Relationships
How to Restore Power Balance in Relationships
Habits deepen. It's not easy to change them, but it's worth a try.
Updated October 18, 2024 Reviewed by Hara Estroff Marano
Key points
- Feeling that your opinions don't matter is hard to live with in a partnership and perhaps a reason to end it.
- Before you do, there are things to try that can restore balance.
- Partners tend to accumulate ways to moralize at each other as if the universe is on their side.
- One thing to try is de-moralizing, because restored balance respects preferences without the moralizing.
You and your partner have been together for a while now. You still say you love them, but it has become less a feeling than a ritual affirmation. You do love your partner and your partnership, but you also love yourself. You’ve got your own preferences, and they’re not always aligned with your partner’s.
Over the years, you’ve both discovered ways to get what you want. One night your partner stumbled on a way to get you to watch their show. Unconsciously, they remembered this new way to get their way. Maybe they’ve found ways to get their way by acting like it’s something you owe them. That’s moralizing: treating a preference as though it’s justified by some moral law. Whether to keep the peace or because you’re a bit of a softy, at least at home, susceptible to guilt about not being everything your partner thinks you should be, you let your partner get their way a lot.
You’ve started to feel bullied in your own home, as though your partner’s expectations have boxed you in, kept you from being who you’re meant to be or at least who you want to be.
Of course, partnership entails compromise. You know that. But how much? It’s starting to feel like it’s a forced choice: Either stay partnered or be yourself.
Or maybe, just maybe, you can find a way to be yourself more within your partnership.It will be hard, but maybe it’s worth a try. For that, you’re going to need to get your partner to back off. If you’re not already out the door, here’s some context and suggestions.
Zoom out: Like any two people, you and your partner are different. You have different appetites, different aptitudes, different attitudes, different options. Your partner might be great, just not a great match anymore. That happens, especially these days. We live in a vast expansion of ways to live and things to do, which increases the chance that over time, any two partners will want to take different paths.
Elective merger: Partnership is an elective, not some moral imperative. It’s got to work for both of you. The goal here is to see if you can be together despite having different preferences—for both of you to allow each other your different preferences.
Consolation of thoroughness: It’s worth trying to see whether you can regain balance. If it fails, at least you’ll have the consolation of thoroughness. It could be that you decide to leave. You’ll have more peace of mind about it if you feel like you gave your partnership your best shot.
De-moralize: To make any progress, you’re going to have to drop the moralizing. If you’re honoring your partnership contract, the rest is about preferences, not morality. You have to try to de-moralize, strip off that moralizing rhetoric. Look around you. Do you see how many different moral standards there are? Notice that you’re always wrong by someone’s moral standard.
Fight fair: You both might feel bullied or at least constricted by each other’s accumulated habits of persuasion or just by the loss of autonomy within any partnership. Your partner might also be relieved to come home to an empty house. Keep that in mind, and strip your moralzing tendencies, too.
Up to you: If you’re the kind who takes morality seriously and thinks there’s only one way to live, you’re the kind who is easily bullied. You got boxed into this corner by being a softy at home probably because you’re easily shameable.
Repercushioning: By now your partner is good at making you feel bad for expressing your preferences. If you start asserting yourself, you can expect a moralizing smackdown. Your partner will retaliate to put you back in the doghouse where you belong. Don’t even try reasserting your preferences if you aren’t cushioned to withstand the inevitable repercussions. If you don’t “repercushion” yourself against the blowback, you’ll back down. What doesn’t kill your partner’s habits of dominance only makes them stronger.
Groundstanding: To withstand the repercussions, calmly stand your ground while letting your partner have theirs. If you partner tries to drown out your preferences with theirs, state yours, hear theirs, and even restate their’s convincingly to show that you heard them. And then shrug. “Oh well. Turns out we’re two different people, with different appetites aptitudes, and opportunities.” Don’t try to persuade your partner that they’re wrong. There’s power in letting the difference just sit there.
The plotting thickens: Intimidated by your partner’s eggshells and land mines, you’ll probably want to be extra careful, plotting the ideal words and gestures to get through to them without provoking retaliation. All that plotting is a symptom of you being bullied, and it’s not likely to work. No matter how you stand your ground, there will be blowback. Instead of plotting, try relaxing into being yourself more. Maybe you are more yourself in some other context. Reintroduce that version of you back into the partnership. You both have preferences. They aren’t always the same. That’s OK. You still get to be you.
Show, don’t tell: Don’t start with a conversation about how from now on you’re going to be different. Show that you’re going to be you. If your partner challenges your new assertiveness, give a short non-defensive answer. It’s who you are and what you want. That’s all.
For the kids: If you have kids, it’s good for them to see you stand up for yourself. They’ll be stronger, wiser adults if they don’t see you or your partner as pushovers.
Give and take: This isn’t you saying it’s your turn to be the dominant partner. You’re trying to restore balance. All commitments entail compromise. You’re just no longer willing to be the primary compromiser.
Worst case: When you’re venturing into something risky like this, it’s useful to ask yourself a non-rhetorical “What’s the worst that could happen?" Picture the worst downside and see whether you can handle it. It might keep you from taking the risk, or it might make you more confident to try, since you’ve already figured out how you could handle the worst possibility.
Compatibility in how you negotiate the incompatibilities: With your preferences on the table, there will be things to renegotiate. Now that you’re being yourself more, the question is whether you two have compatibility in how you negotiate the incompatibilities. If you don’t have that, you may decide that you prefer ending the partnership over pretending you’re someone you’re not. Having tried to reassert yourself and failed to make it work, at least you'll have the consolation of thoroughness.
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