the romantic person has a desperate confidence

    I re-took the Riso-Hudson Enneagram Type Indicator (RHETI) Sample test this week, having taken it once before—my first results are here—and discovered that my type has changed!

 

 

    I'm now a Four, when I used to be a Five. I don't necessarily think that I have changed, so much, except that I answer questions more honestly now. 

 

    Of course, I'm dying to know what types my friends are. If you do take the test (which took me around 5 minutes), please share your type with me!

    What follows is from the website, with pertinent bits (to me, of course) in italics - and especially apt statements in bold. Comments welcome!

 

The Romantic (the Four) 

Romantics have sensitive feelings and are warm and perceptive. 

 

How to Get Along with Me 

• Give me plenty of compliments. They mean a lot to me. 

• Be a supportive friend or partner. Help me to learn to love and value myself. 

• Respect me for my special gifts of intuition and vision. 

• Though I don't always want to be cheered up when I'm feeling melancholy, I sometimes like to have someone lighten me up a little. 

• Don't tell me I'm too sensitive or that I'm overreacting! 

 

Fours as Children Often 

• have active imaginations: playing creatively alone or organizing playmates in original games 

• are very sensitive 

• feel that they don't fit in 

• believe they are missing something that other people have 

• attach themselves to idealized teachers, heroes, artists, etc. 

• become anti-authoritarian or rebellious when criticized or not understood 

• feel lonely or abandoned 

 

What I Like About Being a Four 

• my ability to find meaning in life and to experience feeling at a deep level 

• my ability to establish warm connections with people 

• admiring what is noble, truthful, and beautiful in life 

• my creativity, intuition, and sense of humor 

• being unique and being seen as unique by others 

• having aesthetic sensibilities 

• being able to easily pick up the feelings of people around me 

 

What's Hard About Being a Four 

• experiencing dark moods of emptiness and despair 

• feelings of self-hatred and shame; believing I don't deserve to be loved 

• feeling guilty when I disappoint people 

• feeling hurt or attacked when someone misunderstands me 

• expecting too much from myself and life 

• fearing being abandoned 

• obsessing over resentments 

• longing for what I don't have 

 

 [the title quotation is by F. Scott Fitzgerald, from This Side of Paradise, and reads more fully as follows]

“I'm not sentimental--I'm as romantic as you are. 

The idea, you know, is that the sentimental person thinks things will last

—the romantic person has a desperate confidence that they won't.”