One of the frames I find quite useful in working with men is typology. Typology gives a basic map of different character and personality styles of people and of relationships. I use three of these maps.
They can help people accept the way they are and try to change things in their lives based on reality rather than some impossible goal. And since couples often come together on the basis of opposites that first attract and later repel, typology can help make clear that partners are not setting out to be difficult or oppositional; they are just build differently. I encourage people to make use of them as far they find them to be of help.
The first is the well-known Jungian-based Myers-Briggs typology. The simplest and quickest way to get a handle on this is by taking an online test. But very often you can discover how someone fits into the MB structure just by careful listening and observation. The MB looks for four sets of character biases, on a scale, whether someone is more:
They can help people accept the way they are and try to change things in their lives based on reality rather than some impossible goal. And since couples often come together on the basis of opposites that first attract and later repel, typology can help make clear that partners are not setting out to be difficult or oppositional; they are just build differently. I encourage people to make use of them as far they find them to be of help.
The first is the well-known Jungian-based Myers-Briggs typology. The simplest and quickest way to get a handle on this is by taking an online test. But very often you can discover how someone fits into the MB structure just by careful listening and observation. The MB looks for four sets of character biases, on a scale, whether someone is more:
introverted (focussed on their internal world) or extraverted (focussed on outer experience)
sensate (focussed on concrete details) or intuitive (focussed on hunches and impressions)
thinking (using thought to meet the world) or feeling (using emotion to do that)
judging (preferring order & predicability) or perception (preferring the unplanned & open)
sensate (focussed on concrete details) or intuitive (focussed on hunches and impressions)
thinking (using thought to meet the world) or feeling (using emotion to do that)
judging (preferring order & predicability) or perception (preferring the unplanned & open)
The second is the Enneagram, a set of personality styles built on nine basic compulsions. Its origins are not nearly as clear as the MB, but I have found over the last two decades that they provide noticeable explanatory power. They make sense of people without reducing them to cartoons. I know four men well who all share a single Ennea type. You can see the working out of their primary and secondary patterns. But if you put them all in a room, they are so different from each other in so many other ways that you would not guess they had much in common at all. And like the MB, how someone fits is based on their actual behavior. It's nothing at all like a horoscope. You take a version of the test online here.
The third typology comes from the work of Jungian analyst Graham Jackson ...whose two books on male couples provide an insight into how the "opposites attract" dynamic works out between men. Male dyads are (arche)typically either of the comrades-in-arms type or the olderman-youngerman type. Within these classical forms you often find attracting opposites between men at home with earth and mortality and men in love with ideas and immortality, and between patriarchal men of duty and order and artistic men ruled by passion and love of beauty. There's no test for that; I assess that myself when in counseling with the two men.
I have also found the more recent work of Keith Swain on alpha/beta roles sometimes helpful. It tells a truth that our egalitarian culture resists: that partners are not equal, at least not in the same way. Leading and following is very much a male dynamic but in intimate relationships the fantasy of total equality can shipwreck on the facts.
Falling in love, sorry to say, includes a lot of illusion. Projections, biases, unconscious expectations and patterns. In many cases, what first attracted us to a person later starts to put us off.
One of the great tasks of intimate relationships is actually accepting who the partner really is (and who we really are). And what it is which has made them choose each other. These three "maps of the soul" can illuminate the confusion that comes when the initial romantic haze starts to give way to who a man is. They can reveal and validate basic lines of character so that men can take responsibility for themselves and treat their partners with honesty. (They can also save a lot of wasted time and energy!)
The third typology comes from the work of Jungian analyst Graham Jackson ...whose two books on male couples provide an insight into how the "opposites attract" dynamic works out between men. Male dyads are (arche)typically either of the comrades-in-arms type or the olderman-youngerman type. Within these classical forms you often find attracting opposites between men at home with earth and mortality and men in love with ideas and immortality, and between patriarchal men of duty and order and artistic men ruled by passion and love of beauty. There's no test for that; I assess that myself when in counseling with the two men.
I have also found the more recent work of Keith Swain on alpha/beta roles sometimes helpful. It tells a truth that our egalitarian culture resists: that partners are not equal, at least not in the same way. Leading and following is very much a male dynamic but in intimate relationships the fantasy of total equality can shipwreck on the facts.
Falling in love, sorry to say, includes a lot of illusion. Projections, biases, unconscious expectations and patterns. In many cases, what first attracted us to a person later starts to put us off.
One of the great tasks of intimate relationships is actually accepting who the partner really is (and who we really are). And what it is which has made them choose each other. These three "maps of the soul" can illuminate the confusion that comes when the initial romantic haze starts to give way to who a man is. They can reveal and validate basic lines of character so that men can take responsibility for themselves and treat their partners with honesty. (They can also save a lot of wasted time and energy!)