Love

Love is what gives meaning to the life of a Sexual 2, who rarely feels fulfilled in life without a great love. Their motivation is the constant search for romantic love, lived with passionate intensity and pursued as the fulfillment of their personal significance, through an exceptional dream of glory that they feel capable of realizing.

The eventual range of romantic relationships is justified by the search for the soulmate, a common way of speaking in this character, who fails to realize that this is an illusory and distinctly narcissistic goal. The grand image of themselves corresponds to an equally grand image of their romantic partner.

As seen in this example: "I longed for the encounter with a special woman, beautiful, different, original. I fell in love with women whom I later idealized to the point of pretending they were perfect, adorning them with qualities I invented, so I could place them on a pedestal. Since they weren’t goddesses but human, I couldn’t keep them there for long. Eventually, disenchantment would come, and the aspiration for a new, grand and final love would arise. But while they remained on the pedestal, I was their best propagandist, ‘selling’ them as the best in their professional fields and as people whose value the world would soon recognize.”

However, my commitment was never total, as if I intuitively knew that none of this was secure or permanent. One way or another, I left an escape route open, allowing me to keep seducing compulsively, so I would have an alternative in case of failure, planting the seed for it to happen. I didn’t like showing that I was emotionally committed outside of the romantic relationship, justifying myself as a nonconformist, when in reality, it was to avoid reducing the number of potential candidates for my seductive game. Even my defense of an open sexual relationship, despite the damage it caused me, was based on a supposed need for freedom. I think it had to do with my inability to commit to one woman. One woman couldn’t fill my void of love. But neither could all the women in the world, even though I

didn’t understand it." — Luis Hernández

Given that the foundational ground of E2’s defenses is made of feelings and emotions, this character moves toward others and is strongly relational. This attitude is emphasized by the attempt to repair their original wound: abandonment. As a child, they didn’t have space to express their need for attachment or care, nor their pain.

Rejection, for this Enneatype, is the worst risk of depression. Therefore, they put into action preventive strategies through a fervent conquest of love, which they see as the total and timeless satisfaction of their desires. The effort is so strong that it makes them lively and active, but in reality, they run on a mechanical treadmill, as the love they seek is self-referential: they don’t know how to love the other for who they are, but for the needs of the loved one that they believe they can satisfy, in order to maintain this self-perception of grandeur. In this way, they gain importance in the eyes of the loved one, putting themselves in the first person as a necessity for the other, and they begin to personify the very essence of love, exposed to the adoration of the other on a pedestal.

However, it happens that they fall off the pedestal. And then, this character defends themselves from the emotional fall with a repertoire of strategies. Which strategies? Let’s look at their position in the enneagram circle.

Feeling excluded from love and admiration humbles their self-image and triggers their anger, but this anger exposes them to the recognition of their emotional dependence. A recognition that, in turn, would deepen the abyss of loss and make their anger more destructive: "This can’t happen to me, not like this." From this convergence comes the pride and apparent autonomy of someone who, not tolerating the narcissistic wound, reacts by taking the affective power away from the other. They turn the rejection they suffered into rejection exercised — "go away, you don’t deserve me" — moving from adoration to contempt. Pride defends them from annihilation, and therefore their tendency is to rise from their ashes, appearing as a strong, vital, and positive character.

If they suffer, they hide and conceal it from others, including the most intimate people, because their proud image must not be darkened by the fall into pain or need. They talk about their difficulties only when they are no longer living them, i.e., when they have overcome or pushed them aside, surprising others (who had noticed absolutely nothing) and gaining admiration for their strength. Thus, they survive pain by isolating or cornering it: what seems like a joy for life is actually a panic from psychic death.

Vitality, in the Sexual subtype, is expressed through the pleasure given and enjoyed. The pleasure in its most archaic form: enjoying food, satisfying the hunger of others, or spilling love like a full breast, from which the Sexual 2 is always thirsty and yet ready to give. They

wish to be one with this pleasure, nourished and nourishing, hunger and food, water and thirst, so they never feel deprived and never deprive their objects of desire. It is no coincidence that one polarity of E2 is the appropriative intensity of the E8, which takes much and doesn’t feel obliged to give anything.

