# Socionics + Enneagram compatibility.



## DJArendee (Nov 27, 2009)

So I'm an ISTP enneagram 8. I generally feel I can make my own dreams come true whenever I want to. I can set myself up for success when I put my mind to it. As such, one of my biggest goals is to live a simple life and find someone I can connect with.

I'm very much into the compatibility theories of the different types, because so far in my life, THEY'RE TRUE! I'll experience some relationship with someone and then google the type compatibility and see what part of it came true and what part did not, just for curiosity.

Anyway to the point, I'm rather surgical when it comes to accomplishing my goals, and one of my goals is meeting that "perfect someone." I'm not the most active in my community, so my chances of meeting someone completely out of the blue are rather slim. I like to up these odds, and one of the ways I do this is by thinking about what my ideal companion would be like, then I go into MBTI and ENNEAGRAMs and try to construct this person. I'll say to myself, "I'm looking for someone who talks trash to me, and also connects with me on a deeper level and brings me out of my shell," then I'll go into mbti and try to find this person, then I'll go into Enneagram and find this person, then I'll look at activities to do out in town that maximize my chances of meeting this person, as well as fulfill my own life.

So my question is, how much credibility am I supposed to give these compatiblity theories when compared to one another? Would I be happier with an ENFJ because socionics and lovetypes.com says so? Or should I be happier with whatever personality fits the enneagram type I desire most? Or would I find some INFJ type 6 that I enjoy spending time with?

Maybe I'm thinking about this way too much... I am kinda cooked up in my house for the next 2 months until I move west once my lease expires. It just really bugs the crap out of me that the theory of duality claims its the only way to "true love." Ordinarily I would be skeptical, but experience tells me that it IS something I really need... and I feel bothered that I would reject women simply because I've experienced a relationship in the past that was so fantastic that they can't match up to it if they're not the personality I'm looking for. Can anyone relate to this perfectionism?


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## aestrivex (Mar 7, 2011)

DJArendee said:


> Anyway to the point, I'm rather surgical when it comes to accomplishing my goals, and one of my goals is meeting that "perfect someone." I'm not the most active in my community, so my chances of meeting someone completely out of the blue are rather slim. I like to up these odds, and one of the ways I do this is by thinking about what my ideal companion would be like, then I go into MBTI and ENNEAGRAMs and try to construct this person. I'll say to myself, "I'm looking for someone who talks trash to me, and also connects with me on a deeper level and brings me out of my shell," then I'll go into mbti and try to find this person, then I'll go into Enneagram and find this person, then I'll look at activities to do out in town that maximize my chances of meeting this person, as well as fulfill my own life.
> 
> So my question is, how much credibility am I supposed to give these compatiblity theories when compared to one another? Would I be happier with an ENFJ because socionics and lovetypes.com says so? Or should I be happier with whatever personality fits the enneagram type I desire most? Or would I find some INFJ type 6 that I enjoy spending time with?


for starters, in my opinion, you are absolutely not an SLI. a beta typing would be much more reasonable.

addressing your actual point, socionics is a model of intertype compatibility. being a model, it is necessarily fallible -- even if it correctly predicts "these people get along well" and "these people get along poorly" (assuming you could simplify relationships so simply to a binary valence) in a small plurality of cases, it may well be a useful model since some basis to make predictions may be better than none (otoh, your intuitions about people that have nothing to do with systemic modeling might also be better -- in my personal observations i think "people intuitions" often loosely concord with socionics observations, perhaps since they both draw on the same observations.)

a crucial point is that all of the modeling done by socionics stands alone as a framework for making decisions -- that is to say, what you think or feel about someone is absolutely irrelevant to the prediction that socionics makes about that person, and furthermore is also irrelevant to whether that prediction bears out well in reality. an even more crucial point is that your emotions and socio-cognitive-affective-perceptual reasons for doing something also stands alone. some people (mostly people like you who are very interested in socionics as a tool for dating or love) easily forget that using socionics as a way to make decisions does not remove the responsibility for having to experience the emotions and consequences that result. there is a growing community of disaffected socionists who either harbored or saw this attitude so much in a socially deleterious context, where people made poor decisions, ignored their emotional guidance, and eschewed responsibility for their actions, that now believe socionics is evil for allowing people to make these mistakes (as though these people would not find some other external system like astrology to make choices with).


i argued about this topic briefly on rick delong's blog. summarizing my responses in the comments section, i don't agree particularly with this attitude. in my opinion, a well-adjusted ("enlightened" if you will) individual with knowledge of socionics will incorporate both his emotional guidance and socionics, recognizing the fallibility of *both* approaches but also recognizing the value socionics and putting its predictions in their proper place. that said, i agree it is far less spiritually correct to ignore one's emotional guidance than to ignore socionics' predictions.


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## cyamitide (Jul 8, 2010)

DJArendee said:


> So my question is, how much credibility am I supposed to give these compatiblity theories when compared to one another? Would I be happier with an ENFJ because socionics and lovetypes.com says so? Or should I be happier with whatever personality fits the enneagram type I desire most? Or would I find some INFJ type 6 that I enjoy spending time with?


 From what I've seen of couples it goes: instinctual stackings compatibility > mbti/socionics compatibility > enneagram compatibility 

Incompatiblity in insticts usually lets itself be known upon the very first meeting or date with someone. Your interests and concerns just won't match very well if you insticts are very different. MBTI/socionics type incompatibility takes several months or even years to unfold. Enneagram provides the most leeway and greatest flexibility. If you are type 8 you'd be most compatible with e-2,4,6 and 1w2.


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