After some events this weekend it made me really realise that my mum taught me the following my whole upbringing: if someone has mental health problems and/or trauma, and they treat you cruelly, then it's because of what they are dealing with and they can't help it. Instead of standing up for yourself and asking for and making sure you get treated better, you should allow them to treat you however they wish. After all, surely your love and care for them will help somehow, because you are showing them no matter what that you will be there.

....In reality, what this actually does is make you into someone who it is 'safe' for them to treat cruelly. Maybe they find it makes them feel a tiny bit better to do this. Of course, they may also feel frustrated that you just take their abuse without reacting, and as a result experiment with new ways of harming you. This is incredibly unhealthy for both parties. I had to learn this after I finally left home. (I lived at home well into my 20s because I didn't really believe I could live independently. But in the end it turned out I could. I wish I could go back and make it so I left earlier.) When I was 12 and my mum introduced me to a kid close to my age who needed a friend, just like I did, the above situation began to play out between us within a year. I endured everything he wanted to throw at me because I thought me being a friend to him was helping, and I had no one else. His unmet needs that should have been attended to by his guardians and other responsible adults were instead taken onto my 13 year old shoulders because of the absence of help for him from those people. I saw that there was no one else there for him and I really thought I was doing the right thing by setting no boundaries in our relationship. Not that I'd had much practice setting healthy boundaries at that age anyway. And also, my church indirectly taught that suffering was somehow a good thing. (Ironically my youth leader became pretty frustrated at me about my unhealthy dynamic with x and my inability to make any other friends, and was quite unkind about it. It was like he had never seen a socially stunted child before, which is odd as he claimed to have been one. I think after a certain age teenage situations start to look like unsolveable pointless drama to older people. I wish this were not the case though.)

I'm nearly 34 and I've been free of the above shit in a practical sense for about 8 years (and am now mostly free in an emotional sense, though clearly not fully or I wouldn't be writing this). It took a while to heal because I struggled with people's reactions to others who behaved like me. They often appeared to take the side of my abuser from my point of view, as they pointed out the type of way I had behaved was enabling and discouraged the other person to treat people better, maybe even made them worse. This was a major block of mine for a long time- that maybe it had all been my fault. Now I'm a bit stronger and on better meds and I can see: they weren't saying it was my fault. Just that it's not virtuous or morally good to be a full time emotional shock absorber for someone else. It's a situation that sucks, and can be difficult to break out of, but it's not a morally right way to be. And it's frustrating, and often triggering, for other people to see someone they care about being treated badly and saying no no, it's ok, they can't help it and I can take it! Now I'm on the opposite side of this dynamic when I go home and see how my mum is on full time emotional shock absorber duty for my dad. I've seen other situations where someone I cared about was being treated badly and insisted everything was fine, they don't mind, they can take it, the other person can't help it....and now I was the one wanting to express that this isn't good and it's not helping and it's not morally right!! But I know that didn't help me when I was in that situation so all you can do is offer perspective and how you see the situation from an outside place, and try and reinforce the person being harmed's humanity. But the situation with my parents is much harder because it's basically been going on as long as I can remember. My mum's excuses for why he behaves like this at home keep changing. She says things that out of context would be very offensive, such as that everyone who has anxiety must treat their family like this behind closed doors. But she has to believe that in order to cope with the way my dad treats her. (I told her it wasn't true but it won't have helped.)

The past weekend she even blamed me. I was staying over and when I asked her about the way he had spoken to her and if he always does it, she said my presence annoys him and makes him treat her worse. It is true that I don't get on with him. He's not a nice person. I'm done with the reassurances that he loves me because he's never shown it. His presence stresses me out and the eggshells everyone around him has to walk on puts me on edge. Whenever he's acting nice it feels like an act becuase you know he could say something nasty at any minute without warning, and no one will ever expect him to apologise because that's never been an expectation for him as long as I've been alive.

It was hurtful that she said that. I think my siblings also feel that way about me, that I make him worse by being upset at him and stuff. I plan to avoid him and only see other family members when he isn't there for the forseeable future. This should be possible. Though the idea that I am the family problem is very sad to me.

It wasn't until I was living away from him that I learned healthy ways to have conflict with someone you care about. I learned the difference between someone I care about lashing out in a state of mental distress, and how it can be addressed afterwards and things can return to being ok again, vs someone consistently behaving badly in a dynamic where they have never had any consequences for this. I learned what you can expect from others with regards to emotional self regulation. Most of all I learned how to manage times when I have lashed out at people I care about, and that I can make it right afterwards. It's not easy. But it's possible and I resolve to keep working at it and never get in another dynamic like the above. It makes being in contact with a dynamic like that triggering, and that's probably the main reason why I can't cope with my dad. I can't do anything about his behaviour except stay away from him I guess. I just wish things were different for my mum, and anyone else I care about who I can see is in a similar position.

Hi Charity!

I hope you’re doing well 😊

I’m the INFP who wrote the post about Dean.

I read the post about the different communication styles between feelers, and I found it very interesting and thought-provoking. Your reply really resonated with me. I know the original poster said they weren’t replying to me, but I still felt part of the conversation and wanted to respond to it, but then I got a bit carried away, so I tried to synthesise my thoughts as best as I could (so not that well haha). Here it goes.

Since you said I could edit / shorten it if I wanted, I'm going to, because if I don't, this conversation is just going to keep going in circles with me in the middle. But I'm going to keep what you said about Dean, because I think it's important to discuss.

