Yesterday out with my mom was not the most pleasant day. It got better after we went to visit my sister on her lunch break at work, but most the day took place prior to that, and was very tense and there was a lot of friction between the two of us.
I said it straight out to my mom after we had already had a few conflicts arise: "We're just too different, mom. We're totally different people." She was offended by this. Why? It's the truth. I considered that it may be the fact that I'm her daughter & she is my mother and I'm also young & immature. After thinking about it, though, I feel like the biggest issue is that my mom doesn't know how to communicate without being offensive and feeling offended. I can accept not getting my way. I really can. What makes things difficult for me is when she is not direct. Getting defensive over every statement made that may be in contradiction to what you feel, yelling about it, overreacting and losing your head, is really not the way to handle things. Honestly: GET A GRIP! So I think... maybe she's not aware of how she's acting, mayyybe if she just knew, she would say to herself, "hey, I'm making an ass of myself and not helping the issue at all; maybe I should check my behaviour," then things could smooth out and we could really get somewhere. No. I've tried it, my sisters have tried it, her boyfriends have tried it, friends have tried it... only with the result of her getting more worked up, more resistant to reasoning and understanding, more loud.
When a conflict arises, I want to first come to fully understand it, then from that understanding at least look for a solution or compromise, and if that isn't possible, just accept it, let it go, and move on. That's how I work and it's extremely difficult to try and work with someone who is completely uninterested in understanding anyone else, much less themselves... or anything! I'm not saying all of this to make my mom look like shit and me look like a saint. I just REALLY wish she could handle conflict better, because if she could, I think we could have a much better relationship. Even though we never have things to talk about when we're together outside of joking around, just coming to understandings when in conflict would really make life more pleasant with her. And anyway, this post really isn't about my mother. She's just a way to illustrate the point (which I'm getting to). I could use a few other people, but yesterday is what brought up this whole thing in my mind in the first place, and while those others are possible for me to use as illustrations, she's at the extreme, so I think it makes it more clear.
I think one of the truest and most important things I've ever read about my personality type is the quote as the subject for this post about expecting inexhaustible reasonability and directness. I've always known that I tend to expect too much from people, especially the closer they are to me, I just wasn't sure exactly what it was. This is definitely a huge part of it. I think when you are close to someone, even when you're not aware of it there is often a lot involved in that feeling under the surface, and in order for those subconscious things to not get in conflict, you need to be direct with each other... and reasonable! I'm not even sure you can have one exists peacefully without the other (at least not the directness without the reasonability). I know another part of my expectations is that I for some reason tend to expect them to be tougher, to be able to handle more. I'm not sure why. Not always, but I can tend to want to expect people to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps." Oftentimes this is not reasonable of me. This is something of myself I need to work on.
I think the main benefit about me figuring these kinds of things out about my personality is that I can communicate it to others when I need to. Not only that but when I do get aggravated with someone, I can understand why I'm feeling the way I am, and knowing something like this, there would be a starting place to assessing the real problem.
Problem solvers, system builders, and fixer-uppers we INTJs are, indeed! :P
-Liv-
conflict
