#isfj relationships
Anon wrote: I was hoping to seek your advice with my ISTP father. His inferior Fe is extremely underdeveloped, even though he is in his 60s. He is always starting arguments with my ISFJ (possibly ESFJ) mother and me, his ISFJ daughter. He starts disagreements over the tiniest of things and causes so much turmoil in our household. He leaves for long periods of time without telling us where he’s going, he shows no empathy for our feelings even after us expressing how we need him to change at least once a week, and does not act like he even really needs my mom.. especially like she needs him to be there for her. It’s really hard because we both love him so much, and as an adult daughter, I am well aware of the impact this is having on my mother. Do you have any advice on how to approach him about this? Explaining our feelings and even telling him directly what we need doesn’t work. I just want my parents to be happy and my mom to feel loved. Even if I can’t have the greatest relationship with him myself, I can still love him and know he loves me, but I want him to love my mom how she needs because she has suffered so much emotionally through all of this.. Thank you.
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When dealing with any problem, facing facts is the first step. Your expectations of him seem very out of touch with the reality of what he is. Your expectations for the relationship seem very out of touch with the reality of what is actually possible. Since you and your mom share a similar/same type, you basically run into the same problems with him. However, keep in mind that her relationship with him is a separate entity to your relationship with him. You can’t and shouldn’t try to fix their relationship for her. The both of you need to do some personal work, if you hope to change this unhealthy relationship dynamic.
There are several issues that need to be unpacked:
1) The Problem of Boundaries: SFJs tend to be very self-sacrificing in relationships. This is a testament to their wonderfully deep capacity for love. However, this behavior can result in harm to oneself and/or others when healthy relationship boundaries are never set and properly maintained. Having no limits to what you’re willing to sacrifice leaves you wide open for exploitation. Signalling to others that you’re willing to do whatever it takes for a relationship to work is basically granting them license to take, take, take from you without having to think about giving you anything in return. This is why FJs often find themselves stuck in woefully unequal and sometimes even abusive relationships. It’s important to understand that inequality is self-inflicted suffering that arises from your lack of boundaries and/or your lack of assertiveness in enforcing boundaries. You have to be able to set limits on how much you give in relation to how much you get from the relationship. Aside from what the other person does or doesn’t do, whether a relationship has a sense of equality is largely dependent upon whether YOU assert your rights, advocate for YOUR needs, and request the respect and consideration that YOU are owed. It sounds like you tryto do this, but it is met with no good result, because you have probably waited too long and the relationship dynamic is already set. Boundaries have to be set at the start of the relationship and maintained at every turn. I suspect both you and your mom need to work on boundary setting abilities, see the resources page for book recs.
2) The Problem of Expectations: The self-sacrificing tendency can cause problems when it leads you to place unreasonable expectations upon people to reciprocate your sacrifices (especially when it comes to sacrifices that they never asked you to make). If you expect a Ti-Fe person to be a Fe-Ti person, you’re setting yourself up for a lot of disappointment. Different people show love in different ways. Trying to force an opposite personality type into being more like your type usually backfires. While you must assert yourself in a relationship and make requests of people to meet your needs, there is a hard limit as to how much a Ti-Fe person can reciprocate your devotion and sacrifice, simply because their awareness and understanding of Fe is far different from yours, especially when they have ardently resisted type development. You can’t have a healthy relationship as long as you can’t see and accept someone for who they really are. If you’re not equipped to have a relationship with a Ti-Fe person and/or if you’d rather have a relationship with a Fe-Ti person, be completely honest about it and adjust your expectations to fit the reality of the situation.
3) The Problem of Consequences: In order for people to understand that their behavior is problematic and should be changed, they have to face up to the negative consequences of it. As far as I can tell, he suffers no real consequences for his neglectful, rude, and dismissive behavior, because the both of you are still there waiting on him when he comes back, caring for him anyway. At most, he endures a bit of nagging, which he can easily tune out (out of sight, out of mind). This goes back to the first point: How much are you and your mother willing to give him before you say enough is enough and actually make him suffer some real consequences for his problematic behavior? This is not an issue of miscommunication if the real problem is that he simply doesn’t want to change. Type development is a personal choice; you can’t force it on people. I can’t tell you what sort of consequences he needs in order to finally learn something and I can’t tell you whether he will just ignore the consequences you try to inflict. I can’t tell you whether the relationship needs to end or whether it can be salvaged. All I’m saying is that it looks like he has no motivation whatsoever to change, and your willingness to put up with his bad behavior only enables his resistance to change.
4) The Problem of Sexism: It is very likely that a heterosexual relationship suffers from all kinds of underlying gender biases. As a man, he has very little reason to change his behavior when the women in his life behave as expected, as he has been taught to expect by society’s gender stereotypes. As a woman, it is very easy, even for women who identify as feminists, to unwittingly fall into the default submissive, sacrificing, or passive role that women are socialized to embody. Perhaps both you and your mom need to re-evaluate your concept of “fairness” and “equality”. Equal treatment in a relationship doesn’t magically appear, especially when you have societal forces unconsciously pushing you into an unequal relationship dynamic. If someone refuses to treat you like an equal, do you recognize it and does it bother you? At what point do you ask yourself whether the relationship is still worth your considerable investment of time, feeling, and energy?
This relationship dynamic has been going on too long and the problem keeps getting rehashed in circles with no resolution. I don’t tell people how to make decisions in life. All I can tell you is that, in order for it to change, YOU have to do something different to break the cycle, because he sure as heck isn’t going to change anything when he benefits more from it.
