4 Types of Men

 

For many of us, the concept of a "soulmate" has been a dearly-held believe all our lives, but over the past three decades or so, it has become a sort of worn-out "brand." For awhile there it seemed that every other self-help/psychology title had the word in it. Well, I for one, know they exist, and you may be surprised to hear that I know so not out of some magical, mystical, woo-woo sense of the term. There are many potential "soulmates" for each one of us, but only insofar as their personal life'sSTORY matches our own - like two characters in a great romance novel are "destined" to mean great things to the plot, and to each other.

Others of us may even roll our eyes at the idea of a soulmate, all the pop literature on the subject notwithstanding. These folks think "Relationships are just plain hard work. Get over it!" And while I agree that there is just too much marketing out there trying to sell anything to anyone with the promise of magical thinking - "It will change your life without you even having to lift a finger!" - I'm sure you've heard of a recent blockbuster book or two that does so - I also know that with a little up-front work and wisdom, we really can sort through potential relationships that are way way way too much work, and always will be, versus the type that was as easy to be in as being ourselves from the start. That's the soulmate I'm talking about.

It turns out that everyone you have ever known (including yourself), has a personality style that you could call a KING (or QUEEN), a MAGICIAN, a WARRIOR, or a LOVER. Kings and Queens get along famously with Magicians, and Warriors get along perfectly with Lovers, the poetic, soft, sensitive types. These two pairs are opposites, and "opposites attract" when it comes to "soulmates."

If you want to take an easy test to find out which type you are (and therefore who would make a potential perfect soulmate to you in terms of personality type), go to http://www.kwml.com/ . It's free.

 HOW DID I COME UP WITH THIS IDEA?

One of the things I have always done in my work life is to try to make ideas from science easier to understand for myself, and therefore easier for journalist and the public at large to understand. The mental process that helps us do this is called SYNTHESIS.

If you have ever tried to figure out how to accomplish three unrelated things in a very limited time - say, fly out of town for a work conference, visit an old friend, and even get in a mini-vacation at the beach all in one trip - then you were SYNTHESIZING. You took three separate goals and accomplished all of them in one ACTION.

I've done the very same thing for you with psychology. It took over ten years to do, but oh is it worth it. The overall model of psychology I developed, called mindOS: the operating system of the human mind, is synthesized together out of all the working parts of nearly every other theory of psychology of the past hundred years - psychodynamics, ego psychology, jungian psychology, object relations, self psychology, cognitive therapy, behavioral therapy, interpersonal theory, intersubjectivity theory, dialectical-behavioral therapy, positive psychology, evolutionary psychology, and even some tenets of theology brought to bear on the mathematics of economic theory.

Yuck! Intimidating, right? Gobbledegook. But that is precisely the purpose of SYNTHESIZING things together: the whole becomes far more simple than the sum of the parts. To visit a long lost friend, take a vacation, get an education, work toward a promotion, explore a new city, enjoy some new culture and various other goals you may have can be summed up with one simple action: buy the plane ticket.

When I discovered the only method of psychology entirely composed of easy visual diagrams, I found that a picture really is worth a thousand words - many thousands of people carry around my diagrams now in their wallets and purses, so that they can pull them out to solve nearly any problem involving human behavior...including that of two people seeking love. The Secret Psychology of How We Fall in Love is just the one application of my model of the mind, on the subject of romance.

Let's use the model to discover why there are really only 4 types of men and 4 types of women - and exactly why that explains how soulmates really exist. Scientifically. Not through some kind of magical thinking.

It's about friendship.

Think about the absolute best friends you have ever had, the ones whom you've known for years or even decades. Getting along has had some minor drama here or there, but overall has been easy-breezy. These people are the ones with whom you feel you can most be yourself without worrying how you're seen, and the ones who seem to always leave you MORE energized and MORE enlightened than before you got together for a chat.

There is a reason, and it is not a random happenstance.

Your very best friends and you found each other because you naturally fell into each other's social orbit, emotionally, and intellectually.

You've heard of how magnet poles of opposite charge naturally attract each other. Opposites attract. Opposite magnetic energies seek each other out without any rational motive. It is just a law of nature. The same happens to be true of the human energy our minds run on, which is called self-esteem.

In my mindOS theory, there are two types of self-esteem - well-being and confidence - and these form two opposite ends of how we behave toward others. In other words, we are all either more "nurturing" or "motherly" people who tend to boost the well-being of others, or else more "action-prone," confident, "fatherly" people who boost the confidence of others.

Likewise there are two opposite ways that people, think and communicate (and most of us have heard of these): There are more "left-brained," or analytical, logical, orderly people, and more "right-brained," or creative, flexible, humorous, entertaining people, intellectually. Another way of looking at this is to see the extreme example of a left-brained person as an "obsessive" person, or "neat-freak" with a tendency to want to hold onto and control things. And the extreme of a right-brained person as an "attention deficit" kind of person, who is easily distractible, messy, disjointed, inattentive, but very much goes with the flow of life.

I took these two aspects of us - our emotions and our intellect - saw them as spectrums as one sees a rainbow of color - and CROSSED them. What I then got, were FOUR QUADRANTS of intellectual-emotional behavior. When I looked to names for the four ways that people use their "hearts and minds," the common symbols used in Jungian Psychology were a natural fit: KINGS (or QUEENS), WARRIORS, MAGICIANS, and LOVERS.

Over ten years ago I devised easy diagrams for you to literally see how the personalities of others fit your own. I lay out some of those diagrams for you in The Secret Psychology of How We Fall in Love, and once again, you can take a quick test to identify yourself at http://www.kwml.com

QUEENS AND KINGS

These people have personalities that are dominated by the type of self-esteem I have coined in my theoretical work as WELL-BEING. This means that they tend to be good nurturers of others, and of themselves. They are "motherly" people who love caring for others.

At the same time, intellectually they tend to be very organized people. Imagine how a Queen or a King would care for their kingdom, making laws that help people, directing things that go on in the land, planning the future growth of the nation they governed, and aligning the right people to do the right jobs to secure a peaceful society.

In today's social world, they are the people who gather friends together for a purpose, and make great ADVISORS as friends. There is nothing they like more than being asked for advice.

Their exact opposites and perfect soulmates are the MAGICIANS, the wild and crazy "life of the party," the "star" who entertains and cracks jokes, envisions all kinds of adventures to take together, and all-around lifts the spirit and the vision of a Queen or King. These opposites are soulmates because they offer each other the kind of stimulating intellectual conversation, and the kind of self-esteem in friendship that the other naturally lacks.  All done just by a Queen and Magician BEING THEMSELVES.

The relationship is emotionally and intellectually effortless. Now THAT'S a soulmate.

WARRIORS

Warriors are just as intellectually analytical as the Queens or Kings (they are all left-brained), but emotionally far more outgoing and confident. In terms of self-esteem they tend to boost the confidence of their friends, and have definite targets for their goals. They are the go-to people when you need a specific job done, and done quickly.

The natural opposite of a Warrior is the Lover (not in a sexual sense, but in terms of their poetic, creative, right-brained intellect, and their soft, motherly emotions).  While Warriors are short on words, and quick to action, Lover personalities are natural storytellers full of emotion and caring, very slow to get themselves to take action.

So you can see what soulmates in personality the Warrior and Lover can be. Just by being their natural selves, Warriors love to defend Lovers and rouse them to brave action (as in Medieval times), while they love to hear the tall tales and romantic songs that those poetic, musical Lovers will tell once the battle is over.

In modern terms, the Warrior is the gatekeeper of any group of friends, the defenders and the champions of doing what's right.

MAGICIANS

Right-brained and confident, these are the small segment of society who are the stars of the show, natural public performers and comedians, the top salespeople, and visionary CEOs.

They can tend to be so action-prone and wildly creative that they never seem to run out of steam until they reach total burnout.

That is when they could really use a friend who is logical, a good advisor, nurturing and motherly by nature. Imagine a wild rock star who really needs the wise advice of his or her agent at times, to put out fires in the gossip magazines.

Their soulmates in personality, the ones who naturally "complete them," just by being themselves, are the Queens and Kings they come to for advice.

Magicians love to be given a chance to perform publicly. They need an audience to feel alive, and not in an egotistical way - just a chance to give their talents to many people at one time.

LOVERS

Not a sexual implication, but one describing their style of slow, romantic, poetic, musical storytelling. These are, at an extreme, the peaceniks, granola-people, the chatterboxes who are nevertheless shy when in a crowd, the typical resident of Boulder, Colorado, or Berkeley, or Madison, Wisconsin. Or perhaps an artist's commune somewhere.

They tend to love the Grateful Dead, or Dave Matthews Band.

These are the dreamers of the world, the poets (or fools at times), the soft, romantic, guitar-strumming musicians, and writers who seek solitude while contemplating world peace.

Their greatest challenge is the physical confrontation of others, getting organized with their money or future planning, and being confident in general, especially in a crowd.

So naturally, they benefit from best friendships with Warriors, who are the very opposite - people who take confident and targetted action, but who very much need to be soothed, mothered, and told a good, rich, emotional story. The perfect role for a Lover, who are their perfect soulmates in personality style.

If you have taken the test at http://www.kwml.com by now, you have learned a great deal about yourself, and now can begin to identify all your friends' personalities too.

There is a method in the madness of labelling people this way.

When we look at romance, a very crucial element in anything that will last is the degree of FRIENDSHIP we feel with people, that elusive, invisible force that causes people to bond together in a way that no outside challenge can defeat.

The most solid marriages, like any partnership one hopes to last for life, show us two people who can both be themselves, yet offer everything to their spouse that that person lacks. It is this very principle that can make a marriage of "soulmates" the type that seems to all the world to be effortless, easy, not a labor, but a destiny.

Nothing could be as satisfying as meaning the world to someone else simply by being yourself.

And that doesn't have to be a pie-in-the-sky, mystical, woo-woo notion. As you will see in The Secret Psychology of How We Fall in Love, and any teaching I do on the KWML part of my mindOS system, that the science of psychology really does support that soulmates exist.

We need only the ability to spot them, then make wise choices about how to walk through the steps of courtship from there.

If you have spotted any of these personality types in your life, between characters in novels or film, and have questions about how to use this secret in your life, feel free to write me at http://www.womenshappiness.com  (drpaul@womenshappiness.com)

I'll get back to you shortly.

Dr Paul