Love

In love, the Sexual 4 tends to display all its typical characteristics more spectacularly. The importance that they give to the relationship and the figure of the other is paramount in this subtype, as it involves their self-esteem, their sense of worth, and, in short, their passion. Many individuals of this subtype acknowledge that finding a partner has been the most important pursuit in their lives.

In a love relationship, the egoic part emerges like never before—demanding, attacking, and despising. "I hope the other makes me happy." The other can do anything, but it's never enough; something is always missing. If the other doesn’t see me, doesn’t pay attention to me, or doesn’t recognize me, I despise them to avoid feeling small or unworthy. Belittling, offending, denigrating, and hurting is my specialty. "I attract their hands." Sometimes, men have raised their hands to me, and I, deep down, understood them. I would have done the same with someone like that. Even the mercantile attitude towards men and complacent sex: if I don't have sex, what can I give, what can be found in me? I give pleasure, and maybe I receive love.

— Teresa Cerullo

As mentioned before, Sexual 4s are very passionate and sexually active. Sexuality plays a central role in their relationships since being sexually attractive to the other ensures their affection. There is a significant concern and effort put into appearing appetizing, dedicating themselves to improving their appearance and how they present themselves to the world.

The Sexual 4 needs to bring relationships to the realm of sexuality, regardless of whether they genuinely care for the person or not.

In this sense, a person of this subtype often has many relationships throughout their life, each marked by intense and magical moments in search of that one love that will solve all their troubles.

The Sexual 4 has a deep need to admire the object of desire. It seems that a stable relationship could not be established with anyone who is not admired, especially for something that the other possesses and that the Sexual 4 feels they lack and believes they cannot attain on their own. Couples are often unconsciously chosen as beacons, indicating what the person needs to develop within themselves and believes must be provided by another. Perhaps the healing process is focused on achieving what is envied in the other and proving that it can be achieved independently, or daring to face the frustration of not attaining it and taking responsibility for their own accomplishments and failures.

At a certain point, I begin to see in the other only the neurotic aspects, without indulgence, or only the parts that I perceive as negative. This is because, in doing so, I can confirm to myself that I am unlovable, except by a bad person.

— Teresa Cerullo

Unfortunately, this realization often comes only after the relationship has been destroyed, as if the strength came from feeling like a victim. At this point, attitudes like "I will show you, I will show myself, I will show the world that I can" emerge. The focus is still on the other.

I destroy the other because I will have a good reason to feel guilty, denigrate myself, and then atone. I induce a sense of guilt in the other as well, accusing them of exploitation: “I do all this for you, and you don’t see it! You feel comfortable with me because I take care of you, I help you, and I support you, but you never, not once...!"

The Role of The Victim

They often find people they consider difficult, especially attractive, because what is easy, plain, simple, and above all, possible, is not interesting at all. Unconsciously, they search for those who represent a challenge, those who seem susceptible to being changed by the force of their love and who, especially, will change once they discover all that the Sexual 4 believes they are worth. In the end, they hope to be chosen above all else.

They need to feel like their partner's favorite, to be the most important thing in the other’s life, while simultaneously lacking awareness and the ability to value the positive things they receive. This is a very narcissistic trait, of which they have little awareness. They simply take it for granted that this is how it should be in a relationship, as if they are seeking the gaze of an emotionally or physically absent father and/or mother, or trying to overcome the comparisons where they have been disadvantaged. A struggle, often not silent, emerges to obtain the desired place in the other’s life, maintaining the eternal position of the misunderstood adolescent.

Could my stutter represent difficulty speaking for fear of saying the wrong things and being scolded? Or was it to get the attention of my parents?

In a love relationship, I always feel second to someone or something (my mother and father, my mother and my brother). When I don’t feel seen or considered, the pain disguises itself as anger that I direct towards the other. I demand your attention, I want to be first and foremost, even if that's outside, I wouldn’t stand it because I would feel suffocated. My mother told me that when I was in the crib, she rocked me with her foot while she knitted with her hands, and I rebelled, yelling at her that I had to be rocked with both hands! I wanted all the attention and love for myself.

