Trust me on this

I’ve been reading about enneagram instinctual variants, and came to realize that it explains sooo much about how weird The ENTJ is about his friends. He’s sp/so (I’m so/sx), and here are some of those things he said that I thought was weird af:

[I asked about his best friend whom he hung out with 3-5 days a week for 4+ years, chat with daily, and obviously really likes] “He’s not really my friend. I respect him too much to be friends with him….but then I respect you (to me) and I’m ‘friends’ with you. Hmm…I don’t know how to define friends. I guess I don’t really have any.” [This was when they were both still hanging out all the time.]

[On contacting the same friend who moved to a different city to ask a question] “You can’t just call someone up and ask them a question. If you haven’t seen each other for 3 months, you’re not really friends anymore.”

[We were traveling abroad and I met up with 2 close friends from university who were very happy to meet and show us around] “How can you just do this with people? I’d never expect anyone to reply if we haven’t met for years, even if you used to be close in uni. I’ve never had anyone done that to me either.”

He still calls a friend I introduced to him years ago “your friend” even though they’ve hung out without me so many times.

For me, I never hesitate to reach out to people I haven’t met in years. It seems like a pretty normal thing to do for me, and people are always willing to help when I reach out anyway. I’d do the same if someone contact me this way. I really don’t know what’s the big deal is haha. And although, I’m picky with people I consider close friends, but my definition of friends is pretty open.

I have definitely done the “your friend” thing. Usually it takes multiple experiences in private or in confidence with the person before I truly feel like they are “my friend.” Because I’ve experienced jealousy over people in my less healthy years with whom I felt like I established a deep connection, maybe the “your friend” thing is about healthier sx not wanting to deprive someone else of a potentially deep and intimate relationship.

Imagine you life involves a semi-truck. Your dominant function is the driver, your aux-function is in the passenger seat, voicing occasional comments about which station to listen to, your tert function is asleep on a cot behind the seat and occasionally sticks their head up to make a comment, and your inferior function is the dirt flaps on the back tires. How much driving are those dirt flaps going to do? How capable of steering are those dirt flaps?

Exactly.

High Si gives an SJ clarity of where they come from, their life experiences, their sensory likes and dislikes, awareness of how they learn and how they prefer things, it grounds them because it’s driving the truck. For an NP, Si is either napping behind the seat or dragging in the wind. If it’s dragging in the wind, Ne probably ignores it most of the time, or struggles to remember it’s there, or has a Si memory totally infused with… IDEAS. THIS happened. No, it didn’t. You THOUGHT it did and made it up. And since the dirt flap isn’t that important, Ne is busy with other ideas. Let’s do this! It failed last time, Si says. Ne laughs, it’s fine! It’ll be different this time!

Ne says, I’m a Ne-dom! Yay! They are a Ne-dom for two weeks. Then Ne-ideas and doubts start creeping in. But I do this, and that’s more common to other types… what if I’m not a Ne-dom at all? So Ne looks to the passenger seat: I do these things, what ideas do you have about my type (which is really just Ne seeking other people’s IDEAS about them!)?? And the tert pops up from the cot and says, “Yeah, you could be delusional about the Ne,” as Ne is spinning this melodramatic yarn about how they’re this other type. Meanwhile, the dirt flap is snapping in the wind, and if Ne bothered to get out, walk around to the back of the truck, and ask, “Si, do you think I’m a REALLY Ne??”

Si would glare at the Ne, covered in mud, and say, “You’re JOKING, right?”