It is precisely the tendency to this kind of absolute pleasure, which overrides all rationality, that makes the Sexual 2 emphatic, passionate, and romantic; ready to swear "forever" and to throw their life into disarray to extend this illusion of total satisfaction over time. They can then become extremely clingy and overwhelming in their intention to be everything to the other.

However, this powerful drive lives in a character structure damaged by what this Enneatype fears the most: this source might not be the complete satisfaction, and no matter how reasonable and realistic this is, the Sexual 2 does not heed reason and strikes against the risk of insufficient loving nourishment, with a false superiority over their source: "I’m not the one who needs you." They arrogantly distance themselves from the object of desire that might make them suffer or from which they’ve suffered frustration, until they reverse the roles, transforming the loved object into a rejected one. Unable to hold onto anything, they make themselves elusive (the femme fatale). The "I don’t need" takes the place of their extreme need. This gives rise to their independence, nonconformity, and exuberance.

Karen Horney describes the morbid dependence that is established in the system of pride: "The erotic love fascinates this type as the supreme satisfaction. Love is and seems to be the ticket to paradise, where all evils end; no more loneliness; no more feeling lost, guilty, and unworthy; no more responsibility for oneself; no more fighting with a harsh world for which they don’t feel equipped."

Horney introduces a concept from psychiatry: parasitic or erotic-oral love. The proud person, through love, satisfies not only the need to feel loved and special, but also sees in love redemption. They long to be loved as much as to love. Feeling "united" and becoming one person would allow them to reach the unity they are unable to find in themselves. And because they believe they can only fulfill their idealized self through love, by putting so much of themselves outward, they easily fall prey to insecurities, driven by the fear of rejection and not being accepted. Hence, they are so jealous.

Both men and women sometimes show sophistication and carefree attitudes, and other times, inhibition and naivety, withdrawing from the erotic game when it becomes serious. And they give themselves astonishingly easily to "the most important relationship of their life," which takes a backseat when they find another more interesting one, in search of a great love, always the last one they conquer, in an eternal game of "give to receive."

The proud person may fall into morbidly dependent relationships, where they are fascinated by certain values of the other that they lack in themselves and by others that, lacking them, make them despise themselves:

It could be about independence, an invincible security or superiority, or a reckless display of arrogance or aggression. Only those strong and superior beings — as they see them — can fulfill their needs and take care of them.

There is a frustrating nature to these relationships, as if what they truly seek is the frustration that no one can give them what they most desire: total surrender. Which, at the same time, is a feared scene for them, because if true intimacy were to happen, it would carry the risk of having to show themselves for what they really are, with the part of themselves that they repudiate. So, it’s less dangerous to search for a new relationship and start again.

The Sexual 2 cannot tolerate frustration and finds it difficult to accept a "no" as an answer; whether because of the fear of dying, or because, in turn, they also do not know how to say "no" with sincerity, and they feel betrayed if the other refuses. Therefore, they develop an aggressiveness disguised as hospitality, winning the favors of the other with theirs, but there is no one who can satisfy them, who can fill their void. Then they may despise the person they have conquered and move on to a new conquest, telling themselves that this time, they will realize true love.

They cultivate the fantasy that to love and be loved is an almost religious experience, one that leads to mystical ecstasy. They have an aversion to the ordinary and to the small daily demonstrations of love. They feel alive only in romantic and explosive intensity, or in expansive gestures of rebellion, as they truly fear not feeling anything and discovering the internal coldness that protects them from pain.

During the "IV International Symposium on Enneatypes" in November 2015 in Grosseto (Italy), we had the opportunity to gather twenty-two people who shared this trait and subtype. All Sexual 2s from different countries, we tried to delve deeper into Claudio Naranjo’s proposal to look for, based on our experience of the three loves, a common denominator that could be summarized in a formula establishing a hierarchical relationship between admiring love, compassionate love, and erotic love.

The group agreed that, in order of importance, the first on the list was erotic love; second, compassionate love; and last, admiring love.

The Sexual 2’s love tends to use the other, to get something they want for themselves, both through eroticism and compassion. They use the other to obtain the love they crave, which they see as a source of redemption.

The person with this character confuses feeling loved with feeling physically desired. One of their worst catastrophic fantasies is not being physically desired.

Eroticism is felt as a weapon. They use it as a tool of power. They confuse the ideal projection of eroticism with a real connection to their deep erotic desire. Eroticism often represents more of an ideal than the reality experienced in meeting the other.

