Posted by Jeff on August 04, 2001 at 13:55:10:
In Reply to: Re: fives in relationships... posted by Sharlee on August 02, 2001 at 08:23:16:
: Having had a relationship of sorts with a 5, my advice to 5's would be to reassure your partner frequently that you are still there. I found the detachment of 5's was really like getting a scrambled message that made me feel like I was dealing with 2 different people. Just try to engage more - the words and actions will take care of themselves. Fives have a lot going for them - be generous with your time and resources, listen to and acknowledge your partner's interests and needs and be willing to be listened to and acknowledged in return, learn the art of diplomacy and don't partition off your partner to one part of your mind to be recalled at your pleasure and 5's would be perfect. This is more important than "expressing" love by words and gifts (although these are important parts of the whole).
: Sharlee
Fair enough, I understand how we need to engage more. It is quite easy to just live inside my head and think that the outside world and relationships are still going smoothly. Now, the trick seems to be that there has to be some sort of meeting in the middle. I think most 5's LIKE being detached and find it hard to be engaging in just one area of life. However, relationships require attachment so we try. Now, knowing that 5's are detached it seems that there should be a certain rational expectation. It appears you have that since you use tems like "engage more"..signifying that you aren't like some folks who believe that 5's can't relate emotionally at all.
Engaging isn't natural so it's very easy to slip back into detachment. I guess the meeting in the middle would be for the love interest to understand that and just try to signal that it's time to pay attention rather than jumping to conclusions that detachment means dislike. I know that's not what you're saying but that's what happened with recent ex (If I didn't return email within the hour, all hell broke loose).
I do appreciate what you've said here. It tells me that there are women that don't want a complete change from 5 behavior, just to be told that we still care. The remaining question is how frequently does this need to be said and is there some leeway on whether or not that deadline is missed occasionally.