The Private Idealist

You carry a clear picture of how things ought to be and you compare the real world to it constantly. That is where your warmth comes from — you take other people's inner lives seriously, more seriously than they take them themselves — and it is also where the ache comes from. You are far more stubborn than your manner suggests: agreeable about nearly everything, immovable about the few things that touch what you actually believe.

The weak spot is the gap between the version in your head and anything you have finished. Because the imagined thing is perfect, the started thing is a disappointment, so a great deal stays unstarted and you read that as a flaw in yourself rather than as a predictable consequence of the standard. The second cost is conflict: you avoid it until the accumulated grievance is large, then present it whole, and the other person hears an indictment rather than a complaint. Smaller and earlier is harder for you and much easier for everyone else.