We got married, graduated college, bought a failing business, moved to a new town, and set up a house and new friendships all within the same year. I remember reading about this thing called The Life Change Index where different life events are scored and ranked based on how stressful they can be. Having multiple high scoring stress events in one year dramatically increases your likelihood of throwing your body and mind into turmoil. The highest value events require the greatest adaptations and the most self care/self work. That was 2009-2012 for me.

When you first get married, there’s so many things about living with another person. You are accountable for yourself, your words, and your actions twenty four hours of every day! Before we got married we did lots of work on getting to know each other, having fun together, talking about our dreams and goals, and just learning how to be around each other ALL THE TIME. But, when you suddenly add in huge life stressors like finances, living together, moving, etc. things have a way of getting pretty out of control fast. We were working together 6 days a week from 6am-8pm and if we had a conflict during those hours, we had to learn how to solve it in between customers! There was so many times I just walked out or ran into our back room. Being in relationship with another person that close takes so much thought, care, and work. We learned so much about ourselves those years though and really how to solve conflict and resolve it quickly. But there were some fights that we had that were so circular and no matter what we tried, we couldn’t reach a place of understanding on how to resolve them. As hard as he tried to explain his side to me, I just couldn’t understand. And vice versa. Fast forward to 2016 when I read my first book on the Enneagram, The Road Back to You. I’ve always been into self discovery and dug deep into the Meyers Briggs but what I was finding in the Enneagram had so much depth that I couldn’t ignore it as a tool for our marriage.

We are about five years into using it as a tool in our relationship and to us, the results have been amazing. The basic concept is becoming aware of your own motivations (what makes you you) and then coming to terms with the not so great ways that you have learned to survive in this world and taking them little by little into the light and exposing them. Ouch! Yup, it hurts coming face to face with our inner motivations. For us, the realization has been that true change is related to understanding why we act the way we do and then taking those things into God’s presence and allowing Him to change them. The Enneagram lays out a path for change on a very core deep level. Remember that mention of a circular fight that we just couldn’t seem to find an end to? We got to the root of it using the Enneagram. Did it take years of studying and self awareness to end it? YES. It wasn’t overnight. We were both committed to not only learning ourself on a deeper level but also to learning the other person.

If you are interested, here’s our favorite tools in regards to the Enneagram! P.S. don’t take a test online. In our opinion, they aren’t of enough depth to really understand the nine types. As a side note, once something becomes popular, there’s going to be misuse of information and a watering down of the actual teachings. Here’s some solid book recommendations if you are interested. And like anything that is of VALUE, change and growth take time. Normally things take a bit of time to change because as you reflect on concepts, they begin to permeate on a deeper level. The deeper you dig, the more value you will find.

Primer book: The Road Back to You by Ian Morgan Cron and Suzanne Stabile. This was the first book we read to introduce us to the Enneagram.

Our favorite Enneagram book: The Complete Enneagram: 27 Paths to Greater Self-Knowledge by Beatrice Chestnut. Wow, this book is incredible. Don’t expect to go through this book quickly! Definitely a deep dig.