Enneagram Instinctual Motivations
by Larissa
What “bag” is someone trying to secure instinctually?
SELF-PRESERVATION
Is trying to secure a bag of foundational cookies, steaks, time, energy, money, investments (multiple meanings), hovel/home/property, supplies, resource independence, ideal temperature/weather conditions, physical gratification (sniffing butts + sexual release to get off and move on with day 💪😮💨), comfortable/satisfying environment and lifestyle, boundary-maxing. 🏠
This “bag” is most static, building on top of itself, tangible, quantifiable, measurable. 🧱
SPSO (self-preservation/social)
Secures the SP bag secondarily via social connections, clout, community, store front, public-facing persona, partner/mate (often chosen for fitting an SP ideal - whether as a “trophy” physically or job/finance/skillset/stable choice - someone to nest with + grow). 🪺 Ant colony, brick-layer mentality. Following the well-trod path for successful outcomes. May be the Mercedes Benz SPSO or the Dollarama can-hoarder, freebie-seeker SPSO - depends on type and conditioning. 🛺
SX lastness can manifest as utilizing SPSO to secure a mate/romantic connection that is devoid of chemistry but checks other more practical boxes. And can then manifest as a wandering eye or Instagram scroll p0rnsick behaviors while the wife cooks dinner, etc. Hand callouses and office humps threaten the SPSO world. 🔥 🧯🏚️
SPSX (self-preservation/sexual)
Secures the SP bag with help from physical attractiveness (defies conventional norms or is more intense/seedy), 🕷️ mystery/strange flavour makes their skills or hovel or body more compelling, creating intensity or sparking intrigue with flirts / exhibitionism designed to create pleasure that leads to $ales, resources, comfort, physical gratification, primal sexual werewolf urgency 🌕 but returns to drinking soup off a hot plate and mainlining black coffee to tinker for 8 hours on some project. Has more degenerate, grimy vibe than SPSO. 🪱You’ll get sticky in their hovel. Worst UTI of your life.🩸Openly lick their fangs at you. 👀 🫦
SX can fuck up SP so person will sacrifice a bit but in bursts, perhaps. 💣 SO lastness can manifest as not being aware of social consequences/cues, which might threaten SP resources because of an unwillingness to engage inter-relationally outside of cave. 🕳️
SOCIAL
Is trying to secure the “bag” of clout, networks, groups, ideology, popularity, public persona with an impressive, significant or at least vaguely aspirationally acceptable “image” and role in the social fabric they exist or desire to exist in. They are focused on relationships, whose doing what/who, who knows who, what’s happening, pop culture or some kind of “social sphere” (specificity and breadth of interest relates more to type). 🎊 Can be shallow social climbers or inspirational leaders with some miserable haters peppered in for variety (using social criticism to distinguish and separate themselves from the herd). 💅
The “bag” is semi-permanent - less stable and more dramatic with SX second, more stable and consistent with SP second. Disposable friendships often shuffled through at leisure vs loyal girl gang. ✨
SOSX (social/sexual)
Is securing social “bag” via chemistry, flirtations, spontaneity, provocations designed to get attention socially or draw energy to social “needs.” Advancing themselves relationally through who they can drive into a limerent frenzy. SX serves to feed the SO hunger to be someone noteworthy. Lovers / partners may serve to boost their social signal and buzz around them. They can be gossiping trash bags or the chaotic friend you invite to turnt up the SPSO board game, cheese cubes and nerd trivia gathering. May use SX to sexualize or create intrigue around their social “role.” ✨
SP lastness can manifest as leveraging
connections to take care of uninteresting SP realm (disregard or feigning incompetence). The hot mess express can threaten the SOSX’s ability to get what they want socially if they become known as consistently unreliable, chaotic, disruptive. 🧨
SOSP (social/self-preservation)
Is securing the social “bag” through tangible and marketable skills, their impressive acquisitions or potential acquisitions (finances, art collection, house, car, their business), maybe using “body” to advance self socially via fashion/style. More refined / snooty tastes than SPSO + SOSX, and can more effortlessly pull off “elegant” or “dapper.” They signal their social worth via SP sculpting (judge a book by its cover). May use SP as portal to reap social harvest, curate social world and block riff-raff. 🪭
SOSP’s can wall out attractions in favour of maintaining social standing, leading to compartmentalized, bone-dry kink. Or SX-lastness can interrupt their game of high tea when their partner sneaks out back to have one-off with the horny maid. Their lack of willingness to “play” can prevent them from opening up social rooms they might want in.
SEXUAL
Is trying to secure a “bag” (or bags) of limerent 🧃, chemical romance, constantly churning intrigue and feeding the hungry sparking atoms that crave another person’s undivided gaze, energetic whirlwind🌪️, high risk (many meanings - devouring/being devoured) attraction, moment of collision and turning someone else / being turned inside out (over and over) to feel alive. They operate on a different dimension where the language is undoing sublimations button by button, and weaving energetic subtext like golden threads that leave scars on the skin. It’s an art form of pulling and pushing, intoxication and purification, suffocating submersion and jet skiing away. This process results in human casualties and lust/disgust organs to harvest 🫀, grind into a powder and bathe in to amplify the SX type’s danger and appeal. 🩸🛁
The “bag” is temporary, mutating, evolving, tangibly unmeasurable outside of a wake of damaged hearts, sweat-soaked sheets and trail of chaos. It is the dance of predator and prey. 🦜 🐅 “Stability” may be sought via a singular, fated, electrifying, transcendent connection but it is an illusion due to the nature of the instinct - supply must be constantly renewing, recharging, reigniting, dying + rebirthing in order for it to maintain “bag” status. When the bag fails, flatlines, runs empty or it becomes poisoned and tainted - which it is likely to do at some point - more bags must be tested, toyed with, sucked on. They may return to original bag when it has replenished its juice or they may stick it in the freezer as a snack for later. 🥶
SXSP (sexual/self preservation)
Is trying to secure a bag full of limerence, intrigue, chemistry, drama and penetration inside of a secret world blocked out by the SP wall. The bouncer may slide the eye hole to the door over and look you up and down 👁️ 👄 👁️ like a delicious morsel but invitation to the cave is special and a show designed for one. Or perhaps you will be led down a long corridor where you are kept in a cell waiting for your turn but you will feel the vampire’s thrall and smell the pheromones as you impatiently wait. ⛓️💥🕯️ 🚬
First strategy for summoning sexual supply is magnetic lures - calling upon subject like casting a spell. SP strategy uses beauty of physical body / their artistry or skills / hyper specific aesthetic mesmerism signalling both predator and prey / environment’s charged atmosphere as tangible bait like a siren summoning you to your death.🩸🪨 The cost of admission is your potential destruction. This is not a hyperbole.
You will recognize the SXSP by the sweater they wear, knitted from the veins of their past + current victims that are feeding them sexual caffeine. They will try and keep this process somewhat behind closed doors in their sex tomb but it will ooze out like infectious fluids.
Social lastness “mistakes” + blunders can mess with the SXSP game of intrigue when the social meddlers involve themselves. The social field threatens to overwhelm what the SXSP cannot control and might threaten existing SX bags they’re still squeezing the life out of if a meddler tries palpating it. 🤏
SXSO (sexual/social)
Is securing a “bag” full of limerence and addictive intrigue via the energy field and symbolic web of people (groups, relationships, “audience”). Connections are prioritized / de-prioritized by their capacity to provide ⚡️ + 💦. They fancy themselves the star guest at a masquerade ball and every guest serves to feed, enhance or threaten the seductive narrative they’re actively writing through these connections, for one person (or maybe a couple if they’re feeling ambitious). 🎭 🎟️ 🪩
Social seconds may change dance partners and exchange glances with others but it’s all part of the spectacle to hook one subject. 🎡 They might use these guests to highlight how attractive they are - which may or may not backfire. They’re signalling that they could dance away with another. You will feel the flap of their wings in the air before you realize you’ve been left stranded in a mob of chemically castrated Thriller zombies.
If you’re a savvy enough paramour you’ll be able to follow the glittering breadcrumbs into the sky after them where you may be destroyed by the change in altitude. 🪽🔥
SXSO’s are competitive in a dispersed way, escalating social sparks to energy harvest and create a dizzying effect on their target. They use social to funnel infatuation material to them in a more unrestricted way than SXSP.
But lack of SP can bite them when all the glittering sex bombs they’ve dropped detonate + have consequences.✨💣 Damage to physical/foundational SP resources (last) or even social self is part of the accepted/uninteresting cost of playing with fire and magic. They can potentially re-fashion such damage to be part of the performance to keep the wider audience of potential SX plasma bags engaged but being an SP last means they can appear to be lacking once the SX spell wears off and their subject realizes they are lying on an air mattress in a 200 sqft apartment and dopamine hedonism is a way of life. 🥂
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