Today we purchased a used fridge and the couple we bought it from - aged 50s/60s?; seemed a fairly new boyfriend/girlfriend relationship, where they had had at least one prior marriage - helped us wrangle it onto the truck. I figured out their types fast, after we were driving away and I was reflecting on the encounter. I got EII for her right off. And, I think he was SLE! SLE's are very nice and make an effort to be polite and helpful with strangers, while EII's can be stand-offish at a strangers' friendly overtures, concerned with making boundaries with the stranger, relating instead with their "own", like they are demonstrating to whom they belong. So, Conflictors. Hmm.

SLE immediately took over the thinking-through the problems to solve to move and load it, and orchestrated/led the whole undertaking. There were some tricky parts to the operation. EII wanted to be hovering to help her SLE, which on several occasions made SLE rebuff - He'd say her name in a frustrated, sharp, exasperated tone. I tried to keep an attentive wide berth, but at one instance he got a tiny bit sharp with me ("No, don't do that!" when I reached guide something at a particularly tricky part), and then he immediately apologized - and I was right next to him, and saw the look in his eye when he said this, like he was afraid of offending, like maybe he had a history of having to be afraid he would offend women, so I quickly reassured him that was perfectly fine so he could see he hadn't offended.

Afterward I found myself feeling better disposed towards him than her. She hadn't made any effort to return friendliness, she offered only negative comments on what we were doing (we "should have brought help" with us*; we need to wear masks; and at the end, when, after so much effort, we'd gotten it onto the truck, responding to my husband's friendly comment to her with "You are not wearing a mask", when he'd just taken it off at the end, drenched in sweat, and we were OUTSIDE. Though I do understood her as taking the role of defending her man, and placing herself in her role as "with" her man.

*[that comment stung a bit, because we had watched videos on how to move a fridge and load onto a truck, and were prepared to do this ourselves, and I had texted him saying that I hoped he could be an extra pair of eyes for us. And I think the SLE was just doing what came natural to him, taking charge, as apparently he considered himself as the most competent one for the job. His Ti was probably at work while we ere getting there, and he wanted to implement what he'd deemed was the way to do it.]

But I also realized their interactions with us mirrored the interactions of a longtime friend SLE/EII couple I know. The EII is my longtime good friend. He (SLE) is goes out of his way to be personable and helpful with strangers and neighbors (this is all in a mild, kind way, vs. the full, outgoing, engaging social-friendliness of an ESE). SLE easily lends a helping hand, which can annoy EII - to see her SLE go all out for strangers when he can be exasperatingly insensitive to her and her needs. EII, instead, with the same strangers, will be the stand-offish one. It's like she evaluates: "These people are not a part of my life. What do they have to do with me/us and why is he expending all this energy on them?" And she will be a withdrawn observer, and if anyone says or does anything she does not like or she thinks is out of bounds, she will let it be known clearly and bluntly! This is the way my "Positivist" friend is in these situations, and it was just like this with the EII I met today.

It's interesting because Maristsa (EII) and I once noticed that she is a positivist who can being boldly negative, while I am a Negativist who can be extra positive. (That has partly to do with the fact that those dichotomies do not actually mean positive/negative as we think of those traits).