Compatibility and The Enneagram
Why the Enneagram is a bad matchmaker, and what it's actually good at!
Early in my Enneagram teaching days I got a message from someone designing a dating app focused on the Enneagram. “You tell us your Enneagram type and we’ll match you with only the types most compatible with yours!” Something really didn’t sit right with me about this. Although I did not have as much experience coaching couples as I do now, I knew the idea of “most compatible Enneagram types” was a myth.
People are not software, or chemicals, or even solely personalities…we are a mix of our environment, our past, genetics, and most importantly a soul. So even though I am a huge fan of the Enneagram, I don’t think its a tool that can be used for compatibility and I’ll give you a couple of examples why.
Typing is Not Foolproof: What if you heard you should only end up with an Enneagram Nine, so you narrowed your search to only those who claimed to be an Enneagram Nine. Only to have your spouse figured out 10 years later that they mistyped and are actually a Six?
Health > Personality: A person’s overall emotional/relational/spiritual health is a much greater indicator of their relational happiness than their personality type. There are healthy and unhealthy people in all Enneagram types.
Easy Doesn’t Always Mean Better: A lot of us are attracted to those we find easy to be around, and although getting along with your partner is a worthwhile goal, someone who simply doesn’t annoy you might also be a person who doesn’t challenge you, stick up for you, or help you in the ways you’ll need for all of life’s seasons. There is an amount of friction and conflict that is healthy in relationships! It means that the partnership is equal, no one is being the doormat to the other.
We love to take the guesswork out of relationships! We love someone to tell us “this is a perfect match” because we are scared, there is a lot to risk in relationships, especially romantic ones. So if you are brave enough to set into the waters of relationships this is what I think the Enneagram can help your with! (and spoiler alert it’s not telling you what type you need to end up with.)
A Guide Against Assumptions: I can’t tell you all the times I’ve heard “I thought everyone thought this way!” when they’re learning about their Enneagram type. You just can’t know, what you don’t know. It’s not human to assume others are living a completely different internal experience from the one you’ve always known. So knowing the Enneagram for yourself can help you to identify the way you may assume others are like you, and get more curious about their experience instead of assuming.
A Key to Self Awareness: By learning your own Enneagram type and doing the work to unpack blind spots, and identify ways you’re living in unhealthy patterns you become a better partner. But the knowledge of your type can’t just be something you put in your Insta bio and forget about, it has to be something that blooms a deep curiosity and compassion for you experience -this is what prompts change in meaningful and sustainable ways.
Language for our Experience: Before learning about the Enneagram my husband and I didn’t have the language to accurately explain our experience (be it fears, shame, doubt, deepest wants, motivation, being triggered..etc) and being on the same page about what the other person identifies as their core motivation, and how that impacts nearly everything has been a game changer for our communication and understanding.
In short, the Enneagram is a very helpful tool for growth, but not a matchmaking formula. Its useful for self-knowledge, communication, and compassion but not for choosing “the one” based solely on type.
A note about an upcoming Instagram series: On my Instagram I’ll post about different Enneagram pairings. The second slide for each post will show survey data about which pairings are most common. (as seen in the image below) Please don’t interpret lower frequency as incompatibility, it simply means fewer survey respondents reported that pairing. The data can also be skewed when people type their partners instead of partners typing themselves.
Some takeaways:
Do you your own typing (and if you’re questioning your typing I do Enneagram coaching and have helped many people find their type with certainty)
Lead with compassion and questions in relationships
Don’t rule out types you’ve had difficulty with in the past