Power in relationships

I don't know how I keep forgetting this, but somehow I have this ingrained notion of egalitarianism that keeps me from noticing (until too late) that the main dynamic driving almost every relationship is: Power.

Here are some ideas from others on the subject:

Power in Personal Relationships, which can more or less be summed up by this (bold mine):

"Whoever needs the relationship the least has the power. And...[that] says something very profound that people miss: few relationships exist where both partners need it equally and thus almost all relationships have unequal power in them.

This is reminding me that I need to be even more careful about who I choose to spend time with, and avoid like the plague all relationships that feel disempowering.

Ok, here's another one: Relationships and Health. Quote:

Here are some things to look out for in healthy relationships.

• Respect - no put-downs, each of you having the right to have an opinion, listening and being able to voice what you think and feel.
• Trust
• Honesty - openness and honesty about what you think, feel and do.
• Safety - feeling safe from physical, emotional, sexual or other forms of abuse.
• Equality - look out for power in relationships and who holds it. Feeling powerless or more powerful than another person can affect your health.
• Consistency - you know where you and others stand.
• Value - you feel valued and value the relationship.
• Security/loyalty - you feel safe that both parties value the relationship.
• Empathy - listening and understanding each other - putting yourself in the other person's shoes.
• Genuineness - is a human, natural and honest relationship.

These seem so obvious, but it helps to be reminded. When one grows up with relationships where many of these were missing entirely, it's sometimes easy to forget. The things that are missing from the relationship I'm angsting about today are the Equality, Consistency and Security/loyalty aspects. And maybe Empathy, too - it only happens if I force the other person to listen, which, I tell ya what, totally sucks. Makes me feel like the bad guy, the bully.

I'm trying to be fair, trying to see his side as well as mine. But it seems like the conversations only happen if I make them happen, which seems to me to be a pretty basic part of the power differential. If he never appears to need to talk about things, then everything must be ok, right? And he doesn't have to give up any power by appearing weak or vulnerable. Now I get that this is to some extent a male pattern (having read about it ad nauseum), but I guess I still don't really understand/accept it in my gut. It doesn't feel right, somehow.

And maybe that's the power imbalance at work: That intuitive sense that something's out of whack, the 'red flag' that people talk about. I guess when you grow up in a dysfunctional, non-communicative, pain-filled, shaming family, the red flags are pretty much falling like rain, to the point where you tend to block the whole thing out altogether.

So learning to notice the remaining red flags when you've done a lot of work on eradicating at least some of them - I guess it's just an ongoing process. Kind of like weeding the garden: Something you have to pay a little attention to all the time, or before you know it, some monster weed has taken over the strawberry patch, and there're no more yummy strawberries to be had! Sadness. Can't be havin' with that.

'Red flag relationship' search string led to this

"the body waves a red flag", which I assume is an image of how blocked power manifests in the body's 'aura', if one believes in such things :-).

and this:

Easier said than done, I think. It seems to me to me more valuable to notice the number of red flags in any given relationship, and decide how many is too many to put up with and/or deal with. The number of red flags might simply be another way of measuring the power imbalance.

Sometimes you just have to walk away.

Which is a dilemma in itself, for me, at least: Growing up in a family where the parents always walked away from pain, grief, fear, conflict, always turned their backs on me, I feel intensely guilty whenever I turn my back on someone in need as a consequence, from other people in the family to a panhandler. Sometimes it's like having a 'sucker' sign pasted on my forehead, or something.

I guess this is what happens when other people are allowed to have boundaries, but you are not - you are elected as the boundary-less one in the family, the one upon whom all manner of indignities may be heaped. Once again, the scapegoat.