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Conflicts can be 'head vs. heart'
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Published: November 27, 2008
Do you sometimes think your spouse is overly sensitive, wears their feelings on their sleeve, avoids conflict and is overly accommodating? If so, there is a good chance you are married to a spouse who is a Feeling Type Personality Partner (FTPP).
This series of articles is examining the challenge of what happens when opposite types marry each other. Marriage Types were originally discovered by Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist, and later highly developed by researchers Myers and Briggs.
Let's look now at the marriage partner who is an Intuitive. If you are a dreamer, and love to think and reflect on deep thoughts and if you are always trying to improve yourself and finding new and better ways to do everything, then you are probably an Intuitive Type Personality Partner (ITPP).
Personality Types are neither good nor bad. They just are. People approach decision making and relating to each other in profoundly different ways because of these personality types. If couples learn each others' Personality Type they can learn to communicate better with each other, or speak the language of their partners' type in a way that the partner hears what is being said.
Let's look at some potential misunderstandings when an Intuitive Type and a Feeling Type are married.
Feeling Types are indeed overly touchy. They like harmony and togetherness. They like to feel good and at peace with the world and in their married life. Intuitive Partners, on the other hand, are always seeking a better way and finding new dimensions. If an Intuitive says to a Feeling Type spouse, "Our marriage is getting too routine. We need to make some changes," their spouse would be crushed. The Feeling Type would experience this as a personal criticism and get angry or sullen and withdraw.
Since Feelers do not like conflict, the Feeler would not tell the Intuitive how much these words hurt. The Intuitive spouse would ruminate for hours on why their spouse didn't jump on the idea of spicing up their marriage and sex life. The Intuitive would be hurt because the withdrawing response would say to the Intuitive, "She is not interested in improving our married life."
The FTPP approaches life and marriage issues from the heart and the ITPP would come at issues from the head. FTPPs want to keep things the way they have always been. The ITPPs would rather try something new and get rather bored with the same old thing.
It would improve a marriage relationship if the Feeling Partner would be open to the creative ideas of the Intuitive Partner and hear these ideas as ways to improve the quality of life. Intuitive Partners need to take more time to reflect on how their words are likely to affect a partner who tends to take everything personally. Feeling Partners need to realize that "Peace at any price" can stagnate a marriage relationship and keep it from growing and making necessary changes. Unless the Intuitive Partner gets honest feedback from the Feeling Partner, differences are never addressed and resolved.
Head knowledge and heart knowledge are equally important as couples face a myriad of decisions that need to be made in life. When couples understand each other's contribution, they make a stronger team. They have the best of both worlds.
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