Enneagram in relationships overview

Partnership demonstrates the differences between you and another. Each of you can be telling the truth, yet each can have a different story to tell. You may look at your relationship or job from radically different angles, often without seeing a systematic bias.

Extraordinarily precise, the Enneagram allows you to look deeply within your own character and to clarify relationships with your partner, family members, friends, clients and co-workers. This insight quickly turns to compassion when you can become receptive, see through the eyes of another and feel the pressure of his or her emotional life and view of the world.

In our teachings of the Enneagram in the Narrative Tradition, we depend on panels of speakers to represent each type. It’s typical to see different people with the same type reporting different preferences for the eight other types. It's important to notice that in intimate relating, your feelings about a personality type can be heavily influenced by the few significant people who have raised you, loved you or disliked you. You may generalize your feelings about a particular person to include everyone who shares the same worldview. Yet it would be a mistake to categorize types according to your perceived compatibility or incompatibility. When differences are apparent, it helps when both partners work their side of an issue at the same time.

Each of us is unique. None of us acts out the same range of concerns characterized by our type in exactly the same way, nor are we always fixated in a limited view of reality. When pressure builds, however, our type bias comes into play and tends to dominate our perceptions.

View a sample relationship pairing that explores common and differing attributes, synergies and challenges: Type One and Type Two

Registered? Explore the dynamics between all of the types using our Relationships Matrix™, which allows you to navigate among type pairs.

Read Dr. Daniels’ monthly column
This educational column by Dr. Daniels is intended to answer questions about the Enneagram in personal development, relationships and life situations. These columns originally appeared in the Enneagram Monthly under the title, “The Touchstone Column.”

You can gain more understanding of your intimate and business relationships in Helen Palmer’s outstanding book, The Enneagram in Love and Work. This useful book offers detailed descriptions of interactions in both intimate and work relationships.

Buy Helen Palmer's book about the Enneagram and relationships.

Men in Relationship and Women in Relationship
Nine Points of View DVDs

Nine Paths to a Productive and Fulfilling Life and the Enneagram in the Workplace

See all of our books, tapes and DVDs