The nine one-to-one instinctual subtypes

Type 1: Zealousness/heat

You guard intimate relationships and become vigilant and zealous about your conduct, your partner’s conduct or that of special others. You feel that nobody should violate your right to pleasure – you’ve earned it! You express anger through fierce zealousness at the presumed violation of your high standards. Nobody should take what is rightfully yours. “She shouldn’t do what she is doing.” Special others must adhere to correct behavior and standards. “You shouldn’t. You’re wrong.” This zealousness encompasses the violation of anything you judge as important in the relationship – a confidence, time spent together, getting undeserved recognition or fidelity. At your worst, you get totally possessive and intolerant, monitoring situations and special others, even flaming up in righteous rage. 

Type 2: Seduction/aggression

Here you manifest pride by being personally needed, attuned to the other and empathetic. You feel that you can meet the needs and desires of a special other better than anyone else, thus gaining approval. You seduce by matching to the feeling tones in others and altering subtly to your desired other’s emotional state. You seek attention and affection by giving what is needed and being flattering to the noteworthy other, thus putting yourself in a place of prominence. Using your active energy assertively or aggressively, you captivate and capture the special other by taking on his/her interests, making him/her feel good, and matching exquisitely to what is required to “win the other one.” At your worst, you paradoxically become possessive and demand indirectly through emotion or by complaining about your unfulfilled needs and desires. 

Type 3: Masculine or Feminine Image

In important one-to-one relationships, the Performer automatically adopts the masculine or feminine image of maximum “star” appeal. You manifest deceit by altering yourself to look good and have charisma. As a “human doing,” you automatically perform the required role to get the result. Your life depends upon winning respect in special business or love relationships, as measured by the approval and personal attention you get for your efforts. You gain status in an intimate relationship by adopting a role with the characteristics that your partner finds appealing. This also may result in uncertainty about your own genuine feelings and sexuality. At your worst, your significant other may feel that you are disingenuous and don’t truly care.

Type 4: Competition/hate

In one-to-one relationships, envy and longing drive you to compete for the special position, partner or mentor. Competition is an invigorating energy: “I’ll show you; I’ll get the connection I deserve.” You use competition with others to overcome feelings of inner deficiency. You fight for what is noteworthy, exquisite and elegant. This makes you worthy and deserving. You go for the very best. If necessary, you slam your imagined or actual opponents; a hateful streak can emerge. You compete not so much to win but not to lose. And your own sense of esteem tends to rise and fall in comparison with others through establishing your excellence. Rather than lose and fall into lacking and deficiency, you may reject someone or something before you can be rejected. It’s better to abandon than to be abandoned. In this way you combat the envy, control the situation and keep your feeling of being special. At your worst, you may end up destroying vital relationships, paradoxically trying to win the ultimate connection.

Type 5: Confidence

You bond to special others by sharing confidential information, private knowledge, your energy and even feelings. In these sacred, necessary relationships you don’t need to hide or guard your boundaries. Your avarice shows as you move back within yourself for replenishment. You then can treasure the experience in your mind and memory. You release your boundaries of privacy in intense, often physical encounters.  Key disclosures are made and treasured for a “lifetime” when recreated in your imagination. These shared confidences assuage the loneliness that comes from isolating yourself from feelings while maintaining your autonomy and power. At your worst, the intense one-to-one sharing can operate like an on-off switch, to the dismay of special others. 

Type 6: Strength/beauty

Having power and influence in the one-to-one domain with significant others counteracts your fear. It is safer to manifest power and influence with strength and beauty, appealing qualities that are less likely to create adversarial reactions than raw power moves. Instead of craving reassurance, it comes to you through strength and beauty. Knowing that you affect those close or important to you through your brilliant ideas and physical ability provides assurance. Aesthetic qualities (creating beauty in your environment) and attractiveness command allegiance from others, as do intellectual strength, including fiercely held ideological positions and physical fitness, strength and bravery. Your fear evaporates when you obtain the respect of associates or a mate. While the preoccupation with strength and beauty in one-to-one relating is more common for counter-phobics (because it is more congruent with the coping style), it is more obvious in phobics because it stands out more against a general lack in courage or self-confidence. At your worst, you can become possessed with the need to influence others, and evoke reactions by testing and challenging others.

Type 7: Fascination/suggestible

When your upbeat energy and active imagination manifest in the one-to-one relationship, you connect by finding what fascinates and interests you. Your attention goes to what in the “special” other sparks your interest and imagination, providing a channel for your gluttony energy. You feel magnetized to this person and begin to idealize him/her. You arelikable, charming and disarming. This person basks in your energy and gets caught up in the rush of your ideas, plans and possibilities. When you lose some interest in the relationship or the spark cools, someone else naturally catches your eye. You find a way out, not realizing you are breaking promises that, from your standpoint, you never really made. Or you stick with it, ironically finding ways through suggestibility to keep the vision of a positive future, even when the situation may be disastrous. You just don’t see the negatives. At your worst, you can rationalize your way out of a seemingly committed relationship when it loses its thrill, seems confining or ceases to be self-serving.

Type 8: Possession/Surrender

As a Protector, your passionate lust energy wants to possess your intimate relationships. You want to know everything about your special other – mind, body and soul. You want to protect him/her and be consulted in significant matters. You can be highly physical. You wouldn’t think of your control and impact as dominating – you’re simply taking charge and care for special others who depend upon you. Your vitality and verve infuse every molecule of your intimates. In business, this takes the form of commanding presence, relentless competition and the power to do battle as necessary. Struggles over control let you know whom you can count on. Possession and potency with others verifies your power, strength and efficacy. After you have tested your intimates’ fettle and commitment, you can move to the polar opposite in your all-or-nothing style of attending. You can surrender control, trusting that you won’t be betrayed. At your worst, your intense energetic focus can lead to dominating and controlling relationships with the “my way or the highway” approach to life – an outcome you actually deplore.

Type 9: Union

In the one-to-one arena, you seek comfort through the special other. Your sloth or inertia manifests through absorbing the other into yourself – his/her point of view, agenda or feelings. You feel safe and whole in this union with your partner, with nature or with the divine. Your experience of being overlooked or disregarded evaporates as your identity merges into the other, nature or the divine. You are swept along feeling, “I gain belonging, importance and love through union.” At your worst, since there is a “you” inside, you can get lost in the other and then become quite resistive, passive-aggressive, and even counter-merging, all the while not being present to either yourself or the special other.