Yes Man meets Responsibility or, Ben Affleck meets Jennifer Garner

Today's letter is Y, and I've chosen my second real-life match. First one was Kate and Wills. Anyway, we're coming close to the finish line with the match between a Yes Man, Ben Affleck, and Responsibility, Jennifer Garner, his wife.

The Yes Man is more often male than female, and is also the Horatio Alger personality, the Career Woman, the Soccer Mom, the Trophy Wife. It’s the Company Man and the Stepford Wife. This type focuses on getting ahead in their selected career. In movies featuring this personality type, themes involve overcoming obstacles by perseverance. (My left foot; Pursuit of Happyness). Themes also include immigrants seeking success in the New World. (Hester Street; Far and Away). This is the home of Success or Impostor stories, and the conflict between love and work. We see someone who never wanted to be a parent, but who’s suddenly become one, is clueless about how to be one. We see someone who’s lost their job due to illness or some other factor, and is forced to spend some time thinking about who they really are apart from the identity their job gave them. (Castaway.) They learn to be less concerned about material success and to take more time to smell the roses. Read more about the Yes Man (corporation man; man in the gray striped suit) personality.
The Responsibility personality is as often male as female. The Responsibility personality is most often associated with safety, family and home life, conservative values, and appreciation of cultural traditions. As children they were fearful and shy, whereas their related personality type, Warrior, were fearful, but overcame their fears by acting out. Family oriented, their home shelters them from the world. Often family is all they need, but they are also loyal friends. Books that exemplify this type’s outlook and values include family life stories: Sarah: Plain and tall; Little Women; Old Yeller; Our Town; Cheaper by the Dozen; The Waltons. Movies and books that focus on love and romance after marriage (rather than prior to marriage, which is grist for the Ambassador, Queen of Seduction and Nurturer types) fall into this type’s themes. This personality type gives love freely, giving people what they need but not what they don’t want, whereas the Ambassador, Queen of Seduction and Nurturer types often have a hidden agenda. Feeling unlovable, they help others in order to gain love. Knowing that they are loved, this is not an unconscious need for Responsibility types, and so their love is a gift without strings attached.

Additionally, these are the featured types in books or movies that feature loyal employees (labor dramas) or shy sidekicks; Thrillers (stories designed to invoke fear); fear comedies (because they are more fearful than most personality types, this type of movie pokes fun at their fearfulness. Examples: The Out-of-Towners; What about Bob.) Books and movies featuring this type also include those with themes that celebrate cultural traditions and also those of ordinary people banding together to fight a common enemy. Superhero stories fit into this personality type’s fantasies in movies and books. Lastly, themes for this type also fall under the umbrellas of science versus faith (this type prefers faith) and fear versus faith (this type uses their faith to overcome their fears). Read more about the Responsibility personality.   

  

What might a pairing between the Yes Man (Ben Affleck) and Responsibility (his real life wife, Jennifer Garner) be like? Or if not them, between people of similar personality types?

My sources tell me that while this isn’t a common pairing, these types can work well as a team. Both are practical but eager to achieve material success. Both are hard workers, and will persevere until they achieve success.

But success is dependent on them resolving the tension between performance and performance-anxiety. (He’s naturally a great performer, or has worked to become one and will never forget how to be a success, whereas she might be one as well, but her never-ending performance-anxiety will keep her from maintaining success.) When she wants to stop and discuss her doubts (she’s always full of them), he’ll be afraid to do so, because it dredges up anxieties about his self-worth, despite the confident face he shows the world. So instead of stopping and talking about it, he’ll soldier on, which will inadvertently serve to increase her anxieties. Instead of working things out, issues are forgotten.

Ben will be energetic, optimistic, outgoing. Jennifer will be warm, supportive and loyal. She’ll feel compassion for the less fortunate, and because of this, he’ll learn to care more for them as well. Each respects the other for their talents. They’ll bolster each other’s confidence.

She’ll help him become part of something bigger than himself—a church, or political organization, a cause. Both become stronger individually and as a team through such endeavors. As long as they share important values, their relationship will be successful and lasting.

Each completes the other in important ways, but if the relationship isn’t healthy, they’ll bring out the worst in themselves and each other. Both are competitive and tend to spend too much time at work; both are insecure and need external reassurance and acceptance, and may look outside the relationship to find it. 

Neither likes to talk about their feelings, but instead to soldier on in their respective tasks, which can get on each other’s nerves. She’ll see him as being too ambitious, and with too big an ego. She’ll get tired of his boasting. Both view success through very different eyes. He’ll feel accomplished if he can do something well, whereas she’s unable to remember her successes, and will need to be reminded. It helps when she can learn to focus on the task at hand, rather than getting mired in fear of failure.

He’ll see her as being too nervous and cautious. Both could become evasive about their actions and feelings. If still unwilling or unable to talk about their feelings, both could develop separate social lives from each other.

Ben will try to keep up appearances, and would be embarrassed if she let it be known that their relationship was in trouble. Instead of Jennifer’s healthy questioning of him, and his challenging competitiveness with her, they would lose interest in each other until something exposes the fact that the relationship has died.

Additional Information:

What is the Enneagram, and What are Enneagram Personality Types?  

What are Instinctual Subtypes?  

Traits of the 27 Individual Subtypes  

Sources from which I collected and synthesized information about the matches