Transforming the Interaction Patterns

No matter how deep our individual developmental work, it's only truly tested out in the world, with our friends, partners, and social groups. And it's a beauty of the Enneagram that we more easily see potential interaction patterns among different points.  

We know the particular filters at each point, as well as characteristic ways of interacting. Responses from the other eight points will also vary with each. 

So, a couple operating from points Eight (female partner) and Nine (male partner) might be drawn together initially because of their mutual comfort with point Eight providing structure, then both begin to feel some pain from that same dynamic. Point Eight has plenty of ideas but may forget to include point Nine, who hasn't initiated any ideas. He goes along with her, then obsesses over being left out. Over time, she's exhausted from having to "hold up the world" (a belief typical at point Eight and thus sustained, of course). He is equally tired of feeling "invisible" (though his fixated behaviors, of course, tend to evoke that feeling).

The gift in mutual development is that neither partner is on the hot spot because both are learning about themselves within the relationship. This does require courage, however—to take personal responsibility for the relationship, to deepen our own self-awareness, to accept and integrate parts of ourselves we have not wanted to know and see, moving attention away from how we and our partner should be and toward who we are.

Step 1: Each share with the other your understanding of your Enneagram point in general and how, specifically, that plays out for you. What doesn't fit for you about that point's dynamics? What are your gifts? What problems do you think your motivations and behavior do or could create in the relationship? Ask each other for feedback and listen to it.

Step 2: Create a clear picture of what the transformed relationship will look like and commit yourselves to learning as you go. Pick two or three areas of mutual development (don't overwhelm yourselves with too many promises); set some priorities and work on them one at a time.

Step 3: Be alert to how you get in the way of your own progress and stay committed to the transformation—notice and affirm each other for the ways in which you stick to the plan. When one of you gets hooked into an old reaction, instead of placing blame, try to understand how it happened and what either of you could do the next time to keep from getting caught up in the old pattern.