The eagerness to satisfy the other’s demands so that they are loved means that they cannot truly see the other. They are not in a position to recognize the other’s desires, nor their own deep desire.

The Sexual 2 also manipulates compassionate love. As seen here: "The unconditional love I thought I received transformed into a kind of net to trap those who interested me. This giving love has been my entire life: ‘a love in exchange for...’ It wasn’t about helping the other; I was satisfying my need to give. Sometimes in an invasive way; other times, degrading to myself; and almost always manipulatively and unconsciously.

Sometimes, I thought I was escaping internal pain by seeking pleasure, but it’s more related to manipulating the other. I don't recognize when the internal radar for knowing what others need first developed in me; even that is contaminated by the false security of believing I know it; but somehow, my instincts worked on this for many years. With that, I could capture their attention and affection." — Ángel Saavedra

The transformation is observed when working with love that is, for this subtype, more distant from consciousness: admiring love. But to reach admiring love, they first need to feel compassion; they must connect with their own lack, that is, their lack of love. Once they realize their hole, their incompleteness, they can experience their need and, from this place, see the other and recognize the same in them. If they allow themselves to feel their suffering, they can see the other’s suffering and, in this way, open themselves to compassion.

There, they can feel the "one-on-one" contact between equals and then open themselves to devotional love. To connect with admiring love, they need to feel the pain of not having received love and not having been able to trust in some stable authority figure whom they could admire.

"As a child, I was abandoned by my father and mother. The first time I tried ayahuasca, a vision told me: ‘I am your true mother.’ There I developed a great admiring love for the Great Divine Mother, a mother I could trust. She wasn’t going to betray me, she wasn’t going to abandon me, she wasn’t going to manipulate me. What I lack for devotional love is trust in surrender. I need to trust in order to surrender completely because I am afraid. I am afraid something could happen because I feel a bit naive." — Luciana Vieira

It is necessary to develop that first true sense of self-worth, to have compassion for oneself. Recognize where you are, what your place and value are, whatever they may be, and from there, you can value the other.

For admiring love and compassion, the entry doors for a Sexual 2 have been illness, due to the pain it brings, and the uncertainty of life.

As recounted by this woman: "Admiring love came to me through contact with illness, feeling such a great need, fear, my pain, my lack, and from there, I could feel others and connect with the need of days, being so tiny, being so needy, having so much fear of not knowing if I would die or live. It was when the bond with the divine opened, which, after impermanence, is the only thing that remains." — Consuelo Trujillo

The experience of parenthood or motherhood is also an entryway to compassionate love: "I felt that when I couldn’t give anymore, I still had more to give. The experience of seeing the need of that helpless, tiny, sensitive being connected me with my own fragility and my world of needs. My son showed me the emotional path of compassion, the ability to put myself in his place." — Ángel Saavedra

In admiring love, there is also another entryway: Admiring first the divine and, from there, being able to admire the human. The Sexual 2 finds it difficult to experience admiring love here on Earth, among the people around them. To feel admiring love toward the other, they need to feel their own lack, and that leads them to recognize the feeling of envy, which they have always hidden. It is the great taboo they have been avoiding with all their arrogant strategy.

Recognizing their own envy is, therefore, another gateway to transformation: seeing what you have that I don’t have. That allows them to admire the person beside them, and by valuing them, they learn everything they can teach them. The lofty position of denying envy has made this character lose many opportunities for learning and nourishment.

Due to the lack of self-esteem, the Sexual 2 holds the distorted idea that "if I value and admire you, I am not valuable, I don’t exist." That’s why it’s so important to find a place of value within themselves, a sense derived from the power of being.

At the Symposium, we spoke about experiences with plants to break the incapacity of looking at the other, to reach the point of seeing the other as they are, and also seeing oneself as they truly are.

The transformative process for a Sexual 2 changes the quality of the three loves toward more authentic and less manipulative values, and admiring love emerges at a shorter distance than before.

In summary, this character evolves starting from eroticism and, through lack, can integrate compassion and find the other with their real needs, and not in the fantasy they create of themselves and the other. Only by accepting their own lack can they accept what they are and develop authentic admiration and devotion, which is harder for them with the human than with the divine.