The Enneagram, Relationships, and Intimacy: Understanding One Another Leads to Loving Better and Living More Fully

A revised edition is now available from Morgan James Publishing (2025), featuring new content, a fresh cover, and current insights. Find it on Google or Amazon by looking for the "updated edition" sticker on the top right corner of the front cover.

BESTSELLING ENNEAGRAM AUTHOR David Daniels, M.D. is one of the founding fathers of today's Enneagram. “A modern sage, let David’s light and love fill you with knowledge, love and inspiration…” – Foreword by Daniel J. Siegel, M.D.

Why doesn't my partner get me? Why can't we get along? Why do I tend to always want more from my partner? How can we share more intimacy? Why am I so emotionally inhibited? What tears us apart? What brings us closer together? Why do my partner and I express our love so differently?

This is an easy-to-read, compelling relationships book that will answer those questions and more. Falling in love is what we all dream about. Sustaining that love is the deal breaker. We can't sustain something we don't fully understand, that we don't know how to nurture, that we don't know how to develop and grow. Let this unique book take you on a journey into yourself and into others — into a journey that will change your life.

"Our First Love Story" begins with how early childhood attachment relationships impact our personality's development, and how that development shapes the relationship we'll come to have with ourselves and with others in the future. Learn how to shift our relationships from unwanted struggle to much wanted fulfillment. Let the wisdom of the Enneagram as it meets Dr. Daniel J. Siegel’s groundbreaking mindful awareness make a difference in your life. Learn how and why an openhearted, receptive way of relating fills us with love and grace in lieu of fear and defendedness, and changes the very experience we'll have of love itself.

Written by David Daniels, M.D., Adjunct Clinical Professor Stanford Medical School and Suzanne Dion, certified Enneagram teacher, this book brings their shared passion for human development, healthy relating, and the Enneagram system to understanding one another, loving better, and living more fully. The authors fluidly combine the biology of relationships, the anatomy of love, and the structure of personality in order to build loving relationships all the way to necessary and desired change in our intrapersonal life as well as in our relationships.

Bringing this book to life was the passionate focus of much of David's time and exploration the last many years of his life and was an honor for co-author Suzanne Dion to see through to completion. Suzanne brings her work as an Enneagram teacher and coach and her deep study of early childhood trauma's impact on developing our capacity to bring a full self, and more vulnerable self, to relationships. Within it holds David and Suzanne's endearing understanding of being human, our deep need for self- and other-compassion, and a devotion to contributing to a more loving world.

• The nine Enneagram types and David’s Tips for Growth
• Intimacy with self as the secret to intimacy with others
• Early Attachment—our first love story
• The contributory ways that we're wired via instincts and personality type
• Three centers of intelligence and the three mammalian aversive emotional systems
• What tears us apart? What brings us together?
• The conditional love of type and how it impairs our ability to love
• How understanding sexuality and our biases impacts our more intimate relationships
• The nine Enneagram types and sexuality—nine ways we either diminish or enhance intimacy and fulfillment
• The 5As for development and practice—Awareness, Acceptance, Appreciation, Action, and Adherence
• The 27 instinctual personality sub-types and how they impact the Enneagram and relationships

There are lots of books out there written about love. Some great ones discuss the importance of early secure attachment, and plenty too have been written about relationships and how to make them better. This book is a bit different. On behalf of David N. Daniels, M.D., Clinical Professor Emeritus Stanford Medical School, Suzanne Dion brings their shared personal passion for human development to the table alongside Daniel J. Siegel, M.D.'s groundbreaking study of "mindful awareness," David's over 40 years of study as a private-practice psychiatrist (working primarily with couples), 30 years spent developing and teaching the Enneagram and becoming world-renowned for having adapted the Enneagram to relationships, a 61-year marriage, and a deep and comprehensive understanding of human temperament and personality proclivities. Thanks to having studied something called, “the Enneagram,” David says, "...of all of the treatment modalities I worked with and tried out across my therapeutic career, nothing came close to helping couples heal their hearts, deconstruct their defenses, and open receptively as much as I witnessed happening when using a comprehensive application of the Enneagram system.” Understanding ourselves as well as others — with acceptance, discernment, curiosity, and wonderment — in the way the Enneagram precipitates, provides the greatest foundation from which to build healthier, more receptive and more fulfilling relationships. It is our fundamental relationships that sustain our lives, fuel our happiness, and support our greater development and potential.

Bringing this book to fruition was the passionate focus of much of David's time, exploration, and thought the last many years of his life and was an honor for Suzanne to see through to completion. Within it holds David and Suzanne's endearing understanding of human relationships and a devotion to contributing to a more loving world.

Learn about...

• The 9 Enneagram Types: Multiple descriptions and Tips for Growth
• Self-intimacy as the gateway to intimacy with others
• Attachment - our first love story
• The contributory ways that we're wired
• Three centers of intelligence and the three mammalian aversive emotional systems
• Gender and the Enneagram, a new look, a compassionate perspective
• What tears us apart?
• The conditional love of type
• Nine Enneagram types and sexuality – nine ways we either diminish or enhance intimacy and fulfillment

For more information, visit: www.drdaviddaniels.com