LII-SLI Benefit Relations (INTj & ISTp)

[Hope]

Speaking only for myself here: I tend to get along alright with SLIs. They're chill people, and they appreciate my interests to some extent. However I do find they don't communicate well or offer much feedback which makes it difficult to form a more solid relationship. In my experience, if anyone in the relationship was to take initiative it would be me. In another case we had a mutual friend and were involved in the same social circles.

That's interesting, my experience has been exactly the opposite with my LII gf. Maybe subtype matters a lot in this topic.

I would like to know how this relationship even start, obviously if they aren't family members. How does it develop? I think both LIIs and SLIs don't take initiative/action to start a relationship. I also think both types have some sort of walls/barriers, although they might be invisible to others and themselves. It is written that it is usually the benefactor who initiates the contact. So maybe this benefit relationship never starts because LIIs suck at taking initiative, especially if they don't get any emotional feedback that indicates the other person is interested.

I am also curious about what sort of connection would LIIs and SLIs have? How does it play out in short term and long term? What do they think and feel about each other? I would appreciate if anyone has any experience or observation that they would like to share about this relationship.

I was the first one to talking to my LII gf in class. She didn't look very friendly but for some reason I took a sit next to her and started talking to her. I guess I thought she looked smart, decent and low key interesting. In time it developed pretty well. We became best friends in hs and today we still being friends. I'm not sure about her subtype in dcnh (N or D mb), but I've never seen her in my whole life initiating an interaction or conversation that is not merely formal with strangers. She doesnt seem very interested in making friends either, even when she truly craves human contact (Fe suggestive?) more than I do for example. Luckily, ppl always approached her. I think she must be LII strong Ti subtype.

Then, she always took pretty seriously school and career, she's kinda nerdy, she always was interested in getting high scores, it was a matter of pride and the social/group/family worth probably (both of her parents seem Se). So yeah. Besides that, very serious and professional, seems self centered even when she likes Fe and being around ppl or needs a friend/partner (nanny?) besides her she's kinda selfish and that was an impediment to her investing herself in relationships (like to make them work). Maybe its just that her style is childlike. Most of her relationships were pretty much like alcohol, sex and hard consequences for her to handle. Now she seems resigned to not getting married neither having kids. She currently share apartment with another single ESE girlfriend.
In hs I always was the one who went to her house (she has visited me like twice in our entire life), the one who must call her, and things like that. She never done an effort to truly approached me in any way, still, she needed and wanted me doing almost everything and when It wasnt possible for me, she got upset and limited her contact with me since I was giving preference to my relationship than our friendship (for me thats normal and natural not the opposite).

We still talking to each other and I visit her once in while.

Despite that, I really value our friendship, she's honest, intelligent and have a good sense of humor, we can talk about almost anything and we had a lot of good times together over years supporting each other, there was a very deep understanding and connection. I've always loved her and I never felt like her childlike selfishness was an obstacle in our friendship (unless not from my part), I think I like that she has always been sincere as a kid and according her parents I was her dearest friend. She was physically and sentimentally frail so she so woke up my protective side.

I've no clue how it works in romantic relations honestly. So hope that could be helpful somehow.

Would you like to know something else?

[myresearch]

@Aki, I am glad to hear that LII-SLI relationship exists. I think family relationhips and work relationships (if they don't form a friendship outside of the workplace) have other kind of dimmensions, so those interactions seem limited or affected by some kind of noise. Your post is what was I looking for. She also seemed LII-Ti to me.

After the age of 14 and before my early 20s, I was also prone to not engage with people. My friends always called me first, they were the ones that want to meet etc. I think that was unhealthy. I went through some emotional stiuations, however, I didn't process it and that kind of made me guarded. I value my independence and freedom very much. My feelings develop after I know a person and some time has to pass so that I could form a bond with a person. I can care deeply and invest so much after some point. It is very hard for me to break off a relationship once that bond is formed. When I look back, I think my behaviors was resulted by my unconcious defence mechanism. I think LIIs are great at investigating things but not their emotions. They can show this kind of unhealthy pattern if they have an unexamined emotional baggage.

After some events that enlightened me, I became aware that I want to have more deep and meaningful relationships and after that I start to take more initiative and my existing relationships have gotten deeper. I can easily talk with strangers, I like to meet with new people because I want to see if there is a potential for relationship, if not, I want to know their way of looking at life. I still don't usually take initiative at the very beginnig of relationships. I hope thats ok to form friendships with SLIs.

[Overthinker]

I was the first one to talking to my LII gf in class. She didn't look very friendly but for some reason I took a sit next to her and started talking to her. I guess I thought she looked smart, decent and low key interesting. In time it developed pretty well. We became best friends in hs and today we still being friends. I'm not sure about her subtype in dcnh (N or D mb), but I've never seen her in my whole life initiating an interaction or conversation that is not merely formal with strangers. She doesnt seem very interested in making friends either, even when she truly craves human contact (Fe suggestive?) more than I do for example. Luckily, ppl always approached her. I think she must be LII strong Ti subtype.

