SLE Vulnerable Fi and The Motivation Problem (A Sketch from Life)

“I don’t want to! I won’t! I’m not interested in this!”

Diagnostics—the essence of which is identifying individual differences—is a skill that can be trained, much like recognizing foreign speech. Those who already possess it will tell you that daily practice is required, and the fastest progress comes when the skill is urgent. A person may learn a language slowly at home, yet the moment they move abroad the task becomes non-negotiable: the language is now the price of belonging and interaction.

How, then, do you make diagnostics relevant when it has never felt urgent? This is, without a doubt, a very difficult challenge.

Even when facing a complete failure in interpersonal interactions—one that led to divorce, worsening relationships with people around them, and misunderstandings with loved ones and children—it is as if, even on the brink of an impending catastrophe, a person can still ignore the fact that this task is urgent.

Consider an acquaintance of mine, an SLE who lost the ability to trust women after a messy divorce in which his child was taken from him. He is now a staunch misogynist; every subsequent woman is painted with the same brush: “gold-digging creature, immoral piece of trash, total bitch.” When I asked what a “normal” woman looks like to him—his ideal, the qualities he actually wants—I could extract only extreme, bitter judgments; the subject is simply too painful.

I described his personality type and how others perceive him. He accepted some points but vehemently rejected others, declaring that the feelings of losers, pushovers, weaklings or cowards are irrelevant. If people find his manner harsh, they should change their circle rather than expect him to soften. I pointed out the contradiction: he himself would never tolerate disrespect, and the only people who would are precisely the weaklings he despises.

In other words, I pointed out his subservience complex and explained that his underlying assumptions can and should be worked on. Though it wasn't easy—I had to wade through extremely rigid rationalizations and off-the-charts negativity.

Step by step, I extracted the answer from him: kind, sincere, decent, soft, gentle, tactful, able to smooth over rough edges and defuse tension. A lot of his answers revolved around a "girly girl"—a traditionally gendered image. Wearing dresses, airy, romantic, mysterious.

Those were his words. He knows nothing about Socionics and still considers it nonsense for lunatics.

I offered the analogy that relationship rules are like traffic rules: ignore them and you crash. That is exactly what happened to him. When asked whether he wanted to learn the rules, he refused—understanding “female psychology,” he insisted, is not a man’s job.

He effectively accepted that nothing would ever work out for him. Yet given his nervousness and volatility, plus existing medical conditions, his system may simply not hold; there have already been precedents. Brushing the problem aside is no longer viable.

The larger lesson is that help can be given only to those open to receiving it. Say “Diagnostics is a skill that can be learned” and the reply is often “Nah, that’s bullshit—I tried, it didn’t work.” It is like handing someone a Rubik’s Cube they cannot solve: the algorithm exists, the cube is solvable, yet without motivation the person walks away.

As someone recently wrote to me—paraphrasing slightly—he replied that he no longer has any motivation to delve into this because he reached a baseline level of comfort: he has a job, housing, and a woman he's currently in a relationship with. As long as he likes his job and things are fine with the woman, he sees no reason to "fathom the essence of things." But apparently, only for the time being.

Source: S. Ionkin