Scrum Master

Quite a few things happened with the crush situation at work.

I tried guessing her MBTI type. I guessed ISFP, mainly because she was dealing with UX, and because I was projecting on her that she was a very artistic person. Turns out not to be the case. She actually asked me for my MBTI type, without me having to ask her for it. She was an ENFJ. If you know the MBTI, EXXJ types are considered to have leadership qualities.

And I didn't declare myself as an INFP. That would have made me quite compatible with an ENFJ. Instead, I'm an INTP.

There was another Herrmann braindominance test, and it turned out that both her and I had similar profiles: we were both equally split between blue (very logical), yellow (creative and visionary) and red (feelings and people oriented). And we had less of the green quadrant (rules and routine). I looked at her, and she looked at me, and we were like, hmmmm..... But these similarities are overblown. The default is that people are balanced, so it's not really that much of a similarity if both parties have 3 colours. But that was pretty exciting to know .... 

We had a project that we did together. And it turned out that I had two weaknesses. One of them was that I wasn't very well organised. The other was that I wasn't good at presentations. She was good at both of these things, and it was just amazing how we meshed together. She didn't have the intellectual rigour that I brought to the table. But the way that we were able to cover for each other's weaknesses was just so alluring and sexy. And furthermore, she was a ticket to getting permanently confirmed on the job.

It makes a lot more sense that she's an ENFJ. She's a natural born politician, and had a lot of charisma to get things done, and actually cared enough about people to make people love her back. I could have gone the route of pestering her all the time. But I just wanted to get to know her better.

I think that she had quite a big social calendar. And the only reason why she had time for me is that I was her teammate. If we didn't end up working with her, I might not have had a chance to even get to know her better.

If a lady is as attractive as she is, the consequences of that attractiveness will leave a deep mark on who she is. She might even not want to have a steady boyfriend, because so many guys will be after her, and going crazy over her, that being forced to choose would be quite difficult.

Her being able to get her way a lot of the time will warp and shape her perception of the world. She is a good and kind person compared to other women who are as good looking as she is. But there will always be blind spots.

I would have to think hard about the exact nature of my relationship with this person. They say that if you have a great fortune, you don't own that great fortune: it owns you. It's the same if you not only have an attractive face, but an attractive personality as well. I have a good IQ – not exceptional, but quite good. And that good IQ has ended up shaping considerably who I am as a person.

As good as she was a man manager and being well organised and presentable, she wasn't the best when it came to IT. The one on our team who was good at running an IT team was another young lady (call her tech lead) who eventually grew resentful at her, both for not being smarter than she was, and for getting the leadership role without being the most knowledgeable person. So in the last few months, a considerable amount of tension had developed between them. And sometimes I wonder if tech lead can tell that I had a crush on scrum master.

I often felt that scrum master was a bit like Snow White: she was nice to people, she was down to earth and remarkably unfussy about who to hang out with, and people either loved her or were quite jealous of her.

I think there were a few guys who were clearly ahead of me in being interested in her romantically: and they were part of her “tribe”. I didn't see myself as being part of that tribe, so I guess I could rule myself out. I've also come to realise, from previous experience, that having a significant other like that does not come cheap: you're supposed to be smarter and better than 100 other guys, and always knowing that your position as her man is never ever secure.

I would have to be content with a consolation prize, which is that we get along great, and she's done a lot for me. There's a line that I know if I cross it, that relationship would end, and perhaps even end badly.

I've tried to “mediate” between the scrum master and the tech lead, and it served the dual purpose of being able to understand the social dynamics at work much better, and it also served the purpose of me getting to know the scrum master better. Well, she's not a deep thinker like I am, who's obsessing over all minutia. Actually she probably obsesses over different minutia than me. She likes cute humour, and I've tried to show that side of me to her. The way that she's always immaculately dressed, and her sharp fashion sense – well I think nobody's as talented as she is in that way.

She doesn't always have a smile on her face, but when she does, it's the kind of smile that looks like a summer day. I realised that she doesn't really do sarcastic or maybe mean humour. Guys do it, and guys like me do it because I lead a life that has a lot of unhappiness in it. Her life is not like that. She will care for me, but that is because she cares for everybody else. So it's a little crazy to want her as a girlfriend, because an exclusive relationship is one which goes against her instinct to care for everyone.

This isn't “ugly beauty” we're talking about. She isn't somebody where you have to look very hard to find the inner beauty. It's all there, in front of you. This is somebody who you're hoping that her inner self would match up to the promise of that shiny surface. She doesn't need snide or sarcastic humour to shield her from the harshness of her daily existence. The ENFJ is the protagonist: more a hero than an anti-hero. To busy saving the world to be indulging in any form of naval gazing and rationalising. There is a directness and wholesomeness about her that's quite refreshing for me, and makes me wonder what life was like if I never had any inner demons to battle.

A love or a crush has always been some kind of a city on a hill for me. I know how to love from afar, but I don't really know how to love up close. She was a glittering tower of light for a while, but what would happen next? Because there were times when I thought about what I looked like. If I were to exhibit boorish behaviour: if I were to scold my parents: if I were to do something that wasn't at my best: if I wasn't totally engaged in the moment.

It isn't that hard to be attractive to women. Merely being able to understand them puts you ahead of 50% INFPs and ENFJs have chemistry. If she were merely a pretty face, I might not have bothered. But it was a slow burn – first 6 months, I didn't work with her. Then there was 6 months of working together without any extraordinary attraction. Then by the time lightning struck, there were only 6 months worth of the project before we had to leave. And neither of us may not want the whole world to know about this crush. I care about her enough that ... if she's already going steady with a guy, I can't just overturn the apple cart, that would be selfish. It's a little kinky to be tied to a chair and just sit back and let her turn me on every day.

As the days pass, I have to live through the whole experience in order to make sense of it. There was that crazy crush, but could I turn it into a friendship? Well actually not, because for us to meet up after this experience would start raise questions about the nature of our relationship. If scrum master and tech lead were friends, we could take the whole team out for a meal, but that's off limits at the moment. I had to consider the long term impact: she initiated me into my second stint at the Factory, she was kind to me, we had a good, maybe even happy working relationship. And she made me seriously consider the next steps in my life, which were to find a life partner. Those are the main things. The crush is something that's almost trivial and unremarkable in comparison.