In my original post I didn’t mean to speak for all Fi users, and didn’t mean to definitely exclude Fi when it comes to Dean, just Fi-dom. I didn’t mean either that if he were an Fi-dom he would behave exactly as I would have in the same situation, and I probably carried on too much about myself but I meant that if he were an Fi-dom, to me he would have enough emotional subtlety to understand that people are different, they react differently to things, and he would have given Rory the space to react in her own way. Maybe she didn’t feel it, but then again maybe she did and it was hard for her to express it, or maybe she needed time to figure things out and wasn’t sure of her feelings, which is fine too, especially at sixteen! Maybe he would have asked questions and been more curious about the reasons why she didn’t say it, instead of assuming that it must mean that she doesn’t feel it if she doesn’t say it back straight away. I just felt a lot of harsh energy coming from him, which I didn’t think matched that of a Fi-dom, but then again maybe I self-inserted too much, maybe it has to do with him being a sensor or unhealthy or his enneagram… It’s just, I look at Jess and Dean and I just don’t see the same type. Dean has that sort of traditional aura about him, like “this is what things are supposed to be like when you have a girlfriend and this is what society tells you needs to happen” and stuff, that Jess completely lacks, and that I don’t think is very Fi. But again, I could be wrong. It could also be that his characterisation is just not that great.

You did raise a good point, and I think you are right. Dean has a lot of expectations about what a relationship should look like, and the gender roles people should play in them. Do you remember that episode where Rory and her mom were scoffing at an old TV show? I think it was Donna Reed? He got a little offended, and said he thinks it's "kind of nice" if a woman wants to take care of her husband, and cook, and clean, and look nice for him, and both of them gave him a dirty look -- but then Rory went and dressed up in a 50's outfit and fixed him dinner to "try it." And Dean kind of liked it. My point is, I could see an ISFJ for Dean now that I think about it more. He takes his role as a boyfriend seriously and he wants to do it "right." He is overall tolerant and good-natured, and sometimes makes selfish decisions (but so does every person on that show :P) but you are right, he expects an immediate verbal response in a way an IFP might not. Compare him to Jess, who told Rory "I love you" and then ran away. Left. "The ball is in her court." He got all hurt that she didn't respond immediately or chase him down and tell him, and left / sulked. (Cue Luke going: you're an idiot. You wait around for an answer! You don't just make a declaration and run away!) Then there's the fact that when his marriage falls apart, Dean goes back to Rory. His old girlfriend. It's "going back" and "not moving forward." So your two cents is appreciated and I think you're right and my initial assessment was wrong.

I admire people who are so confident as the poster, because one of the reasons why I didn’t use to share my feelings with other people was in part because it was hard, in part because I didn’t think they were interested. I didn’t think it mattered, I didn’t think I mattered, in any case that I mattered enough that they would want me to bother them and take away from their precious time to have that conversation. I really don’t want to bother people. I’d rather just go away and lick my wounds in private and analyze it and learn from it and eventually be OK with it. (What makes me and my views and my thoughts more important than others’, why should they want to read about it? Answer: nothing, and they probably don’t, so I don’t say anything or send anything.) I’m working on it and doing better!

This is very 9. And it's true, 9s have trouble "taking up space" and feeling like their voice even matters. I also struggle with this a lot, and I just have a 9 fix. I want to do / say things and then think: but no one cares, so why bother? 9s shrink their space instead of expand to fill it.

To sum things up, as you also tried to convey, I think, Charity, I don’t think we can determine people’s communicative styles “once and for all”. Irrespective of type, people are complex and communication depends on many factors: the level of intimacy of the relationship, the presence or absence of conflict, the actual personality of the person in front of you, your history with that person, how you’re feeling in that particular moment, are you tired, anxious, busy, hungry… Your communication style is also likely to evolve back and forth, in one direction as you grow and mature, or in the other when you go through stressful times. People are complex and I don’t think they fit into neat little boxes.

Agreed, but I think some people are naturally more straightforward than others, and others send mixed messages. I had a relationship end last year and then received a Christmas card from that person over the holidays, followed by them wanting to be included in an ongoing multi-person project I had going on about two months later. They were sending me a lot of mixed messages (why are you here? is this you trying to talk to me?) because we had ended our friendship, so I mustered up the nerve to ask: "Does this mean you want to talk?" and the answer was "No."

This is pure attachment type behavior: I'm not sure what I want. Do I want to be friends again? No? But I need to feel still connected to you in some way? Yes? But it's also painful to be around you, and recall that we are no longer friends? Yes. So why am I here?

About a month later, they pulled out of the project, because... I guess... they realized the above. But that is my point: sometimes attachment types (3, 6, 9) don't know what we want, and we send mixed messages, and other people ask us directly what we're up to, and that forces us to think about it, and THEN we make a decision. So I may not like Rory all the time, but I understand why she does the crap she does and all about having to learn to be assertive in a relationship. That Dean thing really upset her, because one minute it was all fine and they were happy and the next, he was mad at her for not instantly saying "I love you." And she reacted largely how I'd expect a 9w1 to act -- what the hell just happened? He tore himself away from me, because I didn't have an answer for him?!

I'm also considering sx2w1 for Dean. Lots of (unhealthy, cuz no one on the show is healthy) intensity, emotion, and expectation that me doing nice things for you means I love you, and you should know that, and I need to hear it from you in return.

Thank you again Charity for being the catalyst for so much interesting thought and introspection! I don’t think I’ve ever written so much on the topic and I am in awe that you are doing it daily and still running this blog after all these years. Sending many good thoughts!

Thanks for contributing! :)