There is difficulty in growing. A compulsion to remain in an emotional state typical of my childhood experiences. How hard it is to recognize the distance between the present and the past. How harmful my neurosis is. Wanting to stay in that painful state as if it couldn't be anything else. Seeking confirmation of the rejection received as a daughter. A pain I know and in which I wallow, as if it were difficult for me to live in a state of well-being to which I am not accustomed because I do not allow it. Being in pleasure feels like a sin. As a child, my expressions of joy were always blocked, especially by my mother, who perceived them as frivolous and, therefore, contemptible.

— Teresa Cerullo

From the place of lack and low internal value, the Sexual 4 is highly attuned to recognizing what they lack, even if it’s a tiny detail amidst the great displays of love from the other. It’s as if, in the face of an infinitely beautiful offering, they specialize in detecting the only defective point, focusing on it as though it’s the only thing they see—the only thing that reaches them, that small flaw preventing them from fully appreciating the beauty before them.

This trait is common to all E4 subtypes, but what differentiates the Sexual 4 is the way they react to it: they react with open and shameless aggression, demanding what they feel is due to them, with a wide range of verbal aggression focused on what they lack, and on how

unhappy it makes them, likely convincing themselves that their happiness depends on obtaining it.

Share with the Self-Preservation 4/tenacious subtype the following position in relation to the desired other: "You are God when I don't have you, the devil when you leave me, and a nuisance when you're with me. Come, I will crush you."

There is no awareness, as long as a process of introspection and self-knowledge is not undertaken, that even if what he claims were given to him, he would surely go on to detect some other missing detail, and so on to infinity. He does not take charge of the internal hole, the bottomless emotional sack forged in his lacking childhood, which no one can fill more than himself, accepting that a part of that emptiness will accompany him for life and that he must take care of it without projecting it outward.

When my suffering is not understood, the feeling of emptiness I feel is so deep that I have to fill it with hate, but more than hate, I feel anger toward the other. I suffer without thinking about the pain I cause, without considering the consequences it may bring, as if they truly left me and I were alone. And when I am abandoned, I fall into despair. It is here that I see the other as the most wonderful person in the world and whom I have lost! Like crocodiles that eat their young and then cry. So, cover my head with ashes and ask for forgiveness. And then, because I have humbled myself, I feel vulnerable and in danger again, so the cycle begins anew. It is exhausting and painful, as well as childish. I did this with my parents; I punished them by provoking and opposing them. I did everything to make them abandon me, and when it happened, I entered that feeling of cold loneliness and hot despair. But with them, I never humbled myself to ask for forgiveness. At least I don’t remember doing it. Teresa Cerullo

The Sexual 4 usually causes feelings of impotence in their partner that, if not detected in time, can plunge the other into a permanent feeling of guilt for not being enough. The couple may try to please their Sexual 4 ad nauseam and then be rejected, assuming that they have been castrated and rendered impotent. At that moment, the Sexual 4 finds the portion of suffering where they know how to handle themselves from victimhood, blaming themselves for not being enough and asking for forgiveness, dragging themselves, etc. "When I am rejected, I am convinced that the other has seen how monstrous I am inside."

We could say without mistake that there is a vocation for the sadomasochistic, superior-inferior, rebellious-submissive game, which, together with the desire to be an agent of change for the other with problems, are ingredients that can facilitate this subtype to enter relationships of psychological and physical abuse.

The Sexual 4 easily lends itself to relationships where the struggle for power is present. Relationships that allow them to enjoy suffering, the necessary intensity that lets them feel

life with meaning, without boredom, with a challenge that they will finally achieve, even if they don't really know what.

Some time after dragging a professional and couple crisis that lasted for years, this is where I realized the masochistic and sadistic facets I was immersed in. When things were going badly for me, I would get depressed, and my masochistic self would appear—catastrophic thinking, apathy, irritability, hyper-suggestion, sadomasochistic sexuality. When I was euphoric, I would take my sadist out for a walk, a very pronounced and automatic verbal sadism; with my partner, it came to physical violence.

