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

Falling in love is what everyone dreams of. Sustaining that love is the deal-breaker. 

People can’t sustain something they don’t fully understand, that they don’t know how to nurture, that they don’t know how to develop and grow.

The nine Enneagram types reveal that there are nine ways to love and receive love. Shown by both modern science and ancient wisdom, leaning into understanding oneself and others through the Enneagram leads to loving better and living more fully.

Enneagram expert and psychiatrist David Daniels, MD and certified Enneagram relationship teacher and coach Suzanne Dion present a relationship-changing guidebook packed with practical tips, specific guidance, and stories of working with couples on communication, anger, judgment, forgiveness, love, intimacy, and sexual fulfillment for all nine types.

This unique resource brings together the power of the Enneagram, relationship mindfulness, and a deep understanding of the nine Enneagram personality types to transform relationships from conflictual and struggling to harmonious and thriving.

Whether someone is seeking love and dating or is in an established relationship, The Enneagram, Relationships, and Intimacy will take them on a journey into themselves and others—a journey that will change their life.

David Daniels, MD (August 30, 1934–May 26, 2017) was a world-renowned teacher in Enneagram studies, self-help, and personal development and an Adjunct Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine. He was a leading developer of the Enneagram system of nine personality types and authored the best-selling book The Essential Enneagram, featuring the first scientifically
validated Enneagram personality test.

Over his thirty-year private practice, David taught the Enneagram to thousands worldwide, integrating it into clinical practice, workplaces, and rehabilitation settings with compassion. Alongside Helen Palmer, he co-founded The Narrative Enneagram (originally, the Palmer-Daniels Enneagram Professional Training Program), and he was an instrumental co-founder of the International Enneagram Association.

Believing deeply in personal liberation through self-discovery, he developed many simple daily personal development methods, including the Universal Growth Process or 5As for personal transformation and self-mastery. In collaboration with Suzanne Dion, David devoted his final years to writing The Enneagram, Relationships, and Intimacy. David’s great hope was that this insightful book would serve as a guide to understanding personality types, leading to personal, relationship, and global healing.

Suzanne Dion, an Enneagram-informed transformational coach and trainer, works with individuals, couples, teens, families, and small
companies. Suzanne is certified as a teacher with the Palmer-Daniels Enneagram Professional Training Program (now The Narrative Enneagram), completed the Advanced Coaching 2.0 program with The Enneagram in Business, and trained with Life Centered Therapy.

Suzanne is an Enneagram consultant and faculty member at the Deep Coaching Institute and the creative director for Marion Gilbert’s Somatic Enneagram™ Training School. She also co-founded The Attuned Parent Project—Parenting to Heal the World. A founding board member of the Enneagram Prison Project (2012–2017), Suzanne developed and taught trauma-informed, addiction-informed Enneagram courses to incarcerated individuals in Northern California jails and the San Quentin State Prison. 

She co-authored The Enneagram, Relationships, and Intimacy with her mentor David Daniels, MD to join the ancient wisdom of the Enneagram and Daniels’s years of experience with Dr. Daniel J. Siegel’s neuroscience perspective on mindful awareness, attachment, and interpersonal neurobiology.

Suzanne currently resides in California.