Thalassa
Permabanned
- Joined
- May 3, 2009
- Messages
- 25,183
- MBTI Type
- ISFP
- Enneagram
- 6w7
- Instinctual Variant
- sx
I understand that line of reasoning, but at the same time, most people straddle between the slightly-above-average to slightly-below-average health levels - as [MENTION=14531]Loki[/MENTION] said, few of us could be considered truly "healthy" in an Enneagram sense.
Yeah sometimes I feel like the highest level of enneagram health should be called "maturity" instead, it's more like a state of being emotionally or spiritually evolved to be at high health levels, and it doesn't happen by accident. You have to do the inner work to get there, unless both of your parents were loving, benevolent psychotherapists who raised you in some completely ideal environment where you were always able to thrive and grow into your best possible self. Those people are fortunate, they exist, but they aren't average. Most people have to come to that maturity the hard way. By doing the work themselves, and actually even someone with a near-perfect childhood and adolescence still would have to "overcome themselves" to grow, so even that person would have to do some work in adulthood, just probably not as much.
And at least for my own descriptions, all that I am saying is meant to be personal commentary and not meant as any definitive conclusions about the types. As I already emphasized, it's my opinion and my feelings. It's actually a funny example of the mismatch between me and 4s that both you and another 4 have raised objections to my posts in here, when I don't really feel like there's anything in my posts to object - in my opinion, you can't really object to someone's personal feelings; they just are. Maybe you could object to the soundness of their origin, but not really to the existence of the feelings themselves. And regardless of reasoning, be it my MBTI preferences, my Enneagram defense mechanisms, my instinctual priorities, and/or my past experiences, I'm really just not that drawn to 4s, 8s, or 1s, healthy or not.
I do agree with this. I seem to be attracted to 9s and 3s. I want to be near the 9s cool reserve and ability to "stay out of it" even if it turns out that the individual 9, in the long run, has the enneagram health level of a basement freezer in which bodies are quietly stored. Same for the 3s flashy charm, charisma and confidence. They've got it all under control. FABULOUS.
I sometimes have had attractions in the past to 5s for a similar reason as 9s, but I prefer 9s as 5s can be waaaaay too inaccessible for me at times. And they've probably been terrified of me.
It seems to me that general attraction or lack thereof is just natural fallout from combination of personality, behavior, experience, values, and other psyche elements, and many of the trends are going to hold true regardless of levels of health, since they're more amplifications than shifts. Even if I would take a healthy 4 over an unhealthy 9, there are still aspects of 4ness that are harder for me to deal with, and aspects of 9 that attract me, and as such I might still be drawn more to the 9. I also think the reason that people have tended to cite unhealthy behaviors is that even overall very healthy people will dip in health level from time to time, and those dips can really be dealbreakers in terms of ease of getting along. It's like what I said with 6s - I love another 6 when they're sailing smoothly, since we can analyze and bond together. But when there's another 6 around who's clearly in the throes of a freakout, I generally try to leave the situation, because I'm aware of how badly that can impact me. It's hard to be drawn to someone when you know that sort of exchange is looming on the horizon.
In any case, being drawn to a certain type doesn't necessarily mean much in the long run. One of my best friends is a 3w4, two are probably 2w1s, another is probably a 7w8, another is confirmed 7w6. One of my favorite managers at work is probably an 8w9, another probably 9w8. My boyfriend is really close between 9 and 1. One of my favorite online friends is a 5w6 and another is a 4w5. Those relationships are all across the board in terms of who I'm drawn to or not. Surface attraction is great to kick-start positive relationships, but I don't think it has a very strong correlation with significant longterm bonding.
No it doesn't mean as much in the long run, but that can have something to do with having similar health levels instead of which number of the enneagram you are....