— Juan Leon

The Sexual 4 is characterized by being in relationships of great emotional intensity, full of fighting and reconciliation. In the fight, they are aggressive, with a great command of verbal and piercing aggression, as they know how to detect the weakest area of the other and aim where it hurts the most. It is usually accurate and hurtful. Once they have made the other feel bad, they enter the spiral of guilt, from where they try to solve or reverse the situation. If they succeed, their thirst for intensity is quenched in a positive way, like a beast that calms down at the sight of its vanquished prey until the need to fight strikes again. If they do not succeed, they fall into despair, guilt, and victimhood typical of the abandoned and wounded, from where they can also display all their fury and resentment, feeling justified even to exercise just revenge for the insult suffered.

Infidelity is usually carried out as a vengeful act, not so much associated with their own enjoyment but so that the couple finds out and suffers. What is pursued is that the other is punished. But there are also cases in which infidelity is not even lived with guilt, because feeling the constant lack, they need their search to not stop. If they don't feel that their partner completes them, they will search and find other people outside of the main relationship, as a right to be happy.

The Three Loves

Among the E4 subtypes, the sexual subtype is the most erotic. That is, the one that has the most access to pleasure, although it can quickly disqualify or destroy it, since it does not support satisfaction and identifies with the lack. In fact, they are seductive and, compared to the other E4s, live sexuality intensely and can overcome the shame and sense of inferiority they feel, even if they hide or repress it. It can be said that people with an E4 character who indulge in sexuality often seek to compensate for maternal love that has been lacking or harmful.

With reference to playful situations, my expressions of joy have always been mortified, and I experience pleasure with guilt. In a love relationship, in order to abandon myself and feel pleasure, I have to feel that I love and that I am loved. However, I must say that I have used sex to attract men. As I have always felt unworthy of love, when a man has been interested in me, I have always thought: "If I don’t give him sex, what am I going to give him? What can he find in me? If I give pleasure, it stays." So my attitude was mercantile. I give pleasure, and maybe I get love.

— Teresa Cerullo

Compassionate love is in all E4s: taking care of the other, suffering for the other. It is recognized in the intense sensitivity, although it is not always materialized with effective care actions, as in the case of the Self-Preservation subtype. The Sexual 4 does not know how to suffer much or strive to care. But they can be "animal" protectors if their lives are in danger. It belongs to all of E4 to charge for giving so much to the other; but in the Sexual 4, as we have already seen, they charge by demanding that the other return what they have given, with an aggressive claim.

Perhaps compassionate love is a little more developed in them. I am an empathetic, maternal, generally affectionate person. Also with my partner, I like being a mother, caring. But all this must be recognized, otherwise, more than a mother, I become a bad stepmother. This thought horrifies me. Teresa Cerullo

The E4 admires in the sense that they see the other as someone who has what they lack. It is an envious admiration that turns into contempt; the sexual subtype finds it difficult to admire, better to say that it idealizes, especially in the couple, and very easily destroys it because it is disappointed when the other shows its limits. This subtype is also very sensitive to social issues of injustice and can be very involved in battles for equality or the defense of the excluded and most needy. They can be a person passionately dedicated to rescuing those who suffer. In this sense, they have a strong admiration for the values of solidarity and collaboration.

Admiring love is what I lack the most. It is not easy for me to admire someone. In order for me to do so, they must have characteristics such as honesty, a sense of justice, superior intelligence, and a big heart. A special person, like Claudio Naranjo. I can't stand bosses, who are often unworthy of their position and for whom I feel respect and contempt at the same time.

In the couple, it is essential to feel admiration to love the other, although then I do nothing but denigrate them. If you don’t see me, you don’t listen to me, you don’t recognize me, I despise you. I have to feel the partner is superior to me, but at the same time, this is an

obstacle for me, and I have to prove that it is not, so as not to feel small and unworthy. Here begins the fight for supremacy. Belittling, offending, and hurting is my specialty.

— Teresa Cerullo