How is the Enneagram Useful to Couples?
What’s
Your Type? Personality system helps couples
understand each other. by Jimmy Radosta
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In any long-term relationship, most couples can remember
disagreeing about something seemingly insignificant. Maybe one of them
was having a bad day. Perhaps it was the result of miscommunication.
But oftentimes a minor spat can spiral into a major conflict without
deeper exploration.
For Vicki Reitenauer, it happened in the kitchen. She and her wife,
Carol Gabrielli, share an interest in cooking, but they don’t always
adhere to the same standards.
“I’ll chop the peppers, and then she’ll come back and re-chop them at
the size that she wants,” Reitenauer recalls. Before long, she’d find
herself feeling: “Wow, you’re betraying me on some fundamental level.
You’re abandoning me.”
The couple, who met at college in 1985 and have been together since
1997, eventually figured out what was causing such an extreme reaction.
They accomplished this by studying the Enneagram, a personality system
that details nine universal perspectives on seeing the world. For
example, “The Protector” tends to be a bossy person who confronts
injustice, while “The Mediator” would rather avoid drama. “The
Performer” enjoys the spotlight, while “The Observer” prefers privacy.
In essence, each personality type has a specific “lens” through which
it filters the world, and the Enneagram aims to bring everything into
focus.
Gabrielli discovered that her Enneagram type is “The Perfectionist.”
This means that she consistently fixates on errors, which can lead to
anger and resentment. “I think things through with great rigor,”
Gabrielli says before jokingly busting into an exaggerated German
accent: “It’s about discipline and consequence!”
Reitenauer, meanwhile, identifies as “The Romantic,” an idealistic type
who frequently notices what’s missing. “I believe in feeling things
deeply. I’m drawn to the highest highs and the lowest lows.”
By learning more about their distinct points of view, the couple were
able to develop a keen awareness that not everyone perceives those
chopped veggies in the same way. As a result, they stopped taking
everything so personally.
“Because of who Carol is, there is this sense of doing everything in
the right way,” Reitenauer says. “But that intersects with my deep
shame around being exposed for being wrong. That would be a driver for
conflict in our relationship.”
The goal, she explains, is for people to express affection in a way
that will resonate with their partner.
“The Enneagram has helped me to recognize how Carol shows love to me,”
Reitenauer says. “Sometimes in a couple, either person can be acting in
ways that they believe are loving and which are expressions of love.
But the other person can’t see it, because it’s not what that person
typically has recognized as love.”
Israel Sostrin and Susan Schmitt have also experienced how the
Enneagram can help couples understand each other better. As the busy
parents of an infant daughter, they have a strong desire to connect
during their limited free time—albeit with different approaches.
Sostrin’s personality type is “The Giver,” so he instinctually places
the needs of others ahead of his own and can suffer from “a lack of
awareness of myself and my basic needs.” He prefers to connect on an
emotional level.
Schmitt, however, finds connection intellectually. As “The Epicure,”
she can easily get lost in thought. Schmitt describes the optimistic
mindset of people who share her personality type: “If something’s not
working out, we move on. We tend to have a lot of great ideas but not
necessarily always follow through.”
Schmitt says the Enneagram is a powerful method to help get to the
heart of the matter “more quickly and gracefully. It gave us a tool to
look inside so we don’t have to blame the other person. It’s not you,
it’s not me, it’s the nature of who we are.”
According to Sostrin, the Enneagram gave him an eye-opening awareness
of his “blind spots.” He adds that frustration subsided once he
accepted that he and his wife have inherently distinct outlooks: “You
wouldn’t expect a raccoon to act like a giraffe.”
Couples have the opportunity to learn more about the Enneagram at
workshops through Enneagram Portland, LLC. Co-founder Cathy Hitchcock,
who has 25 years of experience as a psychotherapist, sometimes
facilitates the sessions along with mentor & spiritual counselor
Dale Rhodes. Both are certified professional trainers of the Enneagram.
“So much about where growth happens is just awareness. People can spend
a really long time in therapy to develop awareness that can come quite
quickly with the Enneagram,” Hitchcock says. “To me, the Enneagram is a
system of self-understanding and understanding others in your life. It
seems like automatically what comes with that is compassion—compassion
for each other and compassion for ourselves.”
Gabrielli agrees. These days, she can more readily sense when her
perfectionism is getting the best of her.
“I value any tool that helps me see how I’m wired,” she says. “Once one
practices the Enneagram more and more, he or she can not only see the
train coming, but hear the whistle of it and get off the track, so that
you’re not just standing there and getting run over by the moment.”
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