Love

“Love, love, you smell like blood sausage.”

That’s the first childish phrase that comes to mind. Later, the adult version follows:

“Love doesn’t exist.”

It becomes the phrase that sums up lived experience.

For this subtype, love is distrusted precisely because it hurts — because it deceives. It is unreliable, false, and can even feel deadly — or at least that is how the self-preservation Eight experiences it: as something that threatens survival itself.

It’s important to clarify from the start that describing the origin of this attitude toward love is not easy. These experiences occurred so early in life that the child had not yet developed the ability for coherent thought or emotional organization. They belong to the realm of cellular, organic memory — sensations so deep that later they had to be denied, split off from consciousness. The mind’s protective mechanism responds:

“It didn’t happen.”

But it did. And that denial conceals a wound of equal depth — a pain so profound that it had to be buried completely.

Writing about love is difficult for anyone, but for this type, it becomes almost impossible. In the self-preservation Eight, intensity reaches its maximum expression in survival mode — and when that same intensity touches the domain of love, it triggers total distrust. Love becomes something close to taboo.

How can one write about something that, from the start, is perceived as a lie — or doesn’t even exist in one’s emotional register? It begins with mockery, with sarcasm and scorn, just as this text begins: pushing love away through ridicule. Only later, slowly, does one begin to open to the experience and dare to express it voluntarily.

At the Beginning, Resistance

“If I’m honest, the first thing that happens when I try to write about love is a bodily reaction: as if an ice axe pierced my chest. From throat to diaphragm, the

body contracts downward — stomach, intestines, belly — and the message in my mind is: ‘No. Love, no. Danger. Survival alert. Don’t go there.’”

Javier

This is not an “emotion” or a “feeling” in the ordinary sense; it’s a bodily reflex that shuts down everything unnecessary for immediate survival. Thought, emotion, reasoning—all go dark. Only one command remains: do not risk exposure.

Language cannot truly capture the existential nature of this reaction. It can only be conveyed by imagining a primitive animal, whose entire being is ruled by a single instinct — survival.

The image of an ice axe splitting the sternum conveys what denial means here: the erasure of emotional life within relationships. That “cut” at the chest is an ancient split — it divides the I–You bond into fragments, transforming it into I–or–You. And in moments of crisis, even that collapses into I–No–You. The opposite — No–I–You — would mean death.

This describes the first, visceral reaction to love: It doesn’t exist. I feel distrust. It isn’t real. Beneath that “gut truth,” however, lies something deeper — the reality that speaking about love causes pain. That is why it’s avoided at all costs.

Love and pain touch the same fragile nerve. Even naming it, or feeling it, threatens to bring tears — and those tears expose a dangerous vulnerability. The body reacts defensively, hiding tenderness and fear behind tension and denial, because to show either risks mockery, rejection, or overwhelm.

Even the soft shimmer of moisture in one’s eyes becomes unbearable — a floodgate that must never open.

This is how the experience of “no” to love feels: not absence, but survival.

Contact and Withdrawal

When it comes to love, the same pattern seen in other vital areas reappears: excess — in one direction and equally in its opposite. More than the classic “contact–withdrawal” dynamic, here it could be described as invasion–abandonment. From the outside, these appear as polar extremes; from within, both are perceived as acts of care.

This character struggles deeply with boundaries in love. Everything is experienced in absolute, all-or-nothing terms: either invasion or withdrawal, everything or nothing. “Take it or leave it.”

When contact becomes intense, their caring transforms into a total effort to fulfill the other’s every desire and need. It’s not about simply meeting basic requirements, but creating abundance — ensuring that no lack is ever felt. Giving “total satisfaction” becomes synonymous with giving “total love.” Yet this complete giving can feel overwhelming or even suffocating to the recipient, who may feel engulfed rather than fulfilled. The fine line between contact and invasion has already been crossed.

This person shows love through action — by doing, by providing, by serving. They meet every need of the other, sometimes to the point of servitude, driving them places, anticipating every wish. Far from being humiliating, this behavior grants the self-preservation Eight a feeling of union, as though such devotion fuses two individuals into one.

However, in this excess of care, only the urge to satisfy the other’s needs remains visible — while the other’s true needs go unseen. The “I–You” relationship dissolves into “I–no–You.” If harm occurs, withdrawal becomes the only option. For them, if love causes pain, frustration, or disappointment, it must vanish. To love purely means to vanish before harm can happen.

