Interacting with "Winners"

[7Wannabe5]

There's another way to look at this problem which is relevant to this forum. What I want, like many/most of the members of this forum, is the free time/energy to engage in creative work/activities of my choosing even if they are not particularly lucrative. There is no avoiding tedium in life. Even if you are completely financially independent you have to do tedious things like flossing your teeth and cleaning dust out of vents. You also have to spend some time/energy on the tedious aspects of managing largely passive investments. Also, there are tedious aspects to any sort of creative work in which you are freely, happily choosing to engage. If you want to breed purple pumpkins then you have to do some weeding or if you want to bike the Lewis and Clark trail, you have to do some boring mechanical maintenance activities. If you want to achieve financial independence through the ERE program then you have to adopt some tedious frugal practices as well as the creative ones and you have to (worst case scenario) spend approximately 5 years working 40 hours a week at a job that may have many tedious aspects (Option 1.) Or you can choose to be self and/or part-time employed for a longer period and accept the tedium associated with that choice (Option 2.) Or you can partner with somebody else who already has more than enough money to be retired and if you are a fair-minded person then you will accept that you owe your partner some tedious labor in exchange for financial support (Option 3.) HOWEVER, if it is the case that the person with whom you have partnered is behaving in a manner (conscious or unconscious) that causes it to be the case that this option will result in MORE tedium than Options 1 or 2 then it will be the case that you will not be happy with Option 3.

The most logical way I can think of to test the truth of this hypothesis would be to assertively commence spending a good deal of my time/energy/ability to tolerate tedium on a number of projects such as breeding purple pumpkins and then deal with the fallout or roadblocks as they appear in my current context.

[7Wannabe5]

Okay, went back to the drawing board and determined that my SO is an ENTJ not an ESTJ or an ESFJ. I only thought he was S because everybody has more S than me and he only seems kind of F relative to me because he grew up in a culture where people express their emotions. Now the problem makes much more sense and actually one of his solutions which was "hire somebody else (who actually is an S) to do the tedious work" is a good one and I should likely strive to overcome my psychological resistance to it. However, solving this area of conflict opens up the larger realm of conflict where I was previously intuiting the other flavor of J present on this forum could maybe help me. The quotes below pretty much exactly describe the conflict in our ENTP/ENTJ relationship.

From Personality Central: Perceiving partners, on the other hand, may feel that Judging partners can be too overbearing and micromanaging at times, and feel stifled. Judging partners may want to decide things like where to keep certain household items, what time the family should be, and attempt to enforce these decisions on the Perceiving partners. Perceiving partners often resist this need for control from the Judging partners; in worst cases, the resistance may come in the form of a break-up.

However, when they have an argument, it is usually harder for one side to back down. Both see the logical sense of their argument and will not relent until the other party agrees with the logic. These arguments may turn even uglier if one partner feels their competence is being challenged and reacts with an outburst of uncontrolled emotion. If both parties lose their temper together, the fight can become intense and damaging.

Do any of you have SO's who are P and, if so, how do you overcome the conflict between efficiency vs. creativity or competence vs. uniqueness or choosing the best path vs. the most interesting path or not wanting to choose just one path? One insight I had was that I am okay with my J partner making all or most of the practical decisions if/when I can quickly see all the new options opening up on the fork he chose. For instance, I understand the practical sense in his decision to paint all the walls in the house (and all of his rental housing units!) the same color of off-white but my initial reaction was "Boring, boring, boring, I am so shut-down and stifled. I can't stand this level of repression." until I had the thought "But if the tiles are already pink and the walls remain off-white then I can change the third color in the bathroom at my whim just by spending a teensy amount of money and effort on accessory items." and then I was happy again but when I tried to explain why I was happy again to my SO, his response was "I have no idea what you are talking about but I am glad that you are happy again." because my need to be free to change decisions does not compute with him.