Then, she always took pretty seriously school and career, she's kinda nerdy, she always was interested in getting high scores, it was a matter of pride and the social/group/family worth probably (both of her parents seem Se). So yeah. Besides that, very serious and professional, seems self centered even when she likes Fe and being around ppl or needs a friend/partner (nanny?) besides her she's kinda selfish and that was an impediment to her investing herself in relationships (like to make them work). Maybe its just that her style is childlike. Most of her relationships were pretty much like alcohol, sex and hard consequences for her to handle. Now she seems resigned to not getting married neither having kids. She currently share apartment with another single ESE girlfriend.
In hs I always was the one who went to her house (she has visited me like twice in our entire life), the one who must call her, and things like that. She never done an effort to truly approached me in any way, still, she needed and wanted me doing almost everything and when It wasnt possible for me, she got upset and limited her contact with me since I was giving preference to my relationship than our friendship (for me thats normal and natural not the opposite).

We still talking to each other and I visit her once in while.

Despite that, I really value our friendship, she's honest, intelligent and have a good sense of humor, we can talk about almost anything and we had a lot of good times together over years supporting each other, there was a very deep understanding and connection. I've always loved her and I never felt like her childlike selfishness was an obstacle in our friendship (unless not from my part), I think I like that she has always been sincere as a kid and according her parents I was her dearest friend. She was physically and sentimentally frail so she so woke up my protective side.

While I don’t have anything to add about SLI-LII relationship, I have to say it’s pretty uncanny how much I could relate to this LII girl you describe. I think your assessment that she is a strong Ti subtype might be spot on, since I am most likely one myself. (It’s interesting too that you think her parents are Se, given that I type my mom SLE - so many coincidences.)

Speaking from my own life experience, I think that trying to befriend/initiate a relationship with an LII can be a true test of patience, since we are almost never likely to initiate contact with someone even if we feel like we might enjoy hanging around with them. If I think about all the firendships I’ve had in my life, I have a hard time recalling a moment where I was explicitly ‘forward’ with the people around me - a lot of the time I was simply passively ‘enduring’ someone else’s initiative until I decided I liked them, after all. Your ‘strategy’ to keep sitting next to your her I think is a particularly effective one with LIIs - at first we will be puzzled/confused by this behaviour, trying to question its reasons (“why are they sitting next to me, of all people?”, “what is their aim, what do they want from me?”, “what is it that they see in me?”), but over time we sort of get used to your presence and defences gradually drop down. It can be a slow process, however, and one that requires persistence, because the LII barely pays any attention to what is going on from a relational standpoint - we are often not sure of the degree of someone’s interest in us, and even when we are relatively sure it often simply doesn’t occur to us that we should do something to help reduce the psychological distance.

I have only recently realized that the extreme “passiveness” of this behaviour actually closes off a lot of opportunities for good relationships and that it can make those people who like me and wish to befriend me suffer an unnecessary amount because they have to put up with my distance and unavailability. As I read through your post at times I almost felt like apologizing on your friend’s behalf because I am sure I’ve pulled a similar type of ‘selfishness’ in the past on some of my best friends right now. And it makes me appreciate them all the more because now I know what kind of patience it took them to drill through this concrete wall of shyness I carry around with myself.

[Rebelondeck]

.........with LIIs - at first we will be puzzled/confused by this behaviour, trying to question its reasons (“why are they sitting next to me, of all people?”, “what is their aim, what do they want from me?”, “what is it that they see in me?”), .......I have only recently realized that the extreme “passiveness” of this behaviour ............I almost felt like apologizing.........type of ‘selfishness’ .......this concrete wall of shyness I carry around with myself.

A lot of what you said is definitely LII-like except for the above excerpts, which seem rather Ip-like......

a.k.a I/O

[Overthinker]

A lot of what you said is definitely LII-like except for the above excerpts, which seem rather Ip-like......

a.k.a I/O

It’s possible I might be a little over-exaggerating some concepts in my exposition, as I sometimes tend to do. Also, I’m not entirely sure how much of a character trait such as “shyness” can be explained by Socionics. Even as a LII, think I’m more shy than most.

Also I would like to add that, in stereotypical Fe dual-seeking behaviour, I can definitely “light up” in the right circumstances so it’s possible to observe me being more loud/expressive in a sort of weird, childlike way. I am actually usually pretty jovial around people I know well.

I think Ti ultimately offers a secure refuge if you’re someone that’s shy/suffers from anxiety. If the world is scary, you can still sit back and analyse it, over and over again, to no end, leading to a situation of analysis paralysis that’s quite difficult to get out of. I think this is because while Ti is a great tool to analyse logical systems, people are often too complex to easily boil down to one, and also it is quite difficult to analyse one’s emotions without in a way losing their “essence”, their “spontaneity” in the process - which is similar to what others have said in this thread, about LIIs not being fully in contact with their emotions. When I become to fixated in Ti-mode the world sort of becomes a grey, robotic, mechanical, ultimately meaningless landscape. Fe types do a lot to get me out of this situation, allowing me to live life more spontaneously and take things as they come, instead of eternally dwelling over them in my head. Maybe it’s like ILIs with Se, except completely different.

Well, my username was not chosen randomly.