u/enneagramming

I was having another existential thought (they’ve ramped up as the world keeps shittifying) and it made me wonder about being born in a different decade so I could have lived more of my life without ai, internet etc. I get into the nuts and bolts of it in my essay but thought to myself, huh, it’s usually 6’s I hear say ‘I wish I was born in X/earlier decade’. At the end of the article, I meta-analyse it as a type 6 phenomenon. This part I’ve included below.

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Most often it’s type 6’s, especially those with a dominant social instinct, that complain about being born in the wrong decade. It’s a natural desire to play victim and push problems onto something outside of your control so you can’t be blamed for your circumstances, something 6’s (but not only 6) are prone to.

Type 6’s fear the cause of their problems and flip-flop between blaming themselves or blaming something external as the reason. It can feel delightful to blame something else entirely, especially when the type 6 has been recently hard on themself. They often feel entitled to blaming a situation or person fully if they have labelled it as ‘bad’ or ‘unfair’ or ‘unacceptable’. In truth, there’s always a balancing scale of blame/cause in every situation and person. While 6’s can be good at seeing the scale, they also fall victim to wanting a clear black/white answer because they lack full trust in themselves (and others). This is especially potent when unhealthy.

The 6’s I’ve met who bring up the desire to be born or live in a different time speak about it with conviction that it could change their present day experiences. 6’s can be acutely aware of history, especially those with social and self-preservation, and can often explain how it would impact their life to live in a different decade. They may quote a variety of facts or old ways of being to bolster their argument. Staying in this space also supports their type-need of having a problem to combat with, a complaint to spill or a reaction to have against something.

Of course, not every type 6 will be sprouting out ‘I wish I was born in X decade!”. You can be a social type 6 who has never thought this in their life. But if you notice this type of pattern pop up in your life, maybe it’s worth considering a type 6 influence. If you already know your type, maybe it'll reveal another way you’re stuck in your patterns.

I typed the other social medias here.

Reddit — Type 5w6 sp/sx

Honest, combative and anonymous. I went back and forth on typing either 5 or 6 for Reddit. Despite the constant debates and reactive energy, it’s ultimately a nerdy, useful and practical media. There’s an undeniable knowledge pretension on the platform: Redditors are the smartest, most intellectual and best-read — right type 5s? Paired with the incredible range, and specificity, of niches and the experts-galore in each subreddit, I landed on 5. There’s a lot of oversharing, which I struggle to see a 6w5 do: Wouldn’t they fear the information eventually being revealed? Or fear it being tracked back to them? Maybe type 5 and sp/sx together is overkill, but it’s the only social media where you get real, unfiltered opinions, with a side plate of condescending.

Would you say any other social media is a 5?

Last week I wrote on self-preservation and the week before that on social (both can be found on Reddit or Substack). The finale in my little series is sexual, the most controversial in the community (the reasons as to why could be its own lengthy post). I've written about the sx instinct in extra depth here, especially around mistyping as sx/so several years ago. I'm gonna write about stacking differences soon; while I now realise how different my instinctual stacking, so/sx, is to sx/so, it took me years of going back and forth to figure it out.

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Regardless of the dominant instinct you have, it controls how you perceive life. You use it as much as you breathe. Like an engineer who knows how every cog in a machine works, the dominant instinct understands their instinctual space with nuance, clarity and detail. It’s not relegated to certain people, situations or online, nor does it mean having a healthy relationship with it. The dominant instinct re-manipulates situations to always get what it wants, often at the expense of, in the case of sexual, the social and self-preservation needs. 

Before I dive into the sexual-instinct, I want to cross off a few common perceptions people have of it.

Sexual is NOT: 

• Having strong passions or interests. 
• Having an intense character or personality.
• Being mentally unstable or unhinged.

The sexual instinct is defined by a need to create tension, chemistry and magnetism. To be magnetic means to both repel and attract which creates the sufficient spark necessary to transcend tight-psychological boundaries in the self and others. This requires constant push-pull: a complete surrendering followed by a period of separation, to then be able to surrender fully again.

Below I have described how the sexual instinct shows up. To clarify, we have all 3 instincts in us. Being dominant in sx means overdoing some (or many) of the below to the extent you neglect social and self-preservation. This is not a checklist where you need to tick everything off to be sx dominant. It’s rather noticing how the instinct plays out in daily life:

• Sex is viewed as a heightened and elevated arena or space. It is more than connecting with someone, physical pleasure or the act itself: sex has a before and after story, a complete narrative arc. 
• The person who can create the sensation of you as an open, vulnerable vessel that is capable of being taken and possessed is in that moment, the only person. Even if it changes. 
• You have an urge to be burnt and transcended by a person. This can at times be an object, but is almost always a person. 
• You are a slave to your sexual pursuits and interests.
• You hunt for a state of full surrender and to make another surrender to you. This is not sharing, relating or getting to know someone.
• Your life is controlled by your latest sexual interest, pursuit or partner. 
• You are highly aware of when a person repels or attracts you into them. You notice your own attention wanes or increases and are aware of how and why.
• Never in your life have you not had a sexual interest, pursuit or partner. If you didn’t have it, that moment in your life was defined by either actively repelling or hunting for it.
• When you look back at your life, all life stages are marked by a sexual pursuit/person or your own relationship with your sexual identity/strategy. Not by career, identity, friends or family. 
• Competitive sexuality. Your dominant instinct (regardless of what it is) recognises there is a finite resource of what they want, so you must create a niche to ensure an endless supply. The sexual instinct requires sexual chemistry and an object attracted by or to attract, so a need to be sexually competitive. Whether competitive feels like the right word is specific to enneagram type (eg. 9’s might not use the word competitive, but a similar-meaning word)
• A need to be the most enticing, magnetising and attractive person your partner/attraction object has met. Even if this is a one-night stand. (this is more relatable for image types).
• People are evaluated based on their ability to excite, create chemistry and have tension with. The end goal is not needing to form a relationship, getting to know each other’s personhoods, sex or physical pleasure. The only reason any of these end goals would come across the sexual-first mind is because they create situations that increase vulnerability and chemistry with another. 
• When unhealthy, you notice an increased desperation to find or make from nothing chemistry, tension and attraction. Spilling yourself open, lowering your standards or forcing yourself to believe a chemistry with someone which isn’t naturally there. 
• A need to always be attractive or be found attractive to be fuckable. (edit: A need to always be attractive or be found attractive to be fuckable. NOT to be liked, respected, accepted or enhance social standing. Exclusively to increase being seen as sexually attractive.)
• You don’t think shared hobbies or commonalities are required to have a strong chemistry with someone.

 

If you can attribute more variety, niche and value to sex, attraction flavour and seduction than you can give language to the self-preservation or social instinct, then you may be sexual-first.

As always, I love to hear what you think! (and appreciate being called out if I used any accidental social-first language, she's hard to let go off)

edit: (additional points)

• Your hobbies, interests, friends and passions are in service of showcasing your sexual display. The primary purpose of all of these is to repulse or attract sexually.
• There is equal part an attraction and repulsion dynamic. You are as invested in making someone not want to fuck you, as you are in making them want to. (credit thanks to YourFavoriteUnknown)

the below is taken from my self-preservation article u can read here! and a huge thank you to everyone who helped on my previous reddit post so i could get the right sp wording here.

Like everything in life, some things get more attention than others.

The self-preservation instinct knows this well. Unlike its sparkly cousins, social and sexual, people often assume it is self-explanatory. But the instinct is more than survival, working and body sensations. If we assume this as sp, it flattens the complexity of what sp entails.

A huge misunderstanding and core reason for mistyping sp is the assumption it's the ‘healthy’ instinct because its associated with survival. But this is false. All three instincts can be warped and manipulated to differing levels of health/unhealth.

Not every sp-first is out there going on weekly runs and eating their 5 fruit and vegetables a day. Some are napping too much, drinking alcohol, getting high, over-exercising, living in messy spaces or gambling their life savings away for the thrill of it.

Dominance in an instinct does not mean being good at it. Rather, it’s seeing the instinct with nuance, clarity and detail. With our first instinct, we are the engineer who knows how every cog in the machine works. But it doesn’t mean we engineer it to be healthy. Sometimes we re-manipulate and tweak the machine to get what we want: often controlled by our Enneagram type structure.

Say you’re a sp-first who wants a ripped, hot body. You could go to the gym and do it the hard way. Eating well, tracking the macros and exercising 5 times a week. But steroids give you the ripped body quicker and you need the extra time because you want to run a business. You weigh it up in your head and take steroids. The gym time is needed for money time. Being dominant in an instinct is trying to do ‘all’ of it but also being aware you can’t, so finding shortcuts that you justify as ultimately fulfilling your overall needs.

By comparison, someone blind to self-preservation might act in a similar way, but won’t realise they are taking a self-preservation shortcut. They don’t see the full colour and nuance. So when problems in self-preservation arise, they are subconsciously redirected as social or sexual issues, even if untrue. Blindness in an instinct means being quite literally blind to realising it’s as prominent in your life as your first instinct.

Below I have described how self-preservation shows up. To clarify, we have all 3 instincts in us. Being dominant in sp means overdoing some (or many) of the below to the extent you neglect social and sexual. This isn’t a checklist where you need to tick everything off to be sp dominant. It’s rather noticing how the instinct plays out in daily life:

— Experimenting and playing with how far you can push or extend the body. For healthy reasons, like pushing limits in the gym with care or unhealthy, under-sleeping to induce a high feeling or over-exercising as a classic example.

— You have a need to self-sustain, continue existing and maintaining the ability to do so. You recognise all the parts that come together to ensure this (livelihood, the body, health etc.).

— Your daily routine prioritises your lifestyle needs so that you can continually engage in the activities you like. Lifestyle needs are not about interacting, connecting or eliciting attention from people. They are sleep, food, creating, producing, making etc.

— You might have a strong interest in material objects like cars, houses and products. If you don’t care for them, you are likely to have a strong reason why. This is often type-centred eg. a sp 6 may hold onto their shoes for a long time to not waste and overspend on new ones.

— You reflect often on your career, degree or ambitions and how they fit, or don’t fit, in your lifestyle & daily needs (eg. it could be money or a need for passion in life). You might constantly refine and focus your vocation. Or take no action but worry about their foundations. It’s the attention you pay to a vocation in life that’s self-pres dominant, regardless of if anything changes.

— Decay, mental or physical, is terrifying and recognised as a nuanced topic depending on multiple factors: age, health, genetics etc. How this manifests can be broad but is usually based on type structure eg. type 5 fearing mental decay.

— Your environment, surroundings and home are viewed as a container and representation of you and your needs. Even if you don’t care for home aesthetics, you set up your space so you can continually engage with your interests eg. making sure you have necessary items for woodworking, or just a functioning laptop to code etc.

— Some sp-doms are specific about weather and how it affects them. Not having enough sun depresses them for example. Sp-doms recognise that a change in physical location would drastically change their everyday lifestyle.

— Chasing physical transformation as a way to psychologically transform. eg. if my body changes, then my life will change too. Surgery, exercise, make-up etc.

— You seek experiences that create intensity in the body such as substances, extreme exercise, fasting, sex, over/under sleeping or gambling. The body is a hub of experience: you can indulge, transform and play in it.

— When reflecting on sex, the body pleasure derived is most important. If considering how sex is like with a specific person, it is typically how they make the experience better or worse through the body.

— Oscillating between surrendering to bodily impulses (binging, drinking, impulsive pleasure) and trying to master the body through discipline, restriction or optimisation. Or choosing one of these to stick with.

— You have hobbies, interests and passions that you regularly engage in. The hobby/passion itself and time spent doing it is where the entertainment and enjoyment of the activity is. Not the social or sexual perspective where the hobby/passion serves to eventually or immediately create/entice attention (platonic and romantic).

the below is clipped from this article.

Social first is often confused with extroversion. But you might need a lot of alone time, dislike most people and think you’re bad in social situations — and still be social dominant.

We can’t turn off our dominant instinct, so if you are social-first you may notice the below thoughts consuming much of your head space when alone.

- You talk to yourself as if on a tv show explaining your life story, a specific moment or how you feel about something. You play pretend interview.

- You rephrase ideas, stories and thoughts in your head as if you are speaking them to someone else. Whether it’s to a specific person or generalised person is irrelevant.

- You imagine how conversations will go with someone and recreate them with vivacity and detail.
You daydream about what other people have said about you or what they could say.

- If you’ve had a social interaction in the day, or are about to, it is the central highlight your day hinges on. Even if you dislike the person or feel neutral towards them, the interaction is registered as part of the day.

- When you think about hobbies, personal interests and career, you think about how other people would perceive them. You might excite yourself playing out how people will view you as cool, contradictory, rebellious, smart or interesting for these skills.

- When liking or disliking something, you think about what type of genre of person it makes you. For instance if you like black clothing, does that make you emo? goth? or just someone who likes black clothes. Regardless of the outcome, it is the consideration of yourself within or against social genres that is social.

- You notice other people: what they do or don’t do and judge them. It can be a negative, positive or neutral judgement. Maybe they seem interesting, disapproving or boring.

- Social drama of any sort is exciting. Either real drama (like two people fighting) or perceived/imagined drama (that look person A gave to person B! maybe they dislike each other?)

- You look at your relationship with others (platonic and romantic) and contemplate how it might be framed, viewed and perceived by other people.

- The above, but using internal framework to unravel and understand a relationship with someone. Questions like: Are me and this person close? How close are we? Are we close enough that I could call them?

— Last week I wrote on how sp/so skew their sx instinct through the fantasy of an ‘effortless relationship’. This week I bring So/Sp! I wrote the article on Substack and included the fantasy, how this plays out with real world examples and how this creates issues for So/Sp. I’ve clipped out the fantasy below —

So/Sp Fantasy Land:

Their mind is a perfectly functioning warehouse. Plenty of boxes are neatly stacked up and each is labelled correctly. The system is coordinated and the conveyor belt works to bring each box when and where it’s needed.

The movement of these boxes depends on what the so/sp values, how they want their identity to be presented and what the social situation they’re in calls for. Depending on the so/sp’s type and their general character, the content of these boxes and what they consider appropriate for the situation can vary wildly.

If a So/Sp is with their friend Chris and they always talk about trains together, when they meet up with Chris, they’ll talk about trains, and know that in that dynamic, they are the ‘train’ person.

If the same So/Sp is having sex with their long-term situation-ship where they’ve set up a routine, then they’ll know its time to go get their alien-shaped-ten-inch-dildo and beg for mercy.

As you see from the two examples, it doesn’t mean that So/Sp can’t engage their sexual instinct to be interesting, unique or kinky. Everyone has the capability to be all of those things, but So/Sp will control how these are presented. Their self-preservation instinct acts as a barrier to the sexual instinct (also visually presented by it being a middle block to the final instinct, So/Sp/Sx). They use self-preservation to manage social situations and identity: each relationship is built on a foundation which can’t be undone, and requires patience and consistency to grow.

To the So/Sp, everything has its social place, label and correct time for the right box to be opened and unpacked. Returning to the warehouse metaphor, there is no spillage, no box breaking, no having the wrong box delivered to the wrong person. If Chris Train Guy wants to start hitting on the So/Sp, the So/Sp will have to actively reorientate what their ‘identity’ will now be with Chris. It is hard for them to let the natural, uncontrolled mess of Sexual to interfere with what is already established.

(rest of article here!)