Originally Posted by
ENJoymENT
I think the word “superficial” reveals the crux of the incompatibility between Alphas and Gammas. The two Alphas view your actions as flakiness—in that you went from the extreme of being soulfully open about yourself, to now (according to them) inexplicably throwing up walls and rejecting them. Therefore to them—you come across as a superficial friend—unreliable…someone who can’t be emotionally trusted to conform to the basic rules of Alpha civility and decency. In contrast, from your Gamma point of view, you felt vulnerable and thus regretted your past personal confessions, once you realized that you weren’t necessarily emotionally safe in that environment. To Gammas, the loud (and to us superficial) Alpha group environment can come off as somewhat cult like. You likely viewed your past revelations to LII as private one-on-one confessions to be protected, as opposed to becoming ammunition that could be used at a later time to keep you in “the cult”. You thus regretted making the confessions because rather than achieving the desired effect of establishing an unbreakable foundation of trust, the confessions instead turned into—in your opinion—emotional protection that you naively relinquished when your guard was down. And you therefore felt you had to establish psychological distance— which in my opinion is ALWAYS the correct action when it comes to Alpha/Gamma relationships. Because once we opt to take down the barriers of that outwardly superficial civility (i.e. which is what forms the actual emotional protection for BOTH sides), the rotten underbelly of misunderstanding comes to the surface and things end up even more damaged. It is in the Gamma’s nature to seek intimacy by getting close personally at a one-on-one level. We don’t realize that that is likely impossible with Alphas, because they are innately seeking group compatibility—which means the whole thing then becomes more than we initially signed up for. And we just aren’t comfortable being THAT vulnerable, because it is no longer within our control.
Just within my own family, I have a LOT of experience with Alpha/Gamma relationships: ALPHA: SEI mother, ILE father, LII ex-husband, ESE ex mother-in-law, ILE son, ESE son. GAMMA: because I also have a LIE son and an ILI son, I have been able to see the varied results from parenting all of my children in the same way. In fact I have the ultimate control group from which to isolate the effect of an independent variable (ie. parenting), as I have a set of identical twins, one Alpha (ESE), the other Gamma (ILI). Socionics has definitely taught me to parent my children differently. I can be completely honest, and do not have to sugarcoat when giving advice to my LIE and ILI sons, and they will immediately accept and appreciate the “help” in the spirit it is intended—eagerly offloading anything from their plate with the overall intention of efficiently crossing off tasks from their list. In contrast, when I see my ESE avoiding dealing with something that is therefore causing him stress, and I try to troubleshoot/offer my help to facilitate relieving him of that stress, my attempts to help are seen as me purposely intending to stress him out MORE by bringing it up. To him, my blustering attempts to rush in and fix everything so that we can then relax, are seen as intrusive and insensitive. So now with him I tolerate long leisurely phone discussions and wait for him to bring anything up. This is painful as well as woefully inefficient to me, because I wish he would just show trust and be real with me— because (in my opinion), certainly by now I’ve proven myself that I have his back, will uphold his privacy, and only want to help?? In contrast, I can call my LIE son while he’s working and fully engaged in something else, omit ANY small talk, and present an option in 8 words, and he in response will tweak and improve my plan with 5 other words, and we can then hang up and both feel satisfaction at our teamwork and crossing something off our to-do list. There just is a basic foundation of understanding when communicating within one’s own Quadra.
A question I will frequently ask when honestly evaluating a particular relationship is #1) could it actually be feasible to go on a cross-country road trip with this person? And question #2) could I actually ENJOY the experience? Funny how upon initial consideration of those questions, that you can immediately cross certain people off of that list, whereas with others it would be the trip of a lifetime. Some relationships just have to remain on a superficial level with some emotional distance remaining intact as a buffer, in order to prevent toxic misunderstandings. Like you aptly pointed out, with Alpha/Gamma relationships, it doesn’t matter how wonderful the individual people are, it’s only a matter of time before each has to eventually discard the superficial act they are engaging in to mimic compatibility, and revert to their natural states and then once that occurs, both sides once again end up feeling alienated and damaged.