For insecure 6SS personalities in relationships, sexuality always becomes entangled with questions of power and truth. When sexually attracted, they feel threatened, because trusting another reminds them too much of their childhood wounds; and it makes them angry to know that they can be hurt again, that another person may hurt them terribly, and that their happiness depends on someone other than themselves. Difficult to seduce, they view all compliments with suspicion...
Since they are compelled to review their own affections, decisions and actions continuously, and are generally very conscious of shortcomings in the character of a prospective lover, unconditional commitment becomes very difficult ... They take a long time to surrender their trust; it happens gradually, a bit at a time, as they confirm again and again that no reasons for suspicion exist...
They need their lovers’ commitments to be explicit and firm; but when this happens, they begin to suspect that the other did not commit ... with full awareness of what commitment implies. They proceed to construct complicated hypotheses about what their lover really feels towards them, and give full credit to their own conclusions ... Thinking in the abstract, they invalidate all that their lover says; and they conjecture that their beloved is not in touch with her or his real feelings...
When they consummate, 6SS personalities never seek to dominate, much less profit from their lover: to the contrary, they feel their lover’s achievements as being personally theirs and may put his or her well-being before their own. Needing to give in order to feel confident in a romantic relationship, they are generally ready to make sacrifices to help their lover’s projects, and to serve him or her sexually. Willing to work hard and build a pleasant future together, yet always fearing the worst, they are constantly vigilant against possible threats to a romantic relationship.
Always ready to accept the failures of their lovers when they admit them, 6SS personalities have no trouble praising their merits and behave toward them the same in public as in private. Always afraid of being betrayed, upon their beloved they project their feelings ... This fear translates into an impulse to dissociate from pleasure, to surrender to the dread of being abandoned, to sever the romantic relationship themselves before it just happens, or to split—head, heart, and genitals—into a different relationship.
They can accept happiness and sexual pleasure only when they feel that they and their beloved form a tight coalition against the external world, and in such cases their loyalty is extreme. Their marriages tend to last many years because in difficult periods they believe that the problem lies with the relationship itself and not with the other and feel a duty to resolve it; they can tolerate highly neurotic behavior in the significant other without demanding a change.