Disappearance, for this character, is not punishment — it’s protection. It is how they prevent further wounding, for themselves and for the other. Yet to the other person, this withdrawal feels like abandonment. In truth, it is a way of saying: “If I stay, I’ll hurt you; if I leave, at least I won’t.”

Hypersensitivity and Insensitivity

Behind the apparent insensitivity of the character lies immense sensitivity. It’s almost never visible, but it’s there — hidden, denied, protected by a rapid, intense, and blunt defense. The magnitude of the defense reveals the magnitude of the ancient wound — still open.

If love is what we learn in childhood, then this character’s childhood was marked by two extremes: moments of absolute tenderness and moments of absolute frustration. The same openness that once felt joyous turned, without warning, into unbearable anguish — from full sensitivity to total numbness, in an instant.

Early emotional relationships were measured with adult standards, ignoring the baby’s need for safety. Used for adult satisfaction, not met with empathy, the child learned that love equals tension, confusion, extremes — sensations without emotional holding. And that imprints character.

Thus, one learns it’s better not to show sensitivity: it’s mocked, dismissed, or punished. Sensitivity may later reappear in intimacy — in twos — but in public or groups, the layer of insensitivity rises again to avoid humiliation.

“With a partner, my intimacy becomes an alliance against the world. I let her do what she wants, as long as she doesn’t expose me. Satisfaction must be total, for both. That’s the implicit contract: total satisfaction, total independence.”

Javier

In public, there are no displays of affection — too risky. Any mockery, any humiliation, would be intolerable.

Love as Satisfaction

There is no sense of being worthy of love. The belief is one of unworthiness. Love received is not believed to be real. Distrust is stronger than love — love is unknown. It is then confused with satisfaction: to love is to fulfill all desires instantly and completely, until the senses are saturated. It is a surrender to “not needing to feel anymore” — a form of anesthesia before pain.

In that intense, egoic satisfaction (mistaken for love), there is a real abandonment of the self. It is a disconnection from self-care, maybe even from existence itself. It was never learned.

This is the great confusion of the character: mistaking satisfaction for love, sensory fullness for emotional fullness. The vital intensity of “total giving” substitutes for the tenderness that was incomprehensibly lost in early life.

“For a long time I described need as ‘what I must cover.’ That is, what I can’t let exist in myself. Satisfaction is the denial of the need for a Thou.”

Javier

The same pattern extends to others — partner, children, close friends. The loved one is “satisfied” completely in their needs. Love is “no need.” That the other feels fully satisfied, needing nothing, becomes the proof of total love. But behind it lies possession: “I care for you because you’re mine.” The expectation is of absolute loyalty — of belonging.

And so love becomes domination — a tyrannical possession of the other.

Distrust and Harm

For someone of this nature, love often carries two names:

• Distrust, because love hides deception, and it feels safer when kept at a distance.

• Harm, because closeness inevitably brings pain.

This is the polarity through which they experience love—both sides felt with burning intensity, both confirming the same absolute conviction:

“This will end badly. It will cause harm.”

Even the faintest trace of lovelessness is met with total distrust. Any perceived lack of love feels like a complete invalidation of everything shared, a betrayal that pierces straight into the wound. Pain feeds distrust, and distrust feeds pain, until both become indistinguishable.

Perhaps due to their difficulty recognizing or naming their own emotions, the self-preservation Eight often mistakes intense emotion in others for authenticity. Passion, tears, fury—anything raw and absolute—appears to them as real love. What they crave is not calm affection, but the intensity itself, because it mirrors the emotional voltage they associate with truth.

To them, what is desired are not feelings but intense sensations—the kind that shake the body and silence the mind. These sensations are then interpreted as love. They act like invitations to surrender to an overwhelming, almost sacred truth.

Betrayal

When someone who has been deeply trusted—someone to whom one has offered their very life—turns out to have lied, it becomes betrayal, and betrayal in love is never forgiven.

When it happens, an annihilating fury erupts. The betrayed one vanishes from their life, erased. Words are unnecessary; silence itself becomes punishment. That inner fury can last years, solidifying into eternal distrust. Time does not soothe it—it fossilizes it. The scar becomes a memory of deception, an unending temptation toward revenge: to make the

other suffer the same pain their lie caused. But in the process, the destruction continues inward. You cease to exist—for them, and for yourself.

“The rage I turn against myself becomes almost annihilating. I call myself a fool for having trusted love. ‘You idiot, you knew love was a lie, that it always betrays.’ I believed love was real—and it wasn’t. I hate myself for believing. It may sound like self-punishment, but for me, it’s the hardest lesson life has taught: to distrust love so that no one can ever hurt me again.”

Javier

The Three Loves

Admiring Love

This type of love is the least developed in the Self-Preservation 8.

Distrust and mistreatment from childhood authority figures prevent them from looking up to anyone who could stand “above” them or hold authority. Such recognition would re-awaken all the old pain and humiliation received.

To give power to someone else feels like taking it from oneself.

It is not easy to have anyone “on a pedestal.” They can admire someone for their truth, integrity, and coherence — what is perceived through words and actions — but that admiration quickly turns dangerous.

At the smallest sign of betrayal to that truth — any inconsistency or lack of integrity — admiration collapses into defenestration. If there are romantic feelings involved, detecting the betrayal becomes harder; it may even be minimized or denied outright.

“Admiration, for this character, is earned through actions — and can be lost through the smallest gesture. Without complete trust (truth), there is no admiring love.”

Javier

He recalls:

“I was nineteen and a confirmation instructor in my hometown church, with my girlfriend. We helped adolescents reflect on faith in daily life and Liberation Theology. We were committed to the Gospel.

The day of the confirmation ceremony, with over thirty young people, families, and the bishop — who got drunk at a bar ten kilometers away — a vicar improvised the ceremony. That night, walking home, I had a conversation with God. I told Him that this wasn’t my Church, and I wasn’t even sure He existed. If He did His job, we’d meet again. If not, goodbye. I broke with the Church (and with the idea of Jesus) that day. One day to the next. Along came family disappointment, fights — all gone to waste.

When they betray me, my response is immediate: I withdraw all trust. If I believed in an idea, gave myself to it, and then discover that what I trusted betrays me — then I’ve put my life in a traitor’s hands.

My life in the hands of unreliable people? No, thank you.”

Javier

Admiring love then turns scornful, even destructive toward those once admired. It sounds harsh, but for this type it feels entirely natural — there could be no other reaction. When seen from outside, it looks excessive, but from within, it feels simply like truth.

“Always absolute, in every circumstance. Everything else is lies, half-truths, and… death. My life in the hands of unreliable people? No, thank you!”

Erotic Love

Among the visceral characters at the top of the enneagram, the E8 is the most erotic — though neurotically it becomes pure intensity and the immediate satisfaction of needs, whatever the cost. In this, the genuine essence of erotic love is lost — turning self-affirmation into raw selfishness.

This kind of love is interesting for the satisfaction it brings, but dangerous for the intimacy it generates. In a relationship, the E8 bets everything — the all, total surrender. The intensity of their

own satisfaction can, at times, be lived as infidelity, since excess and disconnection from the emotional core blur boundaries.

Sexual surrender may be hindered by distrust; yet with a partner who offers true trust and intimacy, they can finally show sensitivity — their pain for small wounds, their fear of being “bad” or of hurting, their tears. It is in that intimacy that they can “cry like a child,” showing vulnerability in moments of real encounter — tears of love or of unworthiness.

Compassionate Love

Compassionate love is born from seeing another’s pain or need — connecting directly through one’s own wound. It ties the heart to shared suffering.

If love does not include pain, it is not truly compassionate — because compassion recognizes pain in the other and moves toward it. For this character, compassion often turns into taking care or providing materially for others, instead of listening to their inner needs. Their care is impulsive, aimed at filling needs rather than understanding them. It denies the autonomy of the other and establishes a bond of loyalty through domination. Security has a price: others are protected under their rule.

Thus, compassion loses its true value — empathy with the other’s suffering — and becomes a form of material assurance. Even so, this “compassionate love,” though denied, is the most meaningful in this character — both repressed and lived with the greatest intensity.

Loving Finale

The organic conviction of this character — that love hurts (kills) — never fades. Life confirms again and again this universal truth: love hurts.

Trust, for this type, was learned as an unquestionable truth, but must later be re-examined to allow a deeper reality: the updated experience that love, though it hurts, does not have to destroy. The pain of love no longer kills; it sets a boundary — awareness that there is another person, a limit. Pain becomes a measure of contact, not of evil. It regulates the relationship, like a switch that turns it on or off.

For this character, trust in love is never subtle. It is learned through attunement to the finest nuances — but when it comes, it arrives with absolute intensity.