The Heart Wants What the Personality Wants

There’s a song out right now that I can’t get out of my head: “The Heart Wants What It Wants.” It’s very melodic and is performed beautifully by Selena Gomez. The lyrics, though, while clever and well-fashioned, are not ones I can get behind. They go to the “heart” of many relationship woes and point right to the control that the personality asserts over us.

The lyrics speak of an unhealthy relationship that is by turns intoxicating and devastating. The chorus ends with the line, “There’s a million reasons why I should give you up, but the heart wants what it wants.” This seems like the only possible answer someone could give for willingly continuing a relationship that causes pain and makes no logical sense to the person or to anyone else. It’s a desperate attempt to justify insanity, really. After all, the heart doesn’t have to make sense, right? Its workings are mysterious – who could ever hope to understand it?

This very phrase, in fact, was used by a famous writer/director to explain his affair with his stepdaughter. As if we’re all supposed to suddenly “get it” and nod in agreement. Ah, well, if that’s what the heart wants, it must be okay. Or at least, “Well, what can you do? He knew it was wrong, but it’s what the heart wants, and the heart cannot be denied.”

Now, please understand that I’m not trying to be judgmental and belittle the above-mentioned song, singer or writer/director. People are precious and beloved of God, and I don’t have the interest or energy to tear down what is precious to God. I provide these real-life examples to illustrate the fact that what the heart wants is not necessarily what is best for us. It is not always (not often?) based on lofty principles or some mysterious force that sees the bigger picture and knows what’s best. The heart wants what the personality wants.

What we all think of as the heart, actually, is a part of the personality. Humans are comprised of three main parts: the soul, the body and the spirit. The soul is also comprised of three main parts: the mind, the will and the emotions. Personality is based in the soul, as are the emotions. If you’ve read this blog before, you know that personality is what the mind creates to approximate the authentic self (the spirit) as it loses contact with the authentic self during early childhood.

So, the mind is running the show of our lives through the personality. Each of us follows a script based on our personality type. Each of these scripts is based on a central theme, also called the Basic Desire. For example, the Basic Desire of the Enneagram Type Seven is to be happy, satisfied and fulfilled. The Basic Desire of the One is to be proper and correct at all times. That of the Nine is to maintain their peace of mind.

So, let’s look at the relationship at the center of the song that inspired this blog post from the viewpoint of these different personality scripts. How would each react to it? A Seven would most likely say “Adios” as soon as anything unpleasant started happening, because the script tells him or her, “Stay happy!” The One would do what seemed correct according to her or his personal moral code – stay with the person out of a sense of obligation and/or to help “fix” them so that they are also doing what is proper and correct, or immediately leave if the loved one was breaking a law or tenet important to the One. The Nine would most likely discard the negative aspects of the loved one’s behavior and only “remember” the good, pleasant aspects in order to maintain inner peace.

So, the “heart” is really the personality being a good little actor and following its script. This is why we see people who make the same relationship mistakes over and over – mistakes that are screamingly obvious to us but that the people just can’t see for themselves. This is why some spouses have the same three arguments over and over for their whole marriage. The script is telling them, “Do this – this is right,” and it doesn’t make sense to them that the script could be wrong.

And this is another reason why the personality is a tragedy. It prevents us from experiencing the fullest, deepest relationships we could have. But until you know that you have a choice, you don’t. You will just keep following that script and hoping it works this time. I hope that this is the year that you will say “Enough!” and start getting free of the personality’s grip. I’ve never found a tool so capable of this task as the Enneagram. I hope you will give yourself the gift of learning it.

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