand, to me as Si with the goal of trying to keep an internal balance and state of wellbeing, opposite quadra relations have been much more traumatizing than supervisors. I had harder time getting used to supervisee than supervisor (mb cuz I'm used too ESE since childhood). But in general I could say that supervisors have a harder time with Supervisees than the opposite. I think there's some kind of admiration going on from Supervisee to supervisor when sometimes there's some need to help the supervisor (especially if supervisor is Si).
Last edited by Hope; 10-13-2020 at 04:52 PM.
My observations. Please take with lots of salt.
1. ESE notices SLI's talents (it might be a craft/skill that heavily involves SiTe) and via Ne HA sees a great deal of potential (is impressed). ESE seems to think that SLI's lifestyle will change with enough passionate encouragement. ESE brainstorms ideas about how SLI could put itself out there more usually involving being more sociable and expressive than SLI ever wants to be, which it presents in a persuasive enthusiastic Fe way that SLI kind of tries to damp down. SLI won't transform into what ESE wants and ESE starts to get the feeling that it will never do anything with its promising potential (in a way that corresponds to ESE's desires). Meanwhile SLI has a certain range of topics it likes to cover like a broken record (see disclaimers) and ESE gets tired of the same topics, and it gets tired of monotone Te going on about how things work. For a while if there are shared Si-ish hobbies like hiking in nature it can make up for the problems, but eventually ESE realizes SLI chooses its lifestyle and it's not going to alter it. ESE grows bored, especially since it can't seem to pass its enthusiasm about anything to SLI. SLI shuts down its every emotional expression when the waves of intense emotion is how ESE moves through life, how it keeps itself inspired and driven, so SLI's response makes it feel discouraged. ESE will start becoming more emotionally volatile in trying to counter the dampening field SLI creates, if only to keep its own emotional vitality. But it will never work and ESE eventually puts its foot down and says it is finished with the arrangement. It is just too bored and discouraged to continue, and the relationship (at closer distance) is making its emotional state and outlook negative. SLI may continue to want to contact ESE because it simply needs someone to talk to and is fine simply maintaining a friendship in which it can talk when it feels like, and ESE out of empathy for SLI's loneliness may keep the relationship in some form, but not at any closer distance. In short, SLI simply will not respond to ESE's emotional passion and vibrancy in the way that ESE wants.
2. The dark side of this, when it's abusive on SLI's end (which means I haven't seen it when it's abusive on ESE's end!), is when SLI sees ESE's efforts to do this as conniving and manipulative. ESE's project to help SLI "develop itself" starts being seen by SLI as attempts to manipulate things out of it. SLI may become paranoid about ESE, and intensify its efforts to shut down ESE's emotional output. The dynamic can turn such that SLI actually has the upper hand and ESE is trapped in a corner in emotional pain that it is psychologically punished for expressing (although all emotional expression will be something SLI must guard against especially the dreaded Fe positive enthusiasm). SLI can target ESE's weak logic as a further way to undermine its self-esteem to the point it becomes uncertain of the validity of it own positions on anything, and eventually even its own emotions. ESE's emotions then start turning inwards and a trauma loop starts to form in its mind. SLI works to maintain tight control of the dynamic so ESE's horrible conniving emotional manipulation cannot establish any light of day. I've noticed in this that even though ESE has the stronger Se, somehow SLI becomes the more forceful one. It's because without ESE's free flowing emotional energy met with at least some positive mirroring back, it is eventually rendered powerless. In this way both ESE and SLI lose their positive/optimistic energy, which was one of the deceptive factors that drew them together in the first place, in addition to usually a large trove of shared Si things - like love of hiking in nature and exploring new natural settings together, or shared passion about cooking, or whatever. The relationship escalates back and forth in negativity becoming increasingly hostile and abusive over the course of many years and leading both to ruin.
Disclaimers/notes: the SLI in example 1 =/= that in example 2. I am more certain of the type of the SLI in example 1 than of that in 2. The SLI in example 1 was not a very aggressive person and was more emotionally healthy/stable although I wonder if he has Asperger's. He came off like the strong silent type and his energy was generally fairly optimistic. The SLI in example 2 was much darker, suffered extreme mental illness and had been exposed to a lot of violence in life. He could go into the stable/positive energy mode, but increasingly as time went on, his mental illness and addiction issues would drag him down into something else (two faces). Both SLIs were loners and generally "undualized" in the sense of not finding any opportunities in life, which also contributed to them going over the same topics a lot probably. In terms of overall psychological health... really neither would probably be considered "healthy" and the ESE might not either, but I'm not a mental health professional. I just want to mention these things as I don't want to contribute to adding to stereotypes. The SLI in example 1 was probably enneagram 9w8; the one in example 2 possibly an 8w9; the ESE is a 6w7. Gender roles may play in; both SLIs are male, ESE is female.
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