Balancing Power in Your Relationship
by Amber Dalsin, M.Sc., C.Psych.
How to feel supported in your relationship and balance the power between you and your partner.
Many relationship conflicts arise from imbalances in power.
If wanted my partner to come home at 10:00, I would give my power away by not telling them and just pretending to be okay with whatever time they came home, even if I wasn’t okay with it on the inside. Then, my partner would come home much later than my 10:00 internal curfew. I’d be giving my power away, counting down every minute from 10 until the time they came home, losing sleep, feeling more and more anxious and upset.
Then I would try to take power back by texting a dozen times, calling, giving ultimatums, or just being plain mean when they got home. Unsurprisingly, this caused conflict in my relationship.
One way to balance the scale is to stop giving your power away. By putting others’ needs before your own, you could be sabotaging your relationship and endangering your mental health.
How do you give power away?
By pretending you don’t have needs
I constantly felt like I was walking through a minefield, preparing for the next conflict. I had to maneuver my life around reactions to my environment and basing my actions around triggers and not setting anyone off. I gave my power away by trying not to have needs. I started putting my needs, my dreams, my beliefs on hold.
By allowing others to dictate your emotional state
It was like I was wearing a bright red button that said TRIGGER on the front. People could just walk by and push it, and they would get a big, emotional reaction out of me.
By thinking that you need to do it all or control it all, and feeling helpless when you can’t
I was trying so hard to make it work. When my relationships started to break down, it felt like I was drowning, trying so hard to keep everything afloat that it all just dragged me under.
When you feel powerless, at times you grasp and cling to any amount of control you can get. The catch is that these behaviours can push away the people you love the most.
How do you take power from others?
Giving harsh ultimatums
I would say things to my partners like, “If you don’t see me this weekend, it’s over!”
Intentionally saying hurtful things to spark a reaction
I would behave pretty aggressively – testing to see if they actually cared about me. I thought that I had to act out in order to be seen and heard.
Achieving Balance
One of the first things I had to do to get back my personal power was to accept that I did, in fact, have needs, that they were valid, and there were legitimate ways to get those needs met.
When it comes to getting support without taking power from others, it is important to be clear on what you expect and need, to avoid making people guess. If you make them guess, you’re setting them up to get it wrong.
Many of my clients express sentiments like:
If I tell my partner to do it, it doesn’t count.
If I tell them what I need, it cheapens it.
If they don’t know what I need then they don’t love me.
Unfair expectations like these can lead to bitter disappointment for you, and feelings of helplessness and utter failure for your partner. It is important to set appropriate boundaries, behave assertively, but not aggressively.
If you need support, think about helpful ways to ask for it, rather than demanding, commanding, or making them guess what you need. Because when you are mean, demanding, aggressive, or when you set them up to fail, you push the people you love the most away. You take their power away.
Today, taking my power back means being assertive and kind. Asking for what I want, allowing my partner to share his view and also to disagree.
Let’s imagine: my partner tells me he’s going out on Friday, but I have to be up early on Saturday.
I could say: “Babe, I have a meeting at 7:00 Saturday; if you’re out late, I won’t be able to sleep. Can you please be home by 10:00 so I can get to bed?” That is assertively asking for what I need.
Here he gets to have power too. He could:
Say yes to coming home at the exact time I want
Negotiate to come home later
Set his boundary and say “No, I’m not coming home, instead let’s have a phone call or a FaceTime before you go to bed so you can sleep.”
When neither of us teeter back and forth between giving away all of our power or trying to take it all, we can work together and compromise, we can both feel supported, we can both have power, we can both be happier.
Being in a relationship means balancing power between both partners. Yes, sometimes someone will have more power than another and that’s normal. Keeping that balance is not always easy. It is our joint responsibility to own our power and communicate respectfully with each other even when we disagree.
This blog is not meant to be a substitute for couples therapy or relationship counselling. This should not be construed as specific advice. See a relationship therapist in your area to address